RE: U+0345 COMBINING GREEK YPOGEGRAMMENI not usable in other scripts as "hook below"?

From: Keutgen, Walter (walter.keutgen@be.unisys.com)
Date: Fri Jun 16 2006 - 14:37:29 CDT

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    Philippe, Karl,

    1) the most complete document about the phonetic script for German _phonologists_ that Karl mentioned is http://www.sprachatlas.phil.uni-erlangen.de/materialien/Teuthonista_Handbuch.pdf. In such a script one does not capitalize. The document also introduces a special font for rendering, SMFTeuthonika, and the PDF probably is written with it. Even a keyboard layout is shown. The hooks below do not touch the base character. I wonder wether the full set of diacritics is defined in Unicode. It seems that Karl is busy making the list.

    2) The little book in Rhineland dialect (http://www.beepworld.de/memberdateien/members85/friedhelmschmitz/dielnschbank1.pdf), on which he draw our attention, mentions the "Rheinische Dokumenta", a phonetic writing system for publishing dialect texts such that _ordinary people_ can read them. Unfortunately the full spelling rules are not accessible on the web. The book restricts to the signs used in it, written in the dialect of the village of Jüchen. I found another partial source, an office of the city of Mülheim/Ruhr.

    In the Jüchen book, the vertical stroke below and the hook (a returned cedilla) below touch the letters. There are no double such hooks and strokes. It has this triple span breve below the "sch" for the sound of "j" in French (see pp. 8-11).

    The RD on the Mülheim site also restricts to the own dialect (http://www.muelheim-ruhr.de/die_schreibweise_rheinische_dokumenta1.html). Compared to Jüchen, "sch" with triple breve below does not exist. There is however an underlined "ch" to distinguish the sound [ç] (which indeed should not exist in Jüchen dialect - I verified the texts) from [x]. It introduces "z" for the sound [z] like in French. Unfortunately the two texts that I browsed are in genuine Mülheim dialect spelling, not in RD.

    "Z" is a contradiction between the two versions. In the Jüchen book, they use "s?" (s with dot below) instead.

    The original book by Peter Honnen, "Rheinische Dokumenta. Lautschrift für rheinische Mundarten. Mundartdokumentation im
    Rheinland, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-7927-0947-3" is not on the web. The book can only be lent or one needs to search and buy it used if one wants to own it.

    Best regards

    Walter

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    -----Original Message-----
    From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Philippe Verdy
    Sent: Friday, 16 June 2006 17:00
    To: Karl Pentzlin; Unicode Mailing List
    Subject: Re: U+0345 COMBINING GREEK YPOGEGRAMMENI not usable in other scripts as "hook below"?

    From: "Karl Pentzlin" <karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de>
    > When looking at some German dialect writing systems which use a
    > diacritic very similar to the Greek iota subscript, I had the idea
    > that U+0345 COMBINING GREEK YPOGEGRAMMENI could fit for that use.
    >
    > But I suspect that for its casing properties, this is not possible.
    > Of course, an a or e with hook below shall uppercase to an A or E
    > with hook below, not to an A or E with anything adscripted.

    Isn't there a "vertical line below" diacritic (U+0329) in the general combining characters block, instead of importing a diacritic from the Greek block which has its own specificities for Greek?

    I know it was used for phonologic (syllable marks) or phonetic (additional interlinear notation of stress) or in Yoruba (I don't know what it means there), but isn't it very similar to a subscript I ? Does it absolutely need to be attached like a leg?

    Consider also U+0328 (ogonek) which is more cursive.

    Is there also a dot above this subscrit (i.e. are you sure it denotes some related meaning with I, such as velarization, or L, such as central palatalization for a more "liquid" vowel)? Could it have similarities with the function of a Cyrillic soft sign?

    Before answering those questions, are there cases where the sign is used below a capital?



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