From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Fri Jun 16 2006 - 16:01:53 CDT
Philippe Verdy wrote on Friday, June 16, 2006 at 4:00 PM
> 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.
And why should one presume it would appear adscript? For example, in
Gentium it appears adscript with a capital alpha, eta or omega, but
subscript with a capital iota, upsilon or 'A'.
But I was perfectly serious when I said that you should consider its
meaning, and try to determine the author's intention. He may not have had
an intention of writing anything distinct from U+031C COMBINING LEFT HALF
RING BELOW, and ogonek may simply have appeared to be at most a variant of
the same diacritic. Using a subscript iota is rather like using an omega
instead of 'w' because someone's handwritten 'w's look more like omegas.
(In my handwriting, U+031C, U+0328 and U+0345 are indistinguishable.)
A much more serious issue is the identity of the base vowels. Are the
diacritics being applied to U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A or to U+0251 U+LATIN
SMALL LETTER ALPHA? I suspect we see the former in Section 2.1, but in a
font that makes no distinction. I don't think the co-occurrence of the
vowel with U+03B1 GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA in 'mädlα' or 'mɑ̈dlα' is
conclusive.
> 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?
In Yoruba it means the vowel is open.
> 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?
The meaning is spelt out quite clearly in
www.uni-wuerzburg.de/germanistik/spr/suf/baydat-udi/pdf/Lautschrift.pdf - it
means 'open'.
Richard.
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