Greek, Cyrillic, Georgian; and Coptic; and Greek/Etruscan/Gothic
Unification in ISO/IEC 10646: summary of points from B Philip
Jonsson, Kamal Mansour on tc46sc2@elot.gr; and and from John Cowan,
on unicode@unicode.org.
In message <9711181922.AA16328@unicode.org> John Cowan on
unicode@unicode.org writes:
> The following pre-proposal suggests a unification of the
> archaic Etruscan and Gothic scripts with Unicode Greek, requiring
> the addition of a few letters in the Greek block for the
> un-unifiable residuum. Given the preliminary decision to use
> L2R ordering for Etruscan, it looks just like an archaic
> variant of Greek; Gothic, in turn, looks like typical
> Greek minuscule writing with a few oddball letters.
Many scripts are linked through a common heritage, shown in use of
similar shapes, sounds, alphabetic order, and/or numerical value.
Recent emails on the tc46sc2@elot.gr email discussion list on
transliteration have linked Greek, Cyrillic, and Georgian, with
further correspondents asking about possible relationships between
specific Cyrillic and Coptic characters.
In general these relationships are not well known. By complete
coincidence, similar relationships are being suggested on the Unicode
email list regarding Greek, Gothic and Etruscan scripts.
I briefly summarise some of the points here, from both of these
lists, but omitting the detail of John Cowan's mail, already sent:
in a separate email I will also include similar points (but not
suggesting unification) regarding Greek, Cyrillic and Georgian.
* * * * * * * *
> From: B Philip Jonsson <bpj@netg.se> on Tue 18 Nov 1997 08:37
> Subject: Origin of Cyrillic dze/Greek stigma
> To: Converse@sesame.demon.co.uk; tc46sc2@elot.gr
> In his comparative list of Cyrillic/Greek/Georgian alphabets John Clews
> equates Cyrillic _dze_ with Greek stigma... While the
> equation seems OK on grounds of alphabetical order and letter-form I wonder
> if anyone knows the details? It strikes me as strange that stigma should
> be used for the ancient value of Greek zeta, even granted that the
> creator(s) of Cyrillic were innovative enough to employ qoppa with the
> value /tS/. So my question is: is there any evidence for stigma being used
> to write an affricate, i.e. the modern Greek _ts_ and _tz_ [dz] affricates,
> or in writing other languages than Greek (such as Turkish or Albanian
> affricates)?
>
> Also, might there not exist a connection between Cyrillic and Coptic?
> While Cyrillic _sh_ most probably is from Hebrew the Coptic letter for the
> same value is also very similar. Also the Slavic _zh_, especially its
> Glagolitic form!, recalls Coptic _dj_ more than anything else -- although I
> would appreciate all possible info on other possible derivations of
> Cyrillic _zh_.
* * * * * * * *
> Kamal Mansour <kamal@ca.monotypeusa.com>
> Subject: RE: Origin of Cyrillic dze/Greek stigma
> To: "B Philip Jonsson" <bpj@netg.se>,
> "Translit Mailing List" <tc46sc2@elot.gr>
>
> It's worth noting that in Coptic circles, the Coptic origin of
> Cyrillic _sh_ is often taken for granted. While I had never
> contemplated the connection between Cyrillic _zh_ and Coptic Djandja,
> now I can see an obvious formal similarity. Can anyone provide
> historical evidence to support or refute these conjectures?
* * * * * * * *
The rest of the forwarded (unconnected but serendipitous) message
from John Cowan follows:
> To: Multiple Recipients of <unicode@unicode.org>
> Reply-To: unicode@unicode.org
> From: John Cowan <cowan@drv.cbc.com>
> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 11:22:31 -0800 (PST)
> Subject: Greek/Etruscan/Gothic Unification Proposal
>
> The following pre-proposal suggests a unification of the
> archaic Etruscan and Gothic scripts with Unicode Greek, requiring
> the addition of a few letters in the Greek block for the
> un-unifiable residuum. Given the preliminary decision to use
> L2R ordering for Etruscan, it looks just like an archaic
> variant of Greek; Gothic, in turn, looks like typical
> Greek minuscule writing with a few oddball letters.
>
> The advantage of this scheme is that (at the expense of some
> space in the Greek block) these languages, like Coptic, become
> representable on the BMP; in addition, 27 + 31 - 11 = 47 codepoints
> are saved.
>
> Here is the proposed unification table:...
(omitted as this was already circulated today to the Unicode list).
John Clews
-- Chair of ISO/TC46/SC2: Conversion of Written Languages; Member of CEN/TC304: Character Set Technology; Member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC2: Character Sets.SESAME Computer Projects, 8 Avenue Road, Harrogate, HG2 7PG, England Email: Converse@sesame.demon.co.uk; tel: +44 (0) 1423 888 432
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