Re: ASSAMESE AND BENGALI CONTROVERSY IN UNICODE STANDARD ::::: SOLUTIONS

Dear Dr Phukan,

The greatest service one can render for one's native script(s) in
terms of Unicode is to research whatever existing written forms are as
yet *unencoded* and research them and get them encoded. Another great
service is to get educated about the Unicode standard and educate
those who are not yet educated about Unicode. It is also relevant to
note here that a person who may be an expert in linguistics is not
necessarily an expert in Unicode and hence may also need to be
educated about it.

Variations in names can be handled by adding informative aliases or
annotations in the code chart. If some of the characters used in
Bengali have different names in the Assamese context, please provide a
list of those characters and those extra names can be added as
informative aliases. For example, the very commonly used Devanagari
Unicode character

094D DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA

has the informative alias:

= halant (the preferred Hindi name)

Similarly, you can have:

09F0 BENGALI LETTER RA WITH MIDDLE DIAGONAL

annotated as:

= assamese letter ra

And similarly:

09F1 BENGALI LETTER RA WITH LOWER DIAGONAL

annotated as:

= assamese letter wa

And so on for your entire list of characters which have distinct names
in Assamese.

You understand that a script is often known worldwide by the major
language that uses it. You cannot deny that the Bengali language has
far more speakers than the Assamese language. Therefore the script
associated with that language is known by that same name, even in the
case of the additional characters which are specific to Assamese
orthography.

However your desire for these characters to be known as Assamese
Letter X and Assamese Letter Y (just examples) and so on can certainly
be satisfied by such informative aliases as I have described above.

@Unicode veterans: Given that almost the entire Sinhala block has
informative aliases giving alternate names for the characters, and
since the Assamese evidently feel very strongly about this issue, it
beseems me that the only practical solution here is to add informative
aliases for such "Bengali" script characters as are used in Assamese
orthography.

-- 
Shriramana Sharma