From: Dean Snyder (dean.snyder@jhu.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 20 2004 - 20:01:04 CST
Philipp Reichmuth wrote at 10:24 PM on Wednesday, October 20, 2004:
>For Semitics at least, this is *not* a "left quotation mark"; people
>normally use a left half ring wherever the character is available.
>(Take a look at Brill publications, such as the Encyclopaedia of Islam;
>Brill's Baskerville variant has a pretty distinct ayin.) The quotation
>mark is a substitute only. I guess the only difference in principle
>with the Egyptological version is that the Egyptological ayin more or
>less has an uppercase form.
The following is a small and quickly generated sample list of
publications in which transliterated Semitic ayins are represented by
left single quotation marks (and alephs are represented by right single
quotation marks):
* Thomas O. Lambdin 1971 Introduction to Biblical Hebrew (Harvard University)
* Giovanni Garbini 1979 Storia e problemi dell'epigrafia semitica
(Oriental Institute of Naples)
* Richard E. Whitaker 1972 A Concordance of the Ugaritic Literature
(Harvard University)
* Zellig S. Harris 1936 A Grammar of the Phoenician Language (American
Oriental Society)
* Hermann L. Strack 1978 Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (Atheneum)
* De Lacy O'Leary 1963 Colloquial Arabic (Routledge & Kegan Paul)
* Paul Joüon 1996 A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew (Pontifical Biblical Institute)
* James S. Pritchard, ed. 1969 Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton
University)
* Choon Leong Seow 1987 A Grammar for Biblical Hebrew (Abingdon)
* Geoffrey E. Bromiley, ed. 1979 The International Standard Bible
Encyclopedia (Eerdmans)
* Johannes Friedrich & Wolfgang Röllig 1970 Phönizisch-Punische Grammatik
(Pontifical Biblical Institute)
In none of these publications can one differentiate between
transliterated ayins and left single quotation marks.
Of course, there are many publications where transliterated ayin does
differ slightly from the left single quotation mark. And there are a
goodly number in which an even greater distinction is made.
A decision to encode ayin characters needs to be accurately informed by
such practices.
To my previous list of ayin transliteration candidates already in
Unicode, one could also add:
02BF MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING
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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