From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sun Aug 14 2005 - 17:35:32 CDT
Michael Everson wrote (on 4 July 2005 -
http://www.unicode.org/mail-arch/unicode-ml/y2005-m07/0047.html ):
> N2948: Proposal for encoding the Vai script in the BMP of the UCS Michael
> Everson, Charles Riley, and José Rivera
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2948.pdf .
After much studying of the proposal simply as reference material, I have two
minor points:
1. The glyph used in the proposal for VAI SYLLABLE NGGO has two dots in the
top half and none in the bottom half. All the examples of this glyph
reproduced as images have two dots in the top half and two dots below, as
does the glyph in the SIL Vai font. This matters because many fonts are
likely to be based on the glyph depicted in the Unicode standard, with no
further research. The glyph depicted in the Unicode report should therefore
have two dots above and two dots below.
2. Figure 2 (a teach-yourself book), Figure 3 (from Tucker), Figure 8b (from
Dalby) (1962 glyphs) and Figure 15 (from Kandakai and Hutchison) give the
same different symbols for the sounds of VAI SYLLABLE GI and VAI SYLLABLE
CE.
In the first case, the different symbol is VAI SYLLABLE KI between a pair of
horizontal dots, and is no more a glyph variant of VAI SYLLABLE GI than Old
English thorn and eth were glyph variants of one another. This symbol could
meaningfully be called VAI SYLLABLE GI-LIKE KI or VAI SYLLABLE GI-BASED KI.
In the second case, the glyph may be a rotated form of VAI SYLLABLE JE; it
retains the double dot that distinguishes VAI SYLLABLE JE from VAI SYLLABLE
YE, both are distinguished from VAI SYLLABLE CE by a vertical bar at the
right corresponding to the horizontal bar of the alternative symbol for the
sound of symbol VAI SYLLABLE CE. I therefore do not believe it is right to
consider this pair as glyph variants either. Moreover, the alternative
symbol might be unrelated to VAI SYLLABLE JE; it could conceivably be VAI
SYLLABLE JA plus a pair of dots. In fact, the best name I can think of for
this symbol is VAI SYLLABLE JA-LIKE CE. This symbol is the one given by
Massaquoi (Proposal Figure 4) for the sound.
Are these alternative symbols being omitted from the initial definition of
the Vai script, e.g. until evidence of use in communication accumulates?
Richard.
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