From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Fri Nov 07 2008 - 08:17:25 CST
On 7 Nov 2008, at 06:13, Hosszu Gabor wrote:
> Naturally in our home page we use our term (Szekler-Hungarian Rovas).
You didn't used to. In fact in your declaration of 2008-07-12, you
used the term "Old Hungarian Runic Writing (Rovásírás)". In letters
you wrote to me in 1998 you were happy enough to use the terms "old
Hungarian" and "old Hungarian runes", in addition to "Hungarian rune
writing".
I have a PDF by you dated 1998-11-29 entitled "The Hungarian Rune
Writing". It states:
"In the middle ages the Hungarian church widely used the runic
writing. Up to the XIVth century the so called „pálos
rovásírás” (Pauline Rune Writing) was more frequently used, after then
the so called „székely rovásírás” (Sekler Rune Writing) was generally
practised. The Pálos means the name of a religious order, established
by Hungarians. Székely, or Sekler refers to Hungarians in Eastern
Hungary, currently the land of the Hungarian speaking Székelys, an
area that today is part of Romania. Of course it does not mean that
the Sekler rune writing did not exist before, but we have no
scientific proof yet."
The same document on your website dated 2008-10-28 is now entitled
"The Hungarian Rovas (Runic) Writing". The text now states:
"In the middle ages the Hungarian church widely used the Rovas
writing. Up to the 15th century the so called „pálos
rovásírás” (Pauline Rovas Writing) was more frequently used, after
then the so called „székely-magyar rovásírás” (Szekler-Hungarian Rovas
Writing) was generally
practised. The Pálos means the name of a religious order, established
by Hungarians in the 13th century. Székely, or Szekler refers to
Hungarians in Eastern Hungary, currently the land of the Hungarian
speaking Székelys, an area that today is part of Romania. Of course it
does not mean that the Szekler-Hungarian Rovas writing did not exist
before, but we have no scientific proof yet."
So you changed "runic writing" to "Rovas writing", "Pauline Rune
Writing" to "Pauline Rovas Writing", "„székely rovásírás” (Sekler Rune
Writing)" to "„székely-magyar rovásírás” (Szekler-Hungarian Rovas
Writing)", and so on. Forgive me, but while I can understand that
there may be terminological disputes within Hungary -- as there are,
as can be seen for instance in Géza Varga's English-language book "The
origins of Hunnish Runic Writing" -- we do not have to suffer these
disputes in English: we have a good term, "Old Hungarian", which has
been used (in fact) for a long time and which is really very suitable.
>> On Thu, 6 Nov 2008, Doug Ewell wrote:
>>
>> 2. The word "old," particularly in reference to the world's
>> writing systems, is not negative or derogatory in English.
>
> I agree with you. I never stated that this is negative or derogatory.
Then why is it a problem? If it is not a problem, then it seems to me
to be reasonable for us to ask you to respect our terminology practice
in English, and accept "Old Hungarian" as the name for the script in
the Universal Character Set.
> However, the name of a script is not unimportant, especially if a
> certain name is not accurate or not specific for a given script.
In the English language, "Old Hungarian" refers only to what is known
in Hungarian as "((székely-)magyar) rovásírás". The term "Old
Hungarian" is specific to that script and to no other script. It is
not inaccurate.
> I understand your intention and I agree with you. From this point I
> am not going to response to any naming-related statements.
I believe Doug's intention was to suggest that you accept "Old
Hungarian" as the name for the script. (Doug, please confirm or deny
this.) Does what you have said here mean that you will agree to accept
it?
I hope so. If so, then we can move on to discuss some of the other
outstanding issues regarding the encoding of Old Hungarian.
Szia,
Michael
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