Hi all,
A while ago, there were questions about the applicability of Han
characters in Plane 2 for contemporary everyday use (as opposed to
historical or specialist use), to which I offered some Cantonese (SIL
"YUH") examples.
I believe I've found a better example. U+2028E is ngai, the Hakka (SIL
"HAK") first person pronoun.
According to the online edition of the SIL Ethnologue, 13th ed., there are
34 million speakers worldwide
(http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Chin.html#HAK)--slightly less
than Italian's 37 million (http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html).
The language is on the decline, though, as they are scattered and tend to
be linguistic minorities where they live, and they are losing speakers to
the more prestigious Mandarin (SIL "CHN") or Cantonese (SIL "YUH").
To my knowledge, no other character sets (including CNS 11643 and HKSCS)
include this certainly common character--I'm actually surprised.
Thomas Chan
tc31@cornell.edu
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