Re: CJK fonts

From: Thomas Chan (tc31@cornell.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 12 2002 - 17:44:24 EST

  • Next message: Julian Gilbey: "Re: Possible proposal for new Hebrew accent character"

    On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Andrew C. West wrote:

    > On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 03:26:07 -0800 (PST), Raymond Mercier wrote:
    > > For example, the simplified form of the character Han itself (U+6C49) is
    > > given the Pinyin reading Yi, the traditional form U+6F22 is the correct
    > > reading Han.
    > This is probably another example of misplaced secondary Mandarin readings - I
    > reckon that about 10% of the CJK block (i.e. a couple of thousand of characters)
    > are affected. Unihan Version 3.0 (the latest version to have the correct
    > Mandarin readings for the CJK Unified Ideographs block) gives :
    > U+6C49 kMandarin YI4 HAN4
    > In Unihan 3.2 this becomes :
    > U+6C49 kMandarin YI4
    > and the reading of HAN4 is mislocated to U+6C44 :
    > U+6C44 kMandarin HAN4 ZE4 (plain ZE4 in Unihan 3.0)
    > It is quite possible that YI4 is a reading for U+6C49 when not a simplified form
    > of U+6F22 (I'll have to check this when I get home this evening ... no
    > dictionaries here I'm afraid).

    The _Hanyu Da Zidian_ (3: 1549) only says that U+6C49 is a simplified form
    of U+6F22, as expected, which in turn has a han4 and a tan1 reading (3:
    1714)--I don't know if the rarer tan1 (and its associated definition) can
    really be inherited by u+6C49, though.

    U+6C44 is given as interchangeable (3: 1548) with U+3CC1, which has a ze4
    reading (3: 1560).

    I can't imagine where the yi4 reading comes from, although I note
    that U+3CBC, which looks somewhat similar to U+6C49, is given both yi4 and
    cha4 readings (3: 1549).

    > U+5481 kMandarin GEM4 - GEM4 is Cantonese pinyin (it is a common Cantonese
    > ideograph) - I don't think this ideograph has a Mandarin reading ... but if it
    > did it would presumably be GAN4 ... which is the reading I give it in BabelMap

    The _Hanyu Da Zidian_ (1: 598) has han2 'breast; milk', xian2 'to hold in
    the mouth', and gan4 'so (quantity)' for readings. But I don't think
    "gem4" is an error--the 1979 PRC _Ci Hai_ has gem4 'so (quantity)' and
    han1 'so (quantity)' for readings, where gem4 corresponds to the same
    vocabulary item as gan4 in the former dictionary. (The han1 reading is
    not Cantonese usage of the character, but Hunanese, despite the identical
    meaning.) It's rare, but sometimes there are unusual Mandarin syllables
    like "gem4" given in dictionaries.

    However, I don't expect much reason when it comes to interpreting and
    creating artificial Mandarin "cognate" readings of ancient or dialect
    words, e.g., U+5C58 'child' is given as man3, but this is based on
    a misreading of a pronunciation gloss--an phonologically reasonable
    "cognate" reading of this Taiwanese dialect character would have been
    *man1; likewise, U+55F2 'coquettish' is given as the unusual Mandarin
    syllable dia3--a phonologically reasonable "cognate" reading of this
    Cantonese dialect character would have been *die3 (patterning on U+7239
    die1 'father' both graphically and phonologically).

     
    > U+4C5B kMandarin XU4M - this is from CJK-A in Unihan 3.2 ... I assume that the M
    > is spurious

    xu4 and yi4 in the _Hanyu Da Zidian_ (7: 4695).

     
    > U+6F71 kMandarin YIE - this should be YI1

    _Hanyu Da Zidian_ (3: 1736) says ye1 here, but I bet you have a source
    that backs yi1 just as well...

     
    Thomas Chan
    tc31@cornell.edu



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 12 2002 - 14:36:50 EST