From: jameskass@att.net
Date: Sat Dec 27 2003 - 06:10:48 EST
.
Dean Snyder wrote,
>
> >But, in either case it is hoped that the needs of script
> >taxonomists and paleographers won't be disregarded.
>
> So Unicode is now prepared to provide support, in plain text, for the
> needs of paleographers?
>
Practitioners of many sciences need Unicode in order to store and exchange
information. Mathematicians have successfully encoded what are essentially
Latin glyph variants separately for usage as math variables in Plane One,
including Fraktur and cursive styles.
Epigraphers may elect to classify and codify specific variants for specific
needs. They could organize and submit a proposal for these requirements
using, say, the existing Unicode mechanism of variation selectors. If they
did so, wouldn't the various bodies give such a proposal due consideration?
>
> >> Well I, for one, prefer to read in more paleographically relevant
> >> renderings; and fonts combined with markup will, of course, take care of
> >> everything.
> >
> >That's not very useful in plain text. Unicode is an encoding standard for
> >plain text.
>
> Fraktur has precisely the same plain text rendering issues.
>
Indeed it does. (Unless you're a mathematician, of course!)
> >Quoting from N2311.PDF:
>
> This document by Michael Everson is particularly revealing and in the end
> damning to his whole attempt at disunification of the Northwest Semitic
> script.
>
The document by Michael Everson is what I had thought had sparked
this thread.
>
> If we compare this list to the taxonomic chart he reproduces on the next
> page (see the attachment), we see convenient, but nevertheless glaring,
> discrepancies between the two. Not mentioned in his list but appearing in
> the chart under Phoenician are Samaritan, Hebrew Square, Arabic, and
> Aramaic - including Nabatean, Palmyrene, Mandaic, Syriac, etc. (See the
> attachment.)
>
It is an evolutionary chart.
>
> Everson's fuller quote here is:
>
> "Phoenician is the catch-all for the largest group of related scripts
> including its ancestors, Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite. Looking at
> tables 5.1, 5.3, and 5.4 (below) most of the scripts are so similar that
> there doesn't seem to be any point in trying to encode them separately."
>
> But he conveniently excludes any tables for Aramaic, Hebrew Square, and
> Samaritan paleography and also fails to mention the one column out of
> sixteen in these tables that IS devoted to Aramaic.
>
A possible reason for omitting tables for Hebrew Square is that this
is what is already encoded under "HEBREW" in Unicode, thus it doesn't
need covering in a proposal for unencoded scripts. It's also possible
that full tables for Aramaic were omitted because, as the document
mentions, further research is required for Aramaic. Samaritan is
covered (at least with a chart) in a different document,
http://www.evertype.com/standards/iso10646/pdf/samaritan.pdf
> So once again I refer to other tables with broader paleographic attestation
>
> <http://www.jhu.edu/ice/ancientnorthwestsemitic/gesenius.gif>
> <http://www.jhu.edu/ice/ancientnorthwestsemitic/gibson1.gif>
> <http://www.jhu.edu/ice/ancientnorthwestsemitic/gibson2.gif>
>
> and, based on such tables, suggest, in Everson's words, that "Looking at
> [THESE tables] most of the scripts are so similar that there doesn't seem
> to be any point in trying to encode them separately."
>
gesenius.gif shows logical divisions between Old Hebrew, Samaritan, Old
Aramaic, and Aramaic-Hebrew. It would seem to align well with Michael
Everson's N2311.PDF.
gibson1.gif is all about (palaeo-) Hebrew and Moabite, which would seem
to already all be covered under "Phoenician" in N2311.PDF
gibson2.gif appears to show the evolution of the Aramaic script. Some
of the Hebrew legend glyphs at the extreme left bear a passing
resemblance to some of the Aramaic glyphs. There is a resemblance
between many of the Aramaic glyphs and many of the the Phoenician
(palaeo-Hebrew) glyphs. Again, "further research is required" on
Aramaic.
Here's another interesting chart:
http://phoenicia.org/imgs/evolchar.gif
Quoting Herodotus (translated by Audrey de Selincourt)
<quote>
The Phoenicians who came with Cadmus - amongst whom
were the Gephyraei - introduced into Greece, after their
settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments,
of which the most important was writing, an art till then,
I think, unknown to the Greeks. At first they used the same
characters as all the other Phoenicians, but as time went on,
and they changed their language, they also changed the
shape of their letters.
<end quote>
Phoenician shouldn't be unified with either Greek or Hebrew.
Best regards,
James Kass
.
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