Hello,
in the Greek Extended block, five of the lower-case characters
do not have upper-case equivalents, viz.
U+1FE4 GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO WITH PSILI
U+1F50 GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI
U+1F52 GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI AND VARIA
U+1F54 GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA
U+1F56 GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON WITH PSILI AND PERISPOMENI
The Rho with psili is indeed only needed in lower-case:
- word-initial rho (upper-case or lower-case) takes a dasia,
- a double-rho within a word can be adorned with a psili and
a dasia, which is not done in upper-case typing,
- no other medial or final rho takes a breathing mark.
However, the missing upsilon variants escape my understanding:
- word-initial upsilon (both lower-case and upper-case) must take
a breathing mark,
- medial and final upsilons do not take breathing marks.
So, you will either need both sorts of marks on both cases,
or you will need only dasia on both cases (I do not remember any
word starting with psili-upsilon, but my Greek is rather rusty).
So the questions are:
- are the above-mentioned lower-case upsilon composites useless,
and entered Unicode only by an oversight, or
- are their upper-case equivalents missing by an oversight, or
- is there indeed a rationale for this anomaly?
Note that the code-points where you would expect these upper-case
upsilon compositions, viz. U+1F58 U+1F5A U+1F5C U+1F5E, are left
unassigned (reserved).
Can anybody shade some light on this anomaly: either explain the
underlying rationale, or acknowledge the oversight?
Best wishes,
Otto Stolz
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