Marion Gunn recently said:
> Ar 20:19 -0000 1999-07-05, scríobh Timothy Partridge:
> >Can I interest you in the possibility of LATIN SMALL LETTER DOTLESS LONG I?
> >It looks just like a dotless j. (LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG I would be unified
> >with LATIN SMALL LETTER J.)
> >
> >In England in the 11th and 12th centuries i was written without a dot. It
> >was common to write the i at the end of a word in a long form which looks
> >like a dotless j.
> >...
> > Tim
>
> In Irish too, and not just in the past, Tim! That dotless long i is what I
> write, when using my native script other than with a computer. I have to
> confess to having used the Turkish dotless i, and would even use a dotless
> j, if that were available, as a long-i substitute (as would many a
> non-fontmaker, who might not know/care about the problems thus caused,
> should text need to be transferred any further than the nearest consenting
> printer).
I'm surprised! I didn't think it was still in use. I think Michael said
recently that the Trionian et sign (looks like a 7 lower on the line for
those who don't know it) was still in use instead of the & symbol. Did
Ireland have a strong case of "not invented here" after releasing
Insular Half Uncial onto an unsuspecting world :-)
More seriously, could you tell us which i's you use when writing natively.
Are they all the same, are there consistant variations, and does it vary by
writer? Can you think of two words which are spelt the same apart from the
length of the i and have different meanings? (I.e. using the wrong i would
mis-spell the word.) Are long i's used in quality dictionaries?
Tim
--Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer
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