Re: Phoenician (was, Response to Everson Phoenician and why June 7?; was, Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew; was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
On Wednesday, May 19, 2004 9:11 PM, John Jenkins wrote: You go down to your local cybercafe to read your email from your grandmother telling you all about your nephew's bar-mitzvah. Unfortunately, your local cybercafe has no modern Hebrew (or Yiddish) installed, but they *do* have a Phonecian one. You cannot, as a result, even tell what language your grandmother is writing you in, let alone what it means. Of course, the same thing would likely happen if there was only a Rashi font installed. Of course, this criterion is difficult to apply to two varieties of writing separated by thousands of years -- and it might behoove the UTC to discuss the problems involved -- but if we accept minimum legibility as a factor in deciding when to unify/separate, I think it's a valid one. Minimum legibility? Among what population? By this logic, Rashi script should be separately encoded as well. An Israeli friend of mine says (only half jokingly) that he can read Hebrew words in Rashi script, but doesn't know any of the letters. Phoenician (k'tav ivri) may not be quite as widely recognized as Rashi script, but I've always thought of both of them as using the same set of characters, just different glyph sets--same letter names, same phonetic values, even the same word spellings. (I find it remarkable that the Phoenician proposal states that none of the characters can be considered to be similar in function to an existing character.) If Rashi and k'tav ivri aren't legible to many, this is really only due to unfamiliarity with the glyphs--much the same problem that young children have with cursive writing (in English as well as in Hebrew). So I don't get it. Why does Phoenician need its own Unicode encoding? What's the operational need that can't be met by using Hebrew characters with the right font? Why is render this in k'tav ivri any different than render this in Rashi script? Is it just that when the glyphs are different enough, it becomes a good idea to encode them as separate characters, or is there more to it? And if there is no difference, are we to look forward to a Rashi script proposal? Surely not. There is a surfeit of proof by forceful assertion on both sides of this argument. Very little by way of clear rationale. (And saying it's in the roadmap just begs the question.) Ted Ted Hopp, Ph.D. ZigZag, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED] +1-301-990-7453 newSLATE is your personal learning workspace ...on the web at http://www.newSLATE.com/
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Elaine Keown Tucson Hi, What is a 'diascript' ? --Elaine __ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Michael Everson scripsit: What is a 'diascript' ? Dean's attempt to invent a new term for the gigantic bucket he thinks Hebrew is. Not new, not invented; as I said, already in use in French, German, and Dutch. By analogy with diaphoneme, presumably; an abstract representation which can equally well (or nearly so) any of a variety of chosen scripts. -- John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan Original line from The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold: Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one. English-to-Russian-to-English mangling thereof: Only on Barrayar you risk to lose support instead of finding it when you threat with the charged weapon.
RE: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark E. Shoulson Sent: Friday, May 14, 2004 11:47 PM To: Dean Snyder Cc: Unicode List Subject: Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician) Dean Snyder wrote: My question is, do you really care what ANYBODY says about encoding or not encoding Phoenician, or has your mind been made up for 10 years and nothing can change it now? But they *DID* listen to what people had to say about it. Some said one thing, some said the other. A decision must, necessarily, go against the opinion of at least one party. There is another option - to postpone the decision. If the question is controversial, and consent impossible to achieve, this is often the best choice. ... ~mark Jony
RE: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Jony Rosenne wrote, There is another option - to postpone the decision. If the question is controversial, and consent impossible to achieve, this is often the best choice. If it is impossible to achieve a consensus, it's disingenous to suggest that a decision be postponed until an agreement is reached. Rather, if no consent is possible, it's pointless to postpone making a decision. Further, when everyone agrees, no decision is required. Suppose nobody celebrated the Sabbath until all of the World's religious experts agree on the correct day of the week? Best regards, James Kass
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jony Rosenne wrote, There is another option - to postpone the decision. If the question is controversial, and consent impossible to achieve, this is often the best choice. If it is impossible to achieve a consensus, it's disingenous to suggest that a decision be postponed until an agreement is reached. Particularly when the status quo is one of the arguing positions. ~mark
