From: Charlie Ruland ☘ (ruland@luckymail.com)
Date: Tue Dec 22 2009 - 16:45:23 CST
John H. Jenkins wrote:
> At this point, the IRG would not entertain the suggestion of adding a new simplified form without evidence of actual use. Adding it because people would like to be able to use it simply will not fly.
>
As I wrote in one of yesterday’s posts:
“In fact there are already so many characters that making up new ones is
quite unnecessary. If one day the need for a ‘new’ character emerges
(eg, to signify a ‘new’ chemical element) I’m all in favour of a
borrowed character (假借字) — see my last post for an example. Frankly I
don’t believe that any one-character writing for Unicode has the chance
of becoming popular.”
>
> In any event, I'm not sure what practical advantage there would be to having a single sinogram meaning "Unicode."
>
Well, what’s the practical advantage of making up con-scripts? Probably
play as a gratifying way to discover how the world works.
>
> The only thing I can think of would be a use analogous to the use of 普 and 粵 in some dictionaries to mark Mandarin and Cantonese readings, respectively, but not only can I not think of any situation where that would convey anything that "U+" doesn't, the typical way to handle this situation would be to use 統.
>
>> From the Chinese perspective, this is equivalent to asking that a monosyllabic *word* that means "Unicode." As Ken Whistler points out, the usual way to coin a modern Chinese word would be to use a compound. If one wanted to use "Unicode" itself in a compound (say for "Unihan"), the standard way would be to use the first part of "Unicode" in the compound (thus, Wikipedia uses 統漢字 for "Unihan").
>
Again, as I wrote in one of yesterday’s posts:
“This is why there will NEVER be a single character for Unicode in
Mandarin, because it would require to be pronounced as one syllable, but
there are already far too many homophonic characters in the language.”
>
> It really is rather unnatural for modern Chinese to make up a new monosyllabic word for a novel concept, whether or not an existing character is used for that new word. Basically this is a solution in search of a problem.
>
Right. But it’s a good thing to play and learn to solve problems before
they’re there :-)
I don’t think anyone taking part in this thread (with the possible
exception of William J G) wants to add a newly invented sinogram to
Unicode. Not even as a something like a ‘partial con-script’ to
Michael’s and John’s ConScript Unicode Registry.
Thank you John for your attention,
Charlie
>
> But if people really want to encourage this, I will defend to the death their right to attempt it. I think it's a rather long shot that it would ever catch on. If people want the *Consortium* to adopt this sort of usage, it would be a matter for the Consortium's officers. I rather doubt they would be amenable to the suggestion. I don't think that the editors of the Unihan database would go for it, either.
>
> =====
> John H. Jenkins
> jenkins@apple.com
-- Charlie • 查理 • चार्ली • Чарли • تشارلي チャーリー • 찰리 • Τσάρλι • צ׳ארלי Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will. — Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844–1900)
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