From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Oct 31 2008 - 14:37:30 CST
On 31 Oct 2008, at 11:09, Hosszu Gabor wrote:
> We never asked Michael Everson to make standard for the Szekler-
> Hungarian Rovas.
It seems from the tone of your note that I will have to defend myself
here.
I don't need to be "asked" to work on the encoding of scripts. It is
what I do and have done for something like 14 years now. On 1998-01-18
I published an exploratory proposal for encoding Old Hungarian -- http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n1686/n1686.htm
-- it was in part based on an analysis of your font, as well as
evidence in a 1975 publication by Fehérné Walter Anna. You and I and
some others engaged in some discussion about the encoding principles
for Old Hungarian, though it was not possible to come to consensus, in
part because of the question of ligatures. I wrote about this on
1998-05-02 -- http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1758.pdf -- and
then nothing happened in terms of encoding Old Hungarian. Nothing
until June of this year, when I tried -- with the support of the
Script Encoding Initiative -- to make progress.
> However, in July of 2008 Michael Everson asked me to organize a
> meeting in Budapest for the Hungarian Rovas writers. I did so.
Yes, you did, and we ended up at the end of that meeting with an
agreement as to how to proceed. We had agreed a number of points. We
agreed that ligatures were to be handled as sequences, because
ligation in Old Hungarian is productive. We agreed to ensure that the
encoding would support in the first place the historical corpus of Old
Hungarian text as part of European heritage, and in the second place
the additional characters used by people who promulgate the use of the
script for cultural purposes. We had agreed that the name of the
script in the English language should be the usual term used for the
script in the English language, "Old Hungarian".
> But after this meeting it become clear for us that Everson-Szelp's
> proposal is based on some relics from the Middle Ages and some
> extensions for the "revivalists".
Quite so. That is what we agreed.
> I refer to the original proposal of Michael Everson and Andre
> Szabolcs Szelp (http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3483.pdf,
> 2008-08-03).
You may refer to this document, but it was superseded by the bilingual
proposal http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3531.pdf, 2008-10-12,
also by myself and André Szabolcs Szelp. The translation was made by
Ádám Joó.
> In this proposal there are a lot of sharp political (!) related
> statements and a strong degrading approach to the "revivalists".
But Gábor, you know perfectly well that I am interested in alphabets,
not politics, and certainly not in insulting anybody. I think you are
posturing here because you think it is a way to discredit (1) the
agreement we made in July in Budapest and (2) anything that doesn't
fit in with your own bias as to how you want Old Hungarian encoded.
That's just not how we work in international standardization.
Let's be honest about N3483. It *does* say: "Popular but often (very)
unscientific works began to be published, and the script began to gain
popularity, particularly in circles interested in folklore and
Hungarian traditional culture. These popularizing “textbooks” about
the Old Hungarian script feature some non-traditional additions to the
character repertoire, based on attempts by their authors to map the
old script to the modern Latin orthography of Hungarian—each trying to
impart his vision of the revived script to their audience."
And you know what? A lot of material published about Old Hungarian
script *is* unscientific. Very unscientific. Some people claim that
Old Hungarian derives from Sumerian. Some claim that Chinese derives
from Old Hungarian. None of this passes scientific muster.
What else does N3483 say? It says: "The modern corpus (modern defined
as beginning with the 20th century) has seen a huge increase in the
last two decades, the script being used by traditionalists and
enthusiasts. Some of these uses are simply decorative, but a number of
books, magazines, and teaching materials including folklore story-
books for children have been published. Very recently the script has
been adopted by esoteric gurus and mystical groups, which propagate
fictitious “ancient” religions (for example, a variety of shamanism
called Arvisura *‘truth-telling’) and by politically radical right-
wing groups. (Similar use has been made of the Germanic runes in
mystical or right-wing contexts.)"
And you know what? The modern corpus *has* seen a huge increase
recently. And there are lots of books including folklore story-books
for children which have been published. I have some of them. And,
indeed, there are some shamanistic and right-wing usages which have
been made of the script. I have some of those materials too.
Yes, we took this text out when we published N3531. That doesn't make
it any the less accurate. And I think both Szabolcs and I will reject
a suggestion that we wrote the text in order to (1) do a disservice to
Old Hungarian, which we wish to encode, or (2) to insult anybody.
> When in end of July 2008 the Community of the Hungarian Rovas
> Writers were formed (as a wide internet-based working group) M.
> Everson and A. Sz. Szelp modified the text of their proposal,
> however, they did not change their view.
What "view" do you think that we have?
> Especially Ádám Joó supports the Everson-Szelp proposal.
I admire Ádám very much. He is a bright young man at the beginning of
his career, inquisitive and helpful. His translation helped us to
improve the proposal. And I dislike your rhetoric: "the Everson-Szelp
proposal" is as quite an adequate proposal, describing accurately the
linguistic facts of the writing system and laying out a scheme for
encoding Old Hungarian which is congruent with our encoding practice.
> Our view is basically different: our statement is that the Szekler-
> Hungarian Rovas never became extinct, it was continuously used. It
> was under development during the whole history. That is the reason
> why the sources of our proposal are based on a wider range of relics
> and practice from the historical time to nowadays.
Evidently your desire here is to avoid calling the script "Old
Hungarian", because you seem to base your view on your assertion that
Szabolcs and I believe that Old Hungarian died out. So, it seems, you
believe that if you "prove" that it did not die out, then our use of
the word "Revivalist" and "Revived Old Hungarian" cannot be
maintained. Evidently you dislike the word "revived" and "revivalist".
Well, firstly, there is nothing pejorative in either word. And
secondly, even if you can prove that one or two people mananged to
copy down the Old Hungarian script every 40 or 50 years since the 12th
century, that is not *at all* the same thing as "proving" that the
script was in continuous use.
Old Hungarian seems to have been in fairly wide use (modulo general
literacy) until the Middle Ages, but it is indisputable that the Latin
script supplanted it. *Every* literate Hungarian today reads the Latin
script. Some tens of thousands -- maybe even as many as a couple
hundred thousand -- of people have learned to use the script, but few
of them read it as fluently as they read Latin, and none of them have
given up Latin for it. The cultural revival of the script is
fascinating, praiseworthy, and notable. It's important. That's why we
want to encode Old Hungarian in the UCS. But (1) none of that changes
the fact that the name of the script in the English language (*my*
native language, thanks, which should be respected just as much as you
want *your* language to be), and (2) none of that changes the fact
that popular knowledge of and usage of the script is the result of the
work of revivalist activists in the early and late twentieth century.
*Your* work, Gábor, is a part of that revivalist activism, and is as
praiseworthy as the work of Adorján Magyar and Sándor Forrai is. But
what are you doing, attacking the people who are responsible for the
script even being considered for encoding at this time?
> The core of our proposal, the "Rovás Szabvány" was accepted and
> supported (based on voting) by the World Congress of the World
> Federation of the Hungarians (August 20th, 2008).
>
> The N3527 proposal (including the whole character set of the "Rovás
> Szabvány") was accepted and supported (based on voting) by the
> "Alive Rovas" Symposium in October 4th, 2008.
I'll have to let Szabolcs put the nature of the Congress and Symposium
into context for readers of this list. Regarding N3527, it contains
many provisions which go against the way that we work encoding scripts
in the Universal Character Set. Szabolcs and I are preparing a
document which will compare the proposals in N3527, in N3531, and
N3526 (a proposal by Gábor Bakonyi).
With best regards,
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com
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