UCA and Russian letter Ё
In Russian, the difference between Е and Ё is primary at the beginning of a word as they are considered distinct letters of the alphabet, yet secondary in the middle of a word, as the dieresis over Ё is not mandatory. As an example, ель ёлка, but тёлка тель, see http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Орфографический_словарь_русского_языка A cursory scan of the UCA doesn't reveal if that's implementable, and experiments in a fairly fresh Linux Mint yield either ель ёлка тель тёлка or ель тель тёлка ёлка depending on the LANG setting (en_US works better than ru_RU). Could someone tell if the UCA in its current form is able to support that? Thanks, Leo
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Leo Broukhis, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 01:31:18 -0800: In Russian, the difference between Е and Ё is primary at the beginning of a word as they are considered distinct letters of the alphabet, yet secondary in the middle of a word, as the dieresis over Ё is not mandatory. As an example, ель ёлка, but тёлка тель, see http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Орфографический_словарь_русского_языка You say that the difference is primary in the beginning of a word but elsewhere secondary. And yes, that orthographic dictionary that you link to above, looks as you describe. However, in reality, the difference is secondary - if that is the right word - even as the first letter in a word. Wikipedia has the following example: едок ёж ездит.[1] And, for instance the word ёлка could also be written елка. Hence I would argue that the dictionary you linked to above considers the difference to *always* be secondary. It is just that the dictionary applies the sorting algorithm to a collection where the words that begins with the letter Ё has been separated from words that begins on the letter Е. A cursory scan of the UCA doesn't reveal if that's implementable, and experiments in a fairly fresh Linux Mint yield either ель ёлка тель тёлка or ель тель тёлка ёлка depending on the LANG setting (en_US works better than ru_RU). (Both examples consider the difference primary, but the the last example is incorrect as the ёлка follows after the тёлка - which is incorrect from every angle (except from the angle of the number of the letter inside Unicode.) Could someone tell if the UCA in its current form is able to support that? Is there not a need for 3 kinds of sorting? Namely: a) Е/Ё as always distinct letters, b) Е/Ё as always non-distinct letters, c) Е/Ё as non-distinct letters except when used as the first letter. (Note that the last variant would only be yield correct result on collections of words where a first-letter Ё is guaranteed be rendered with a Ё. Thus, if ёлка is written елка, then the result becomes incorrect.) Linguistic PS: From the angle of the color of the sound, then Russian Ё is the light version of Russian О. (Its predecessor was also a digraph - IO.) But from the angle of stress then, when the Ё looses its stress, it alternates with Russian Е (since Е can both be with and without stress, whereas Ё can only be with stress). The reason why Е/Ё is often considered a secondary difference, is (I think) related to the stress: But for in lexicons and dictionaries, then Russian texts typically do not mark where the stress of a word is. The stress is simply known by the reader/user. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ё#Russian -- leif halvard silli
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
[Philippe tells me that his message that I'm quoting could have been rejected by the mailing list as spam; my answer is below.] On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 5:13 AM, Philippe Verdy verd...@wanadoo.fr wrote: This is an interesting case. A solution would be to be able define a distinct collation element for ^ë, where ^ means begining of a word (even if there's no character encoded there). That element would be such that : e ë ^ë But this requires a prior definition of word boundaries to recognize the ^ as an additional collation element by itself (usable distinctly only in context, and ignored when it occurs anywhere else, meaning that all weights assigned to ^ alone would be null.) So ^ë would become valid as a collation element, but т^ё makes no sense if there's no possible word boundary between т and ё. This would work with the UCA algorithm, which does not really mandate what is a collation element (not only in terms of encoding as characters), or any syntax to support it. This mechanism of incorporating word boundaries in UCA would be an interesting extension for section 6.9 (Handling Collation Graphemes) of UTS#10 (but for now there's no support for it in LDML with a defined syntax allowing the insertion of boundaries or other contextual conditions). Would it also mean that using a CGJ at the beginning of a word will cause a ё at the beginning of a word to be treated as a mid-word one? Is space, CGJ a well-formed character sequence? Leo
