From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Thu Mar 24 2005 - 13:34:07 CST
Of the orthographies of 600+ languages that I researched for MS Typography in 1998,
including many African languages during a week spent at the excellent African Studies
Library at Northwestern University, Fe'fe' is the only one that I have listed as using
U+0251 LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA. Unfortunately, I can't find the folder that contains my
bibliography for each language (I believe MST should have a copy of this kicking around
someplace; Peter C, you could ask Paul Nelson about this).
When researching African languages I found a lot of instability in the orthographies,
either because of frequent reforms or, in some cases, different orthographies used for the
same language in different countries. Apart from grammars and government orthographic
reports (the Ghana language authority produced particularly good documentation), I also
consulted books published in the languages, which were typically aimed at children. In
many cases, only lowercase letters were shown, but I presumed bicameral casing for all
characters that I documented for MS.
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer David Jones: artist and poet, ed. Paul Hills
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