Coptic queries (was: Etruscan/Gothic/etc.)

From: John Cowan (cowan@drv.cbc.com)
Date: Fri Nov 21 1997 - 16:38:10 EST


Marc Wilhelm Kuester wrote:

> Michael Everson wrote:
> >Greek and Coptic should never have been unified.
>
> I could not agree more.

Then perhaps they should be de-unified. This is already in
progress for {S, T} with comma below and for yogh/ezh.

BTW, how is COPTIC LETTER SO/SOOU (the 6th letter, between EI and
ZETA) represented in Unicode? The glyph looks vaguely like
a (Greek, not Coptic) lower-case epsilon with a descending flourish.
See http://pharos.bu.edu/cn/articles/CopticAlphabet.txt or
http://www.stshenouda.com/coptlang/coptalfa.htm .

Context suggests that this is used for the number 6 when
writing numbers using letters (the ancient Greek method as well),
and therefore the "correct" unification is GREEK LETTER DIGAMMA.
The visual resemblance is, shall we say, not striking.

Also, is Coptic caseless? The Coptic-unique letters in Unicode
are given in two cases, but the difference appears to be one of
size only. I don't find any bicameral Coptic fonts or texts
anywhere on the Web.

The TrueType font at http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/coptic.html
has some additional characters which may have Coptic uses:
what I would describe as RHO WITH STROKE, FEI WITH STROKE,
STIGMA, and something that looks like a stylized THORN.
These appear in the font at glyph codes 0x37, 0x35, 0x36, and 0x34
respectively. Can anyone pin them down?

-- 
John Cowan	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan		cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:38 EDT