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 4:56 AM, Leif Halvard Silli xn--mlform-...@xn--mlform-iua.no wrote: You say that the difference is primary in the beginning of a word but elsewhere secondary. And yes, that orthographic dictionary that you link to above, looks as you describe. However, in reality, the difference is secondary - if that is the right word - even as the first letter in a word. Wikipedia has the following example: едок ёж ездит.[1] And, for instance the word ёлка could also be written елка. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ё#Russian Wikipedia's example is sadly unsourced, unlike mine. Hence I would argue that the dictionary you linked to above considers the difference to *always* be secondary. It is just that the dictionary applies the sorting algorithm to a collection where the words that begins with the letter Ё has been separated from words that begins on the letter Е. Isn't that notionally the same as having the difference primary for the first letter? A cursory scan of the UCA doesn't reveal if that's implementable, and experiments in a fairly fresh Linux Mint yield either ель ёлка тель тёлка or ель тель тёлка ёлка depending on the LANG setting (en_US works better than ru_RU). (Both examples consider the difference primary, but the the last example is incorrect as the ёлка follows after the тёлка - which is incorrect from every angle (except from the angle of the number of the letter inside Unicode.) Right. And, ironically, the [en] collation is the correct one. Could someone tell if the UCA in its current form is able to support that? Is there not a need for 3 kinds of sorting? Namely: a) Е/Ё as always distinct letters, b) Е/Ё as always non-distinct letters, c) Е/Ё as non-distinct letters except when used as the first letter. (Note that the last variant would only be yield correct result on collections of words where a first-letter Ё is guaranteed be rendered with a Ё. Thus, if ёлка is written елка, then the result becomes incorrect.) We're not talking here about *words per se* that may or may not be rendered with a Ё, we're talking about letter sequences with Ё as a given. The dictionary order shows that all word-initial Ёs go after all word-initial Еs, but within a word the difference is secondary. For a set of letter sequences using canonical spelling of words, the collation algorithm should give their dictionary ordering, shouldn't it? Re the linguistic PS: you're right, and that proves that an approximation to the proper collation using secondary ordering is preferred to an approximation using primary ordering. Leo
I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
But I still intend to do this before the end of January. Jameson
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Resending my earlier reply. Apparently, by default, Gmail sends subject lines in KOI8-R if they contain Cyrillic, and unicode.org rejects those as likely spam. I just changed my Gmail settings to Use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding for outgoing messages and hope this goes through. (*Please change the subject line* if you want to discuss *this* issue.) My earlier reply was: Theoretically, it is possible to select collation elements based on the proximity of word boundaries or other criteria. However, I don't know if there is an implementation that has that built in. ICU (one of the commonly used implementations of UCA+CLDR) does not. It sounds like the secondary difference is ok for sorting, but you are looking to customize an alphabetic index such that there is a separate bucket for words beginning with Ё. I think the best would be to do that with some custom code that looks for Ё as the first character, in addition to the regular bucketing and sorting. Best regards, markus -- Google Internationalization Engineering
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Leo Broukhis, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 08:57:11 -0800: On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 4:56 AM, Leif Halvard Silli wrote: You say that the difference is primary in the beginning of a word but elsewhere secondary. And yes, that orthographic dictionary that you link to above, looks as you describe. However, in reality, the difference is secondary - if that is the right word - even as the first letter in a word. Wikipedia has the following example: едок ёж ездит.[1] And, for instance the word ёлка could also be written елка. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ё#Russian Wikipedia's example is sadly unsourced, unlike mine. My Moscow Russian-Norwegian from 1987 and my Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary from 2003 agree that both list words on Ё and Е under the same category – namely, under the letter Е. Also, the Russian wikipedia article on the letter Ё says as well that this is how sorting should happen. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ё#.D0.A1.D0.BE.D1.80.D1.82.D0.B8.D1.80.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.BA.D0.B0 And the article list xindy as one applications that handles this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xindy Hence I would argue that the dictionary you linked to above considers the difference to *always* be secondary. It is just that the dictionary applies the sorting algorithm to a collection where the words that begins with the letter Ё has been separated from words that begins on the letter Е. Isn't that notionally the same as having the difference primary for the first letter? Input from a coalition expert would be welcome. However, this is how I think: Should one expect such an algorithm to write the phone book on one’s behalf? Or that it writes the dictionary? I think that would be an unrealistic expectation. E.g. a dictionary or phone book has precise rules for how the words as written and grouped before they are sorted. Fact is, again, that ёлка - in the wild - can be written ёлка and елка. So if you assume that the algorithm should