From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 16:44:47 CDT
Peter Kirk wrote at 9:31 AM on Tuesday, May 4, 2004:
>>If Phoenician is considered a glyphic variation of modern Hebrew, then
>>it can also be considered a glyphic variation of modern Greek. Would
>>it then follow that modern Greek should have been unified with modern
>>Hebrew? (Directionality aside.)
>
>In principle, the only thing which makes these unifications impossible
>is directionality. I am sure there are a number of other things which
>would make them undesirable.
Here are the top 7 reasons why Greek is separately encoded:
8 The Greek and Phoenician character inventories are different.
7 The archaic Greek scripts dropped characters, re-deployed characters,
and developed new characters completely independent of Phoenician script
development (which was, in comparison, practically non-existent).
6 Greek employed right-to-left and boustrophedon writing, but then
exclusively left-to-right; Phoenician has always been (to our knowledge)
exclusively right-to-left.
5 Greek and Phoenician are not even in the same language phylum;
Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Moabite, etc. are very closely related
linguistically.
4 Greek is the language and script of a modern state; the last Phoenician
script exemplar is from the 1st century BC.
3 Greek has miniscules.
2 Greeks are better sailors.
and, finally, three words -
1 Alexander the Great.
Respectfully,
Dean A. Snyder
Assistant Research Scholar
Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project
Computer Science Department
Whiting School of Engineering
218C New Engineering Building
3400 North Charles Street
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218
office: 410 516-6850
cell: 717 817-4897
www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
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