RE: Bantu click letters

From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jun 10 2004 - 12:51:29 CDT

  • Next message: Peter Constable: "RE: Bantu click letters"

    > From: unicode-bounce@unicode.org [mailto:unicode-bounce@unicode.org]
    On Behalf
    > Of Michael Everson

    > I have an offprint of Doke's article in Bantu Studies. We have noted
    > that 70 years later Pullum and Ladusaw cite a word (the word
    > stretchedc-h-utildecaronbelow-triangularcolon chu:) in Doke's
    > orthography. Isn't that an indication that the work and its
    > characters have not been lost to history?

    It is, but it's that the stretched C that's been called into question.
    There is no question that that character gained currency -- it was
    adopted for a time by the IPA; so also did the qp ligature and db
    ligature gain currency -- and those have been accepted for encoding. If
    the small n with left loop is not accepted, it will be because it was a
    proposal that never gained currency and has no user community.

     
    > It's a little peculiar to suggest that data has to be printed in two
    > books in order to be considered "interchangeable". Books don't
    > interchange data between themselves. Users do. ;-)

    Books are only indicators of the users; a lack of attestation in books
    by anyone besides Doke is suggestive of a lack of a user community. P&L
    clearly indicated that these characters were excluded from their
    compilation because they never gained currency, and that strongly
    suggests a lack of user community.

    Peter
     
    Peter Constable
    Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
    Microsoft Windows Division



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