only deal with ёлка, then you are also saying that you want the algorithm to deal with words that have been prepared for sorting. Thus you are talking about a well prepared text were ёлка is always written ёлка and not елка. While not a definitive proof, I may also mention that the CSS list module defines an enumeration style based on the Russian alphabet, in which the ё is excluded. http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-lists/#lower-russian A cursory scan of the UCA doesn't reveal if that's implementable, and experiments in a fairly fresh Linux Mint yield either ель ёлка тель тёлка or ель тель тёлка ёлка depending on the LANG setting (en_US works better than ru_RU). (Both examples consider the difference primary, but the the last example is incorrect as the ёлка follows after the тёлка - which is incorrect from every angle (except from the angle of the number of the letter inside Unicode.) Right. And, ironically, the [en] collation is the correct one. Perhaps this bug is because the Russian localizers failed to get it the way they wanted: Full alignment of Е and Ё? ;-) Could someone tell if the UCA in its current form is able to support that? Is there not a need for 3 kinds of sorting? Namely: a) Е/Ё as always distinct letters, b) Е/Ё as always non-distinct letters, c) Е/Ё as non-distinct letters except when used as the first letter. (Note that the last variant would only be yield correct result on collections of words where a first-letter Ё is guaranteed be rendered with a Ё. Thus, if ёлка is written елка, then the result becomes incorrect.) We're not talking here about *words per se* that may or may not be rendered with a Ё, we're talking about letter sequences with Ё as a given. The dictionary order shows that all word-initial Ёs go after all word-initial Еs, but within a word the difference is secondary. For a set of letter sequences using canonical spelling of words, the collation algorithm should give their dictionary ordering, shouldn't it? I believe the English Wikipedia article is pretty canonical when it says that it can be done both ways - see the sources I pointed to above for examples of sorting where the status as first letter doesn't matter. I don't know why the dictionary you pointed two http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/Орфографический_словарь_русского_языка has separated the words. It could be a technical limitation of MediaWiki. Or it could be because those who initiated the project felt it made the most sense. (It does make a lot of sense to me … he, he.) But that dictionary is also peculiar in that it lists words that begins on the letter Ы. :-) It is typical to say that no words begins on the letter Ы. :-) But the list managed to find some … (Including one word that simply means to say ы.) Neither of the dictionaries I mentioned above have any words under the letter Ы. Even in the above mentioned CSS list module’s definition, the ы is excluded. Re the linguistic PS: you're right, and
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
2012-12-21 21:05, Leif Halvard Silli wrote: My Moscow Russian-Norwegian from 1987 and my Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary from 2003 agree that both list words on Ё and Е under the same category – namely, under the letter Е. This appears to be the case in any serious dictionary. The use of the Cyrillic letter yo (ё, called IO in the Unicode name) has varied through ages, but it has never been a dominant spelling to use it. According to “The World’s Writing Systems”, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (Oxford University Press, 1995), “The letter ё is used virtually only in dictionaries or language textbooks.” It may have become more popular in the Internet, but still less common than using the letter ye (IE, е) in its stead. Fact is, again, that ёлка - in the wild - can be written ёлка and елка. And in most contexts, it is written “елка”. It is of course possible that some people would prefer treating “ё” as a primarily different letter. But it’s rather illogical to require that it be treated that way at the start of a word only. I don’t think collation rules need to accommodate such preferences. Yucca
RE: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Fact is, again, that ёлка - in the wild - can be written ёлка and елка Though you need a better dictionary: it's the diminutive of ель (as in Yel'tsin) meaning fir tree, and is the 4-letter word for Christmas tree. С Рождеством, Joe
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Jukka K. Korpela jkorp...@cs.tut.fi wrote: 2012-12-21 21:05, Leif Halvard Silli wrote: My Moscow Russian-Norwegian from 1987 and my Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary from 2003 agree that both list words on Ё and Е under the same category – namely, under the letter Е. This appears to be the case in any serious dictionary. You're right. In an influential orthographic dictionary the difference is secondary, e.g. ёлка is between елисейский дворец and ёлки-палки: http://lopatina-slovar.com/description/elka/34736 (The site database has been built by scanning a printed dictionary) However, the preferences could change, as electronic dictionaries seem to demonstrate. It is of course possible that some people would prefer treating “ё” as a primarily different letter. But it’s rather illogical to require that it be treated that way at the start of a word only. I don’t think collation rules need to accommodate such preferences. Granted, not yet, but by itself the argument is invalid. Unicode collation rules are descriptive; if, for example, a language happens to sort accents backwards, this rule has to be - and is - accommodated despite its apparent illogicality; along the same lines, if a language happens to make a distinction discussed in this thread, it has to be accommodated just as well. Also, In several languages the rules have changed over time, and so *older dictionaries may use a different order than modern ones* [emph. mine - LB]. Furthermore, collation may depend on use. For example, German dictionaries and telephone directories use different approaches. