From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 16:35:53 CST
Michael Everson wrote:
> Certainly. By encoding these as unique letter consonants we ensure that
> vowel matras will follow them, and we avoid any confusion caused by the
> application of an additional character. That is, BBA + U = BBU, which is
> simple, whereas if it were BA + IMP + U = BBU, there would be the
> possibility of incorrectly writing BA + U + IMP. That is "less simple"
> than just encoding four letters. Plus the mark interacts with the base
> consonant; cf Latin barred t, d, l, etc. So this proposal is analogous
> to existing practice in the Standard.
> Implosive consonants are rare, for one. IPA gives symbols for five of
> them, four of which are used in Sindhi (BBA 0253, DDDA 0257, GGA 0260,
> JJA 0284). The one which isn't is the voiced uvular implosive (029B).
> Devanagari doesn't have a symbol for the voiced uvular stop (0262) either.
>
> The IPA Handbook gives Mam (a Mayan language) as using the voiced uvular
> implosive.
Thanks for the response, Michael. I'm not convinced of a *need* for processing simplicity
given the example in the first paragraph above: ensuring correct character ordering is
something that one has to do for Devanagari anyway. However, your other points are
reasonable and, with this additional information, I'm happy to support the four characters
as proposed.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer David Jones: artist and poet, ed. Paul Hills
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