Re: mixed-script writing systems

From: Andrew C. West (andrewcwest@alumni.princeton.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 06:19:41 EST

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    On Mon, 18 Nov 2002 02:34:18 -0800 (PST), Kenneth Whistler wrote:

    > In point of fact,
    > people for centuries have been borrowing back and forth between
    > Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic in particular, so that in some respects
    > LGC is a kind of metascript and should be treated as such.
    >

    Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Runic even (cf. Latin letters Thorn and Wynn).

    Gothic is a good example of a mixed-script writing system, composed of a mixture
    of Latin, Greek and Runic letters. There is a "Gothicness" about the graphic
    forms of the glyphs of the Gothic alphabet, but IMHO this variation from
    "standard" (but what is "standard" in 4th century terms ?) Latin, Greek and
    Runic letters should be dealt with at the font level. Nevertheless, Gothic has
    been encoded in Unicode, and this may provide an unwelcome precedent for
    encoding other mixed-script writing systems.

    What about the now-defunct Zhuang alphabet (used between 1955 and 1981 in PRC)
    that was composed of a cumbersome mixture of Latin, Cyrillic and IPA letters ?
    Should the letters of this alphabet be encoded separately in "Zhuang" block, or
    is it simply the fact that the borrowed letters do not exhibit any distinctive
    "Zhuangness" in their graphic form that precludes their being encoded separately
    in the same way that Gothic is ? (Or is it perhaps a Eurocentric bias in Unicode
    ?)

    Andrew



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