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collation] The distinction in two collation methods in German (secondary vs expanded umlauts) is prominent enough to be mentioned in UCA. Luckily for Germans, both methods are covered by the algorithm thanks to requirements of other languages. My question is as follows: does UCA have to be modified (e.g. by adding another bit flag word-initial primary next to the existing backward secondary) to support the feature if it were to be implemented, or is there a way to achieve the new Russian online collation within the existing UCA without modifying the strings to be sorted before the application of the algorithm? Leo
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Jukka K. Korpela, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 21:35:16 +0200: 2012-12-21 21:05, Leif Halvard Silli wrote: My Moscow Russian-Norwegian from 1987 and my Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary from 2003 agree that both list words on Ё and Е under the same category – namely, under the letter Е. This appears to be the case in any serious dictionary. In «Tolkovïj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazïka» from 2005 («Dictionary over contempary Russian language»), has located words on Ё in its a separate category, consisting of exactly one word: Ёмкость. That, and the dictionary Leo pointed to, tell me that there is a difference between categorization and collation. The use of the Cyrillic letter yo (ё, called IO in the Unicode name) has varied through ages, but it has never been a dominant spelling to use it. According to “The World’s Writing Systems”, edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (Oxford University Press, 1995), “The letter ё is used virtually only in dictionaries or language textbooks.” It may have become more popular in the Internet, but still less common than using the letter ye (IE, е) in its stead. The internet has also really boomed since 1995. ;-) Fact is, again, that ёлка - in the wild - can be written ёлка and елка. And in most contexts, it is written “елка”. Google Trends has «ёлка» as *pretty* close — I think, but «елка» remains in the leead. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=ёлка,елка It is of course possible that some people would prefer treating “ё” as a primarily different letter. But it’s rather illogical to require that it be treated that way at the start of a word only. I don’t think collation rules need to accommodate such preferences. Right: To require it would be not be in tune with praxis. -- leif halvard silli
Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
Don't worry, I think you now have another 5351 years until the next Mayan Doomsday... Happy Holidays to everyone Clive On Friday, December 21, 2012, Jameson Quinn wrote: But I still intend to do this before the end of January. Jameson -- Clive P. Hohberger, PhD MBA Managing Director *Clive Hohberger, LLC* +1 847 910 8794 cp...@case.edu
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Leif Halvard Silli xn--mlform-...@xn--mlform-iua.no wrote: In «Tolkovïj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazïka» from 2005 («Dictionary over contempary Russian language»), has located words on Ё in its a separate category, consisting of exactly one word: Ёмкость. This is either a mistake or a misunderstanding. There are a few dozen words starting with Ё: http://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%80%D1%84%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C_%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D1%8F%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B0_%28%D0%81%29 Some online dictionaries may require you to click on a word to expand a word range. That, and the dictionary Leo pointed to, tell me that there is a difference between categorization and collation. You're right. A primary difference is categorizing (e.g. when many people have to check in to an event, the waiting lines may be categorized by several primarily distinct letters of the last name), a secondary difference isn't. Also, speaking of dictionary vs phone book collation, I'd like to know how Ельцин vs Ёлкин would be sorted but I don't know how to find out. During Soviet times, the White Pages weren't accessible to the public. It is of course possible that some people would prefer treating “ё” as a primarily different letter. But it’s rather illogical to require that it be treated that way at the start of a word only. I don’t think collation rules need to accommodate such preferences. Right: To require it would be not be in tune with praxis. I'm not in a rush. :) Leo
