From: Jim Allan (jallan@smrtytrek.com)
Date: Mon May 19 2003 - 19:48:51 EDT
John Cowan posted:
> The point is that "ae" is a ligature in some languages and a plain letter
> in others, but "oe" is always a ligature.
Not so.
Both _æ_ and _œ_ were ligatures devised in very late Classical Latin for
the combinations _ae_ and _œ_ when these represented diphthongs rather
than _a_ followed by _e_ or _o_ followed by _e_.
Compare _cœles_ as opposed to _coemptor_ (which one might also write
_coëmptor_).
They were adopted into Old English where _æ_ at least was definitely
taken as a separate letter. Some Old English scholars also count _œ_ as
a separate letter (I do not know on what evidence) but it did not last
long in the language.
But in Old Norse _œ_ was definitely a separate letter placed at the very
end of the alphabet.
It is a separate letter, not a ligature, in the International Phonetic
alphabet. See http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/vowels.html.
It appears in the Seneca alphabet where it must be a separate letter
since that alphabet lacks the letter _o_. See
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Languages/Seneca.htm?CalledFrom=800287.
I would not be suprised to see it appears in other "aboriginal/native"
Latin letter orthographies, though can't recall any at the moment. Its
appearance on the Niamey keyboard might be for use with French words, or
it might not.
It is the also normal Latin letter transliteration for the Runic letter
U+16AF.
Accordingly, it would be reasonable that _æ_ and _œ_ be classed as the
same kind of thing in Unicode, whatever that thing might be. It would be
reasonable that the same collating rules be applied to both as to
primary or secondary differences from _a_ and _o_ respectively.
Jim Allan
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