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Michael Everson wrote: One last try. At 16:21 -0400 2004-05-14, Dean Snyder wrote: Michael Everson wrote at 7:29 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: At 11:44 -0400 2004-05-13, Dean Snyder wrote: It's your dogmatic assertion that Phoenician/Palaeo-Hebrew is a different script (in the ENCODING sense of that word) from Jewish Hebrew. No, it's my considered opinion[] I disagree. I know you do. This discussion has been spinning its wheels. At this point, we keep yelling at each other It's the same script! No, it's two different ones! but there's nothing new left to dispute. It's safe to say that the two sides disagree here, and always will. Further discussion is mostly a lot of hot air and wasted electrons ~mark
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Michael Everson wrote at 7:29 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: At 11:44 -0400 2004-05-13, Dean Snyder wrote: occur side by side FOR THE SAME TEXTS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. In DIFFERENT SCRIPTS. It's your dogmatic assertion that Phoenician/Palaeo-Hebrew is a different script (in the ENCODING sense of that word) from Jewish Hebrew. I disagree. You've given no evidence to back this assertion, and I recall no one else here supporting this assertion of yours with any evidence either. (Legibility by modern readers is basically irrelevant in an ancient script context.) I, on the other hand, have given evidence, including several email attachments of palaeographical charts, showing that they are not different scripts - they are members of a diascript continuum, with a one-to-one mapping of letters, with the same writing direction, in the same alphabetical order, with practically the same letter names, used by scribes to differentiate archaizing text from more modern text in the same language contemporaneously, with both forms legible to the same people. The burden of proof is on you to show that these are different scripts. Maybe you don't want scholars to intercollate this material? I don't care. If scholars want to tailor an ordering... Interesting attitude for an encoder, that I don't care statement. I DO care if Dead Sea scroll scholars have to always be doing workarounds just to overcome the results of a dogmatic assertion that Palaeo-Hebrew is a different, encode-worthy, script from Jewish Hebrew. I note here, for example, Ken Whistler's recent pre-supposition that this proposal will be adopted - Phoenician (~ Old Canaanite, or whatever we end up calling it). In light of these kinds of foregone conclusions by respected members of the Unicode Consortium, what else can we POSSIBLY do to stop this proposal's adoption? Nothing. Embrace the inevitable. If there is no possible way to prevent the adoption of a proposal like this, why put it up for review at all? The actual encoding content of the proposal is actually rather simplistic and straightforward; it's the question of whether or not to encode Phoenician at all that's in any way interesting or merits discussion. And if this is a foregone conclusion, an inevitability, then the review process is a sham. I am proceeding on the assumption that it is not. My question is, do you really care what ANYBODY says about encoding or not encoding Phoenician, or has your mind been made up for 10 years and nothing can change it now? If the UTC encodes Archaic Greek and does not encode Phoenician, it will make both Classicists and Semiticists happy. Nope. Archaic Greek can be properly unified with Greek. Then forget about plain text distinction of the two. Old Canaanite can be properly unified with Hebrew - de facto, it is unified right now. Phoenician, on the other hand, cannot be properly unified with Hebrew, because we are going to encode important nodes of the family tree. Are you going on record here as stipulating that Archaic Greek is not an important node on its family tree? Or are you saying that you are just not going to encode important nodes on the Greek family tree? We're going to do this because the Universal Character Set is a cultural artifact for everyone, not simply a tool for certain kinds of scholars. My proposal to encode Archaic Greek instead of Phoenician is a solution that will work better for everyone - your proposal to encode Phoenician is an inadequacy for Classicists, an increased mess for Semiticists, and a convenience for makers of plain text alphabet charts. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Dean Snyder wrote: My question is, do you really care what ANYBODY says about encoding or not encoding Phoenician, or has your mind been made up for 10 years and nothing can change it now? But they *DID* listen to what people had to say about it. Some said one thing, some said the other. A decision must, necessarily, go against the opinion of at least one party. Don't forget, your opinion was not the only one expressed. We also had other scholars who said otherwise. And if you think they are mistaken, you need to convince *them*. Or is it _you_ who is advocating that some opinions be discarded? ~mark
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
At 16:21 -0400 2004-05-14, Dean Snyder wrote: [repetition deleted] Pete oun maaje mmof esotm maref sotm. -- Gospel of Thomas 21. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
At 16:21 -0400 2004-05-14, Dean Snyder wrote: [repetition deleted] Pete oun maaje mmof esotm maref sotm. -- Gospel of Thomas 21. Exegesis for the rest of us: Thomas 21, Verse 10. Nag Hammadi Coptic text original *transliterated* into Latin script. Translated usually as: He who has ears to hear, let him hear. --Ken P.S. Can we find something *else* to talk about this weekend?
