RE: johab compound letters reference for Hangul?

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Sat Dec 20 2003 - 09:35:17 EST

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    Åke Persson wrote:

    > Korean
    > http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC22/WG20/docs/n1051-hangulsort.pdf

    When looking at this document, I see that it needs a separate codepoint
    (actually a separate weight) to represent the KAPYEOUN- variants of CHOSEONG
    and JONGSEONG consonnants.

    However, the Hangul script seems to be consistent (including for its
    representation as glyphs), if <KAPYEOUN-consonnant> is decomposed simply as
    <consonnant, IEUNG>. I spoke with a Hangul writer, and he also thinks that
    there's no difference (beside the name) between:

    CHOSEONGs:
    - <KAPYEOUNRIEUL> and <RIEUL, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNMIEUM> and <MIEUM, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNSSANGPIEUP> and <PIEUP, PIEUP, IEUNG> and <SSANGPIEUP, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNPIEUP> and <PIEUP, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNPHIEUPH> and <PHIEUPH, PIEUP>

    JONGSEONGs:
    - <RIEUL-KAPYEOUNPIEUP> and <RIEUL, PIEUP, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNMIEUM> and <MIEUM, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNPIEUP> and <PIEUP, IEUNG>
    - <KAPYEOUNPHIEUPH> and <PHIEUPH, PIEUP>

    So I wonder if the "special" weight given to KAPYEOUN- should not simply the
    same weight as IEUNG, so that KAPYEOUN is simply a special name for IEUNG
    which is not pronounced by itself, but alters the phonetic of the associated
    consonnant.

    Also, there is no other "-IEUNG" suffixed consonnants in the encoded Johab
    and Wangsung sets (beside SIOS-IEUNG, CIEUC-IEUNG, however there's no
    similar KAPYEOUNSIOS and KAPYEOUNCIEUC).

    In any case, the KAPYEOUN- consonnants all use the horizontal oval stacked
    below the modified letter, exactly like compounf jamos terminated by
    IEUNG... So readers could not tell the difference if there was one. So
    KAPYEOUN are merely a traditional name kept even after the formal modern
    definition of the Hangul alphabet.

    And finally it seems consistent with North and South Korean collation orders
    (however I did not check extensively this to be sure), and the fact that it
    is known that there are only 17 basic consonnants (leading or trailing) and
    11 vowels in the Hangul script, plus "fillers" artificially created only for
    syllabic encoding purpose.

    Compatibility jamos (from Wansung) are also made of 17 basic consonnants
    (without the distinction between leading/trailing) and 11 basic vowels and
    Half-Width variants of these, probably coded to avoid too long rendered
    syllables when the jamos are basic enough to make it a true alphabet with
    unmarked syllable breaks (which could be used to transliterate Latin, Greek,
    Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, possibly with additional diacritics borrowed from
    general left-ot-right scripts).

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