Re: LAO LETTER FO SUNG and LAO LETTER FO TAM

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Oct 18 2005 - 02:03:49 CST

  • Next message: Christopher Fynn: "Re: LAO LETTER FO SUNG and LAO LETTER FO TAM"

    Doug Ewell wrote:

    > Philippe Verdy <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
    >
    >> This should be an exception to the rule of immutability of normative
    >> character names, because this is an editorial error that should not
    >> have happened.
    >
    > Surely no more so than U+1D0C5.

    That is a relatively harmless fault - someone looking for 'fthora skliron
    chroma vasis' is not going to pick the wrong character. On the other hand,
    someone looking for Lao fo sung could very easily pick the wrong character
    from a pick list - with a legible name, why bother to look at the very tiny
    distinction in the top left hand corner. (It's illegible in the Windows
    character map.) This will cause confusion for a thousand years - changing
    the name would only cause confusion for five years!

    Are there are other routes available for reducing confusion? For example,
    I'm beginning to wonder if fo sung and fo tam are not descriptions rather
    than names - there are acrophonic names, such as fo fon (for the high
    consonant, 'FO TAM' - 'tam' means 'low', 'fon' means 'rain') and fo fai (for
    the low consonsonant, 'FO SUNG' - 'sung' means 'high', 'fai' means 'fire').
    Incidentally, is the translation of 'FO TAM' into Lao to be 'fo sung' or 'fo
    tam'? :)

    None of this would help with the LO issue.

    Richard.



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