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
At 16:42 -0700 2004-05-14, Kenneth Whistler wrote: Pete oun maaje mmof esotm maref sotm. -- Gospel of Thomas 21. Exegesis for the rest of us: Thomas 21, Verse 10. Nag Hammadi Coptic text original *transliterated* into Latin script. Translated usually as: He who has ears to hear, let him hear. My apologies for the spelling error. There should be no space in marefsotm. P.S. Can we find something *else* to talk about this weekend? I'll have a new and surprising proposal for you before the end of the weekend, gods willing. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
One last try. At 16:21 -0400 2004-05-14, Dean Snyder wrote: Michael Everson wrote at 7:29 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: At 11:44 -0400 2004-05-13, Dean Snyder wrote: occur side by side FOR THE SAME TEXTS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. In DIFFERENT SCRIPTS. It's your dogmatic assertion that Phoenician/Palaeo-Hebrew is a different script (in the ENCODING sense of that word) from Jewish Hebrew. No, it's my considered opinion, based on years of study of writing systems and encoding. Based on an appreciation of the different significant scripts in the history of West Asian and European writing systems. Based on an appreciation of the NAMED distinctions scholars of writing have made, *naming* uniquely identifiable writing systems -- something which can be distinguished from ordinary palaeography (which has a higher granularity). Based on simple concepts of legibility and similarity. Based on the tradition of marks on paper/stone/papyrus, and not on the *language* in which historical documents are written. And based on the typographic history of these writing systems; the Imprimerie Nationale (for instance) didn't go to the trouble and expense of cutting standardized type for these different scripts out of idle interest in letterforms. I disagree. I know you do. You've given no evidence to back this assertion, and I recall no one else here supporting this assertion of yours with any evidence either. That isn't so. Non-experts who have suffered through this discussion can understand that the scripts/alphabets which have been proposed to be unified under the rubric Phoenician all have similar glyph characteristics which make them more like one another than they are to standard Square Hebrew. (Legibility by modern readers is basically irrelevant in an ancient script context.) No, it's not. Even in antiquity the Jews recognized the distinction between their original Palaeo-Hebrew (as used in unbroken tradition by the Samaritans) and their Square Hebrew (as derived from the offical Aramaic script they learned in Exile.) I, on the other hand, have given evidence, including several email attachments of palaeographical charts, showing that they are not different scripts I saw your e-mail attachment Selected West Semitic Scripts. No one disputes that these are West Semitic. The fact that someone published them in a table does not mean that they are all the same. I would unify items 1-7 in that attachment as Phoenician, and items 8-12 as Hebrew. Note that the difference between item 7 and item 8 is four centuries. Note that the attachment itself identifies item 8 as post-exilic. Note that I (and many scholars) have observed that it was in exile that the Jews abandoned their original script for the Aramaic script which subsequently developed into Square Hebrew (formal Hebrew in the attachment). - they are members of a diascript This is not an English word. continuum, with a one-to-one mapping of letters, So? with the same writing direction, So? in the same alphabetical order, So? with practically the same letter names, But only practically. And so? used by scribes to differentiate archaizing text from more modern text in the same language contemporaneously, Not so. The exiled Jews considered their new script suitable for writing scripture and explicitly rejected the older one (called Phoenician in my proposal). These people were perfectly aware that their language could be written in more than one script. They did NOT consider them variants of the same script. with both forms legible to the same people. An unsupported hypothesis on your part. The burden of proof is on you to show that these are different scripts. Anyone with eyes can see that items 1-7 in your attachment have more to do with one another than they have with items 8-12, which can also be seen to have strong similarities. Maybe you don't want scholars to intercollate this material? I don't care. If scholars want to tailor an ordering... Interesting attitude for an encoder, that I don't care statement. I don't. I care about the plumbing, the letters available for use. What people do with those letters is their business. I DO care if Dead Sea scroll scholars have to