Re: ISO 15924: Different Arabic scripts?

From: Andreas Prilop (nhtcapri@rrzn-user.uni-hannover.de)
Date: Fri Nov 18 2005 - 10:21:48 CST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: ISO 15924: Different Arabic scripts?"

    On Fri, 18 Nov 2005, Doug Ewell wrote:

    >>> Specifically, a book of
    >>> Schiller's poetry might be published in Fraktur
    >>> orthography or in Roman orthography,
    >
    > This wasn't Michael's question. He asked whether Naskh and Nastaliq
    > were distinguished by having different *orthographies* -- that is,
    > whether certain words are actually spelled differently when written in
    > these Arabic-script variants, not merely whether the letterforms look
    > different.

    Sorry, I cannot see this. The example was about Schiller in Fraktur
    or Roman ("Antiqua"). There is *no* difference in orthography
    between Fraktur and Antiqua (= normal Latin) in German.
    Why are normal Latin and Fraktur separate (sub-)scripts in ISO 15924
    when the argument is different orthographies?

    There is no orthographic difference between Latf and Latn
    in German.

    What are the orthographic differences between Hans and Hant?

    > If there are no orthographic distinctions, you have to ask whether the
    > real use in this would be to distinguish visual styles,

    For example, Nastaliq has U+06C1 and U+06C3
           where Naskh has U+0647 and U+0629.

    > There would probably have to be either an orthographic difference of
    > some sort (certain words are spelled differently) or a genuine literacy
    > threshold (a noticeable percentage of readers of one variant are unable
    > to read the other) in order to consider this a separate script.

    I suspect that many Arabs have difficulties reading Persian or Urdu
    Nastaliq.

    Nastaliq is a *two-dimensional* script as can be seen from
    the following sample images.

    From http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/NastaliqNavees_doc.html :
     http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/images/naskh-nastaliq.gif

    From http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/urdufonts.html :
     http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/nafeesnaskhtitle.gif
     http://salrc.uchicago.edu/resources/fonts/nafeesnastaleeqtitle.gif

    Bottomline:
    I consider the difference between Naskh and Nastaliq greater
    than between Latin and Latin (Fraktur) and perhaps comparable
    to Hans vs. Hant.

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 18 2005 - 10:26:20 CST