From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sun Oct 16 2005 - 20:50:47 CST
Philippe Verdy wrote:
>>I have received the following communication about a possible confusion
>> in the names of a couple of Lao letters (U+0E9D and U+0E9F). I don't
>> know anything about Lao or Thai, so I'd be grateful if anyone could
>> let me know whether the Unicode names for these characters are correct
>> or not.
>>
>> <quote>
>> Je tiens à vous signaler que deux consonnes laotiennes qui
>> correspondent d'ailleurs aux deux consonnes thaïes sont bien à leur
>> place correcte, mais on s'est trompé en leur donnant leur nom en
>> laotien: Fo Soung est entre Pho Soung et Pho tam lequel est suivi de
>> Fo tam.
>> Les dessins des lettres sont donc corrects et à leur place, c'est le
>> nom qui doit changer. Idem en thaï: Fo Fan (Soung) doit être avant Fo
>> Fa (tam).
>> </quote>
>
> In other words, the representative glyphs and the alphabetic order is
> correct (so is the encoding itself), but the names only are wrong for
>
>> U+0E9E : LAO LETTER PHO TAM
>> U+0E9F : LAO LETTER FO SUNG
>
> which are swapped, as well as:
>> U+0E1E : THAI CHARACTER PHO PHAN
>> U+0E1F : THAI CHARACTER FO FAN
No!
The Thai is fine. It's just that the names of the Lao fo letters have been swapped. The Lao chart needs to be annotated something like:
U+0E9C : LAO LETTER PHO SUNG
U+0E9D : LAO LETTER FO TAM
The Lao name is fo sung.
U+0E9E : LAO LETTER PHO TAM
U+0E9F : LAO LETTER FO SUNG
The Lao name is fo tam.
> Unfortunately, names are normally immutable, unlike representative glyphs.
> But I think that swapping the glyphs would make more damage, breaking
> existing texts and collations, than just changing the confusive names (which
> are most often not used in implementations as well as in fonts).
> This should be an exception to the rule of immutability of normative
> character names, because this is an editorial error that should not have
> happened. I think that such change this should require an immediate "Public
> Review Issue", and a communication to ISO/IEC 10646, so that they can
> statuate on this case...
Maybe we should have a rule like the English legal rule that an Act of Parliament means what Parliament intended it to mean, not what it says. Unless of course the naming was done maliciously...
I think someone was having an off-day. Aren't
ຣ 0EA3 LAO LETTER LO LING
ລ 0EA5 LAO LETTER LO LOOT
also the wrong way round?
Cf.
ร 0E23 THAI LETTER RO RUEA [ruea = boat]
ล 0E25 THAI LETTER LO LING [ling = monkey]
See also the character chart at http://www.seasite.niu.edu/lao/LaoLanguage/LaoAlphabet/lao_consonants_poster.htm . Unfortunately for its evidential quality, the author is Thai (albeit from the North East), but I am persuaded by the fact that the word for 0EA3 is _lot_, meaning car. (I don't understand the 'oo' in 'loot'.) U+0EA5 is what I would expect to see in a native word, U+0EA3 in a Pali/Sanskrit loan, if I was seeing an etymologically reliable spelling.
I haven't reported the matter because I haven't had Lao confirmation.
Richard.
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