RE: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Leo Broukhis said: Granted, not yet, but by itself the argument is invalid. Unicode collation rules are descriptive; I'm not sure what you mean by that. UTS #10 is a *specification* of an algorithm, with various options for tailoring and parameterization which make it possible to accommodate various needs for particular cases. It is not intended as a descriptive mechanism. Perhaps you are referring to LDML, which includes a formal mechanism for describing a particular collation in terms of the default table and tailoring options and parameterization options of the UCA. if, for example, a language happens to sort accents backwards, this rule has to be - and is - accommodated despite its apparent illogicality; Backwards accent secondary weighting was actually included primarily because of prior art in collation standards, because of the need to be able to synchronize the UCA algorithm with ISO 14651, and because it makes it easier to explain how folks can implement versions of multi-level collation which can pass the conformance tests of the Canadian sorting standard, etc. along the same lines, if a language happens to make a distinction discussed in this thread, it has to be accommodated just as well. No, I don't think so. It is rather easy to come up with distinctions or collation requirements which simply cannot be accommodated within the intended bounds of the UCA. For example, sorting all numerical expressions mixed with text strictly by their numeric values, or sorting all (or some specified list) of abbreviations as if they were spelled out, and so forth. Many lexicographical ordering rules cannot be fully accommodated within the context of the UCA algorithm, which is a multilevel *string comparison* specification, and not a dictionary ordering specification. My question is as follows: does UCA have to be modified (e.g. by adding another bit flag word-initial primary next to the existing backward secondary) to support the feature if it were to be implemented, or is there a way to achieve the new Russian online collation within the existing UCA without modifying the strings to be sorted before the application of the algorithm? I don't think there is any out-of-the-box way to use UCA so that an implementation would automatically recognize a word boundary context and weight characters conditionally based on that context. So no, I don't think you could get an implementation to do that without first marking up text with additional characters to indicate word boundaries and then tailoring the weight table to weight sequences including that markup accordingly. This is actually derived trivially from the fact that UCA knows nothing whatsoever about word boundaries. At core, it is just a mechanism to take a string input and provide an output vector of collation weights. You would have to have to hook it up to a text segmentation algorithm to even identify words, and then that text segmentation algorithm would itself have to be tailored and tuned to whatever language you had in mind, because the criteria for identifying words will vary from language to language, and even orthography to orthography. But there is another possible sense of the question, does UCA have to be modified... to support..., i.e. is the UTC somehow required to augment the algorithm to support some particular kind of behavior for a particular language's sorting rules, just because someone has turned up particular odd behavior. And I think the answer to that is clearly no. Oh, and by the way, I don't think LDML must (or should) be augmented to enable it to describe any and all lexicographical ordering practices, either. That isn't the function of LDML. --Ken
RE: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Joe, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 12:48:47 -0800: Fact is, again, that ёлка - in the wild - can be written ёлка and елка Though you need a better dictionary: it's the diminutive of ель (as in Yel'tsin) meaning fir tree, and is the 4-letter word for Christmas tree. The dictionary of Dal,[1] says: «Ель, ели́на, умал. ёлка [snip]», which ought to mean that ёлка is a diminutive of ель. My impression is the same as yours with regard to the Christmas tree/New year tree meaning, but many dictionaries do list fir tree as the primary meaning of ёлка and Christmas/New year tree as a secondary meaning. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Dal С праздником! -- leif halvard silli
Re: UCA and Russian letter Ё
Leo Broukhis, Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:43:14 -0800: On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Leif Halvard Silli xn--mlform-...@xn--mlform-iua.no wrote: In «Tolkovïj slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo jazïka» from 2005 («Dictionary over contempary Russian language»), has located words on Ё in its a separate category, consisting of exactly one word: Ёмкость. This is either a mistake or a misunderstanding. [ snip ] Not at all. THe dictionary I referred to is a dictionary on paper which only contains new words or words with changed meaning etc. Thus, a dictionary of hot words for the time being. That particular dictionary only found room for one such word on ё-. :-) That, and the dictionary Leo pointed to, tell me that there is a difference between categorization and collation. You're right. A primary difference is categorizing (e.g. when many people have to check in to an event, the waiting lines may be categorized by several primarily distinct letters of the last name), a secondary difference isn't. Also, speaking of dictionary vs phone book collation, I'd like to know how Ельцин vs Ёлкин would be sorted but I don't know how to find out. During Soviet times, the White Pages weren't accessible to the public. I think that this is definitely one thing that can be affected by electronic media. But I just checked how Thunderbird sorts words and Ё- and Е- and it treats them as one and the same, even when the the Ё is the first letter of the word. Which to me makes sense in such an uncategorized medium as a list of e-mail since the user wants him- or herself to verify that he/she has seen all the message. However, I agree that in a dictionary etc, then it could probably make sense to have separate categories for Ё and Е. Question is whether categorization is a subject for collation algorithm. -- leif halvard silli
Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
On 2012-12-21, Clive Hohberger cp...@case.edu wrote: Don't worry, I think you now have another 5351 years until the next Mayan Doomsday... It's only 394 years till the next b'ak'tun. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
RE: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
And as you've no doubt heard to death by now, real Maya don't believe in that apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo anyway. Today was a celebration. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell -Original Message- From: Julian Bradfield jcb+unic...@inf.ed.ac.uk Sent: 12/21/2012 15:55 To: unicode@unicode.org unicode@unicode.org Subject: Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal On 2012-12-21, Clive Hohberger cp...@case.edu wrote: Don't worry, I think you now have another 5351 years until the next Mayan Doomsday... It's only 394 years till the next b'ak'tun. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
http://xkcd.com/998/ On 2012年12月21日, at 下午4:22, Doug Ewell d...@ewellic.org wrote: And as you've no doubt heard to death by now, real Maya don't believe in that apocalyptic mumbo-jumbo anyway. Today was a celebration. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA http://www.ewellic.org | @DougEwell From: Julian Bradfield Sent: 12/21/2012 15:55 To: unicode@unicode.org Subject: Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal On 2012-12-21, Clive Hohberger cp...@case.edu wrote: Don't worry, I think you now have another 5351 years until the next Mayan Doomsday... It's only 394 years till the next b'ak'tun. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
Re: I missed my self-imposed deadline for the Mayan numeral proposal
If the name of this ending baktun really means rebirth or renaissance, then the real catastrophe occured 394 years ago, in 1618, just because of the conquest of America by Spanish troops : which meant a massive death of lots of Amerindians (most of them due to imported infections, to which Amerindians were not protected, but also due to the end of development of the Mayan civilization caused by their internal wars, their concentration in giant cities which lacked the resources to survive in a more concentrated territory). So since 1618, the Mayans have changed completely of civilization, and became a minority. They are now being recognized with more respect (including for their native languages that was largely ignored when Spanish became official). The rebirth or renaissance just started with the European Renaissance (ending Middle-Age), and this is a strange coincidence. Well, not everybody thinks that this ending baktun was really the last one in the cycle (are there 12 or 13 baktuns in the longest cycle ? Mayans may have just stopped counting after that, certainly because their past civilization was already ending at that time, or because nobody knows how they were counting these long cycles of more than 12 or 13 baktun, or if they counted them starting by zero or one and even Mayans can't tell when the historic first cycle really occured in the past, just like we don't know really where to start the proleptic Julian calendar (in 4714 BC, really ?), in a time where history of dates was not written. (Even the Julian dates up to J.C. birth in the Christian are a reconstruction imagined during the 6th Century, several centuries after the Julian calendar was normalized : years werre still counted after a Roman Emperor or other political rulers in separate eras, even if the length of a year was formalized in 325 in the Concile of Nicea for unifying the various Julian calendars used in Europe, so even today, we still don't know the exact date Jesus Christ was really born, or when exactly the Julian calendar started under Julius Caesar : various options are still possible for matching Roman eras with the modern Julian calendar still used today, notably for some question : was 4 AD a leap year or not and when Augustus really suspended the triennial leap years, for correctly determining when the Julius Caesar calendar really started ; the most recent proposal for matching dates in the Julius Caesar era was created in 2003 after the discovery of an old Egyptian papyrus, matching Julius Caesar's era years with Egyptian dates). If we don't know when the Julian calendar started, then we also don't know really how to match the Gregorian calendar with it. We also don't know exactly when the Mayan calendar started, or if this was also just a reconstruction (with more or less historic approximations). Let's just learn something : the human history is not written since very long. And most of it as been reconstructed with lots of errors (notably of interpretation of old texts or because we can't figure out the validity of these old texts to know if they were accurate too in the time where they were written).