always be doing workarounds just to overcome the results of a dogmatic assertion that Palaeo-Hebrew is a different, encode-worthy, script from Jewish Hebrew. The facts (as evidenced in the tetragrammaton examples in the proposal) shows that Phoenician script was used in distinction to Hebrew or Greek script in certain contexts. If one wants to represent those texts in plain text (as at least some people do) then one will encode the Phoenician bits in Phoenician script, and the other bits in Hebrew or Greek. If one wants to *alter* those texts and represent the Phoenician bits with Hebrew letters, that is perfectly legitimate, and one can do that by transliterating the Phoenician into another script. If there is no possible way to prevent the
Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Michael Everson wrote at 3:08 AM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: At 21:34 -0400 2004-05-12, John Cowan wrote: Remember that Phoenician in this context includes Palaeo-Hebrew, an we *have* seen evidence that this script is mixed with Square in the same text, though not in the same word. Remember that we have likewise seen Greek text with the Palaeo-Hebrew text embedded in it in exactly the same way, yet we do not propose to interfile Phoenician with Greek. Michael, your response exhibits faulty analogies and fundamental misunderstandings of the issues involved. (At the very simplest level you are confusing language and script.) Your response is tantamount to saying - Remember that we have likewise seen Greek text with Fraktur German text embedded in it in exactly the same way, yet we do not propose to interfile German with Greek. Would you propose, by analogy, to separate Fraktur from Roman German? Do you want to interfile Fraktur and Roman German? You, or no one else here, have ever answered my objections based on the analogy of Fraktur/Roman German to Palaeo/Jewish Hebrew. This response also exhibits a complete ignoring of my Dead Sea scrolls scenario, where both scripts, Palaeo-Hebrew and Jewish Hebrew, occur side by side FOR THE SAME TEXTS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. Maybe you don't want scholars to intercollate this material? How can you and others keep on ignoring these serious objections, and railroad this proposal through in spite of substantive resistance? I note here, for example, Ken Whistler's recent pre-supposition that this proposal will be adopted - Phoenician (~ Old Canaanite, or whatever we end up calling it). In light of these kinds of foregone conclusions by respected members of the Unicode Consortium, what else can we POSSIBLY do to stop this proposal's adoption?] On the other hand, to be fair, I have yet to answer the only viable reason you have provided, and the one you and others keep repeating, for separately encoding Phoenician - Classical scholars want to contrast in plain text Phoenician characters with Greek characters. Here is my answer: As a person who does research in both disciplines, Semitics and Classics, I say that what Classicists really need to distinguish in plain text is Archaic Greek (read Old Canaanite+) from later Greek. And the only problem is that your Phoenician proposal will not help Classicists in doing this. You see, we really need to encode ARCHAIC Greek, which is a SUPERSET of the Old Canaanite alphabet - Phoenician is simply inadequate for the job Classicists and others need to do. If the UTC encodes Archaic Greek and does not encode Phoenician, it will make both Classicists and Semiticists happy. Besides, encoding Archaic Greek is more fun - it's more complicated, more interesting, and I predict will be an increasingly ever more active area of research. And, after all, it was Archaic Greek that was the direct ancestor of the other, subsequent, Mediterranean scripts, not Phoenician/Old Cannaanite. Maybe I'll beat you to the punch and write an Archaic Greek proposal myself? ;-) Is there time to get an Archaic Greek proposal on the June UTC agenda? I can write this up fairly quickly. Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Dean Snyder wrote: Is there time to get an Archaic Greek proposal on the June UTC agenda? I can write this up fairly quickly. Yes, there is time. All script proposals need to be in a week before the UTC, by June 7. For something that is likely to be controversial, I would recommend two weeks in advance or May 31. Lisa
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Dean Snyder wrote at 11:44 AM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: Do you want to interfile Fraktur and Roman German? Of course, what I meant to say was, Do you not want Fraktur and Roman German interfiled? Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
