From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Wed Nov 26 2003 - 11:04:33 EST
On 26/11/2003 04:40, Andrew C. West wrote:
>On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 16:16:15 -0800, "Doug Ewell" wrote:
>
>
>>Well, one reason could be that there is no such character. (Did you
>>mean U+1034A GOTHIC LETTER NINE HUNDRED?)
>>
>>
>>
>
>But why do U+10341 [GOTHIC LETTER NINETY] and U+1034A [GOTHIC LETTER NINE
>HUNDRED], which are letters that are only ever used to represent the numbers 90
>and 900 respectively (they have no intrinsic phonetic value), not have a numeric
>value assigned to them ? Is this perhaps because all the other Gothic letters
>can also be used to represent numbers in exactly the same way that U+10341 and
>U+1034A are used (these two letter were devised specifically to fill the gap in
>the series of numbers represented by the ordinary Gothic letters), ...
>
Probably not. It doesn't take long to see that NINETY appears where one
might expect a Q and corresponds to the Greek koppa. Koppa was used as a
letter in very early Greek, but since then (and even to the present day)
as a numeral with the same value 90. See
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/numerals.html#koppa. It is
clear from the value and the glyph that the Gothic NINETY is derived
from the Greek koppa. Similarly, the Gothic NINE HUNDRED is derived from
the Greek sampi (U+03E1).
-- Peter Kirk peter@qaya.org (personal) peterkirk@qaya.org (work) http://www.qaya.org/
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