RE: Obsolete characters

From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jan 16 2009 - 11:02:47 CST

  • Next message: Mark Davis: "Re: Obsolete characters"

    [stopping the cross-list posting]

    But standard IPA is not the only convention for phonetic transcription in use. Patrick’s point, which Andrew re-iterated and which I will add my voice to is that some of those characters are very much used by Sinologists.


    Peter

    From: unicore-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicore-bounce@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Mark Davis
    Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:45 AM
    To: Andrew West
    Cc: UTC; Unicode
    Subject: Re: Obsolete characters

    The word I got a response from John Wells (who would know) that [ɩɷɼɿʅ-ʇʓʖʗʚʞʠʣʥʦʨ-ʯ] contains three characters that have never been IPA (ɿʅʯ) , and the rest are "obsolete, archaic, no longer taught to students, no longer in use".

    So at least in terms of official IPA usage, these would count as "archaic". I presume that their use has been supplanted by others, but I don't know any details.

    Mark

    On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 02:22, Andrew West <andrewcwest@gmail.com<mailto:andrewcwest@gmail.com>> wrote:
    2009/1/15 Mark Davis <mark@macchiato.com<mailto:mark@macchiato.com>>:
    >
    > U+027F ( ɿ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED R WITH FISHHOOK
    > U+0285 ( ʅ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER SQUAT REVERSED ESH
    > U+02A3 ( ʣ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER DZ DIGRAPH
    > U+02A5 ( ʥ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER DZ DIGRAPH WITH CURL
    > U+02A6 ( ʦ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TS DIGRAPH
    > U+02A8 ( ʨ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TC DIGRAPH WITH CURL
    > U+02AE ( ʮ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK
    > U+02AF ( ʯ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H WITH FISHHOOK AND TAIL
    As Patrick Chew has already pointed out, these characters are
    ubiquitous in the Sinitic tradition of IPA notation, and are certainly
    not obsolete.

    I'm not sure about these tone letters, but I suspect that they are
    also not obsolete:

    > U+02F9 ( ˹ ) MODIFIER LETTER BEGIN HIGH TONE
    > U+02FA ( ˺ ) MODIFIER LETTER END HIGH TONE
    > U+02FB ( ˻ ) MODIFIER LETTER BEGIN LOW TONE
    > U+02FC ( ˼ ) MODIFIER LETTER END LOW TONE
    > U+A700 ( ꜀ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YIN PING
    > U+A701 ( ꜁ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YANG PING
    > U+A702 ( ꜂ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YIN SHANG
    > U+A703 ( ꜃ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YANG SHANG
    > U+A704 ( ꜄ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YIN QU
    > U+A705 ( ꜅ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YANG QU
    > U+A706 ( ꜆ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YIN RU
    > U+A707 ( ꜇ ) MODIFIER LETTER CHINESE TONE YANG RU
    > U+A720 ( ꜠ ) MODIFIER LETTER STRESS AND HIGH TONE
    > U+A721 ( ꜡ ) MODIFIER LETTER STRESS AND LOW TONE
    On the other hand these Zhuang tone characters (not listed) probably
    should be considered to be obsolete:

    U+0185 ( ƅ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TONE SIX
    U+01A8 ( ƨ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TONE TWO
    U+01BD ( ƽ ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TONE FIVE

    Andrew

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