At 10:16 -0700 2004-05-13, Lisa Moore wrote: Is there time to get an Archaic Greek proposal on the June UTC agenda? There might be time, but there is no reason to make such a proposal. Archaic Greek is already handled by Greek. It even includes archaic letters like QOPPA. There are some letters missing, like HETA, but those can be added in due course. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
At 11:44 -0400 2004-05-13, Dean Snyder wrote: Michael Everson wrote at 3:08 AM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: At 21:34 -0400 2004-05-12, John Cowan wrote: Remember that Phoenician in this context includes Palaeo-Hebrew, an we *have* seen evidence that this script is mixed with Square in the same text, though not in the same word. Remember that we have likewise seen Greek text with the Palaeo-Hebrew text embedded in it in exactly the same way, yet we do not propose to interfile Phoenician with Greek. Michael, your response exhibits faulty analogies and fundamental misunderstandings of the issues involved. Bollocks it does, Dean. (At the very simplest level you are confusing language and script.) Ordered lists are language-independent. It is the script which is ordered, not the language. You, or no one else here, have ever answered my objections based on the analogy of Fraktur/Roman German to Palaeo/Jewish Hebrew. Because they aren't analogous. This response also exhibits a complete ignoring of my Dead Sea scrolls scenario, where both scripts, Palaeo-Hebrew and Jewish Hebrew, You don't need to use the quotation marks. They are both different scripts. In fact if you would just accept this, your difficulties would fade away. occur side by side FOR THE SAME TEXTS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. In DIFFERENT SCRIPTS. Maybe you don't want scholars to intercollate this material? I don't care. If scholars want to tailor an ordering so that they can interfile Georgian and Pahawh Hmong it is fine with me. Nothing prevents them from doing so. How can you and others keep on ignoring these serious objections, and railroad this proposal through in spite of substantive resistance? Because the objections are based on faulty analogies and fundamental misunderstandings of the issues involved? I note here, for example, Ken Whistler's recent pre-supposition that this proposal will be adopted - Phoenician (~ Old Canaanite, or whatever we end up calling it). In light of these kinds of foregone conclusions by respected members of the Unicode Consortium, what else can we POSSIBLY do to stop this proposal's adoption? Nothing. Embrace the inevitable. If the UTC encodes Archaic Greek and does not encode Phoenician, it will make both Classicists and Semiticists happy. Nope. Archaic Greek can be properly unified with Greek. Phoenician, on the other hand, cannot be properly unified with Hebrew, because we are going to encode important nodes of the family tree. We're going to do this because the Universal Character Set is a cultural artifact for everyone, not simply a tool for certain kinds of scholars. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Michael Everson wrote at 7:01 PM on Thursday, May 13, 2004: There might be time, but there is no reason to make such a proposal. Archaic Greek is already handled by Greek. It even includes archaic letters like QOPPA. There are some letters missing, like HETA, but those can be added in due course. No, I mean glyphically-archaic Greek (just as you are focused on glyphically-archaic Northwest Semitic). If you believe that multi-dialectical Archaic Greek scripts are already sufficiently covered in plain text by modern Greek glyphs, with their adjuncts, then how in the world can you au contraire propose that multi- dialectical Northwest Semitic scripts, sans adjuncts, be de-unified? The issues are the same, only the differences are much greater in Greek script development. To pick one example, just ask any modern literate Greek to read Archaic Greek glyphs; you will get more numerous, and more deeply puzzled, responses than Shoulson did with modern literate Israelis trying to read Palaeo-Hebrew glyphs. This is inconsistency and, frankly, smacks of anti-Hellenism! [ ;-) Just kidding, of course, on that last remark.] Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
Re: Archaic-Greek/Palaeo-Hebrew (was, interleaved ordering; was, Phoenician)
Elaine Keown Tucson Hi, There might be time, but there is no reason to make such a proposal. Archaic Greek is already handled by Greek. It even includes archaic letters like QOPPA. There are some letters missing, like HETA, but those can be added in due course. I hope Dean Snyder does this---and he is right, there is a reason. Epichoric Greek alphabets do have a variety of letters, apparently different in each region, and the Archaic Greek is quite different from the regular stuff. Elaine __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2' http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861
