Re: Burmese vowels

From: Rick McGowan (rmcgowan@apple.com)
Date: Wed Oct 14 1998 - 20:27:24 EDT


> So then, it's not "illegal" to combine independent vowels with dependent
> vowels; though, it is not often done?

This is done when it is done, e.g., in Tibetan when a word begins with a
vowel. RAven Travillian pointed out that there's one legal situation in
Khmer where this occurs (on a particular vowel). I think that Raven's
assessment is right:

> ... Tibetan
> has no independent vowels, and that Khmer has independent vowels which
> dependent vowels cannot be attached to.

In that way, Khmer is pretty much like the other Indic scripts; and Tibetan
is a slightly odd case.

In general, however, refering to the Unicode Standard: It is never
"illegal" to combine any character with any other character. The standard
does not legislate the segregation of scripts or the legality of arbitrary
text streams.

        Rick



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