Re: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
At 13:00 -0700 2002-10-01, Kenneth Whistler wrote: >Espen asked: > >> Just out curiosity, is what you call High Ogonek here what ended >>up as U+0313 or U+0314? > >No. It was an erroneous identification of: > >U+02BD MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA Sort of à propos this, we've found a MIDDLE COMMA in Early Cyrillic. MIDDLE DOT is the height of the dot in a colon or semicolon, and MIDDLE COMMA follows suit -- kind of an inverse but not inverted semicolon fragment. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com 48B Gleann na Carraige; Cill Fhionntain; Baile Átha Cliath 13; Éire Telephone +353 86 807 9169 * * Fax +353 1 832 2189 (by arrangement)
Re: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
Espen asked: > Just out curiosity, is what you call High Ogonek here what ended up as U+0313 or >U+0314? No. It was an erroneous identification of: U+02BD MODIFIER LETTER REVERSED COMMA A spacing form for a modifier mark indicating aspiration, rather than a non-spacing comma above. --Ken
RE: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
At 17:21 +0200 2002-10-01, Marco Cimarosti wrote: >The Italian lira is not in circulation any more and, when it was, its symbol >was with U+00A3, which is the character Italian keyboards have on the key of >digit "3", in place of the US "#". And which is the position of the pound sign on UK keyboards. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com 48B Gleann na Carraige; Cill Fhionntain; Baile Átha Cliath 13; Éire Telephone +353 86 807 9169 * * Fax +353 1 832 2189 (by arrangement)
RE: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
Kenneth Whistler wrote: > [...] So it is possible that the lira sign > simply derives from a draft list that was standardized > without anyone ever spending time to debate the pound/lira > symbol unification first. [...] If it proves true that the lira sign was an unification fault, why not stating it officially in the next book? The current information is misleading: 00A3POUND SIGN = pound sterling, Irish punt x (lira sign - 20A4) 20A4LIRA SIGN * Italy, Turkey x (pound sign - 00A3) Why not substituting it with something more sensible, e.g.: 00A3POUND SIGN = pound sterling, Irish punt, Italian lira, Turkish lira, etc. x (lira sign - 20A4) 20A4LIRA SIGN * Intended for lira, but not widely used. * Preferred character for lira (Italy, Turkey, etc.) is 00A3. x (pound sign - 00A3) The Italian lira is not in circulation any more and, when it was, its symbol was with U+00A3, which is the character Italian keyboards have on the key of digit "3", in place of the US "#". I don't know what's the situation in Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, and so on, but I would be very surprised to know that anyone ever used U+20A4. _ Marco
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
At 12:50 AM 10/1/2002 -0700, Ben Monroe wrote: >> For instance, IIRC, Isabella Bird wrote in her (British) English >travelogue in the early Meiji restoration era (1878 AD) >> of travels to Yedo (now commonly called "Edo" in the literature, and >known by its modern name to all as "Tokyo"). She called Tokyo "Tokiyo". > >Just a small correction. The Meiji Restoration was in 1867 (some >historians view it as 1868 though). That's a timezone issue, right? :) Actually the 1878 date I referred to is the date of the travels discussed in the book, not the date of the Meiji Restoration. the book itself, according to my copy from about 100 years later, was first published in 1880. Barry Caplan www.i18n.com
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
- Message d'origine - De : "Ben Monroe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > - the yen currency began in 1871 And written as such since 1871 in French accord to my Dictionnaire historique de la langue française which writes « est l'adaptation (1871) d'un mot japonais dont la transcription normale serait èn, lui-même du chinois yüan « rond, cercle » et aussi « dollar » (en tant que monnaie ronde). » > - there are many foreign languages that have common words with the same > spelling as "en", so there was a need to avoid this. French and Spanish > has an "en" meaning "inside (something)" True even though French could use an accent (as in sample above) to disambiguate (en is a single nasal sound, èn is not). I'm not sure that the French and Spanish had much influence on the transcription of Japanese (English, Dutch or Portuguese maybe). > and Dutch has an "en" meaning > "and then". [I really do not know. I am just repeating what it says > there.] In Dutch « en » simply means « and » (or « both and »); there is no more a connation of « then » than in English. P. Andries
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
On Mon, 30 Sep 2002, Thomas Chan wrote: > (Was U+56ED what you saw, James?--I don't have my Krause catalog by me at > the moment, but I think it was present on older PRC coinage.) A correction to myself here--I thought I had seen U+56ED as a currency unit, but now I cannot find a reference in my notes, so I'm retracting this one. James Kass said: >I don't blame you. According to Krause... >One Dollar (Yuan) = 100 Cents (Fen/Hsien) = 1000 Cash (Wen/Ch'ien) = >(=) 0.72 Tael (Liang) = 7 Mace and 2 Candareens >...and, that's just for starters. Well, the last part is a different system--mace and candareens are weight measures for silver coins as part of the "tael" system: liang/qian/fei/li (tael/mace/candareen/?). Hence, there are three systems: dollar, cash, and tael. The 1/100th units fen and xian (hsien in Krause) are part of different systems: yuan-jiao-fen in the north, and yuan-hao-xian in the south. (xian U+4ED9 < English 'cent', even in Macau, where 1/100th of a pataca is an avo.) The northern and southern systems may be seen residually in contemporary Hong Kong and Macau, and historically during the early 20th century during a period of provincial minting in mainland China, where people used their local terminology on their coins, with the exception of the 1.0 unit. The situation is similar for the 1/10th unit; jiao in the north and hao in the south. Marco Cimarosti said: >U+5143 4~6~D^4~D6~^A >U+5186 4~6~D^4~DC^4~DC >U+5706 4~6~D^4~D^4~DC >U+570E 4~6~D^4~D^I >U+5713 4~6~D^4~D^O Thank you for finding these--I didn't realize that U+570E was encoded independently of U+5713, and not as a font variant of the latter. (And I had forgotten the obvious U+5713 ~ U+5706 connection.) I checked Krause--U+5713 may be seen on pre-war Japanese coinage for "yen". Alan Wood said: >I have added all of the symbols from this discussion to the second table on >my page at: >http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/currency_symbols.html Please remove U+56ED--that was my mistake. U+6587 is not entirely appropriate there--while it was a currency unit (approx. 1/1000th yuan), it was gone in all regions by the early 1930s, and now it is just (a least) a colloquial Cantonese synonym for yuan, sort of like northern kuai4 U+584A/U+5757 'piece'. I can provide you with a bunch of other terms for 1/10th and 1/100th units, but once one steps into the realm of Han characters, one is no longer dealing with symbols but words, and the list can inflate very quickly unless restrictions are set, such as primary currency units (not 1/10th or 1/100th units) in contemporary use (not historical) that appear appear on currency (not other terms like "bucks", "benjamins", etc). U+5713 I wouldn't list as "yen/yuan variant"--it should be on the same level as U+5143 and U+5186, as U+5713 (Yuan) is the unit used in Taiwan and Hong Kong on the currency (despite being "dollars" in English). Thomas Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
Kenneth Whistler posted: "It is a deeper subject to figure out how the LIRA SIGN got into Unicode 1.0 in the first place, and I don't have all the relevant documents to hand to track it down. It was certainly already in the April 1990 pre-publication draft of Unicode 1.0 which was widely circulated." The distinction between pound currency sign and lira currency sign appears in the HP Roman-8 character set, still the default character set in HP laser printers. See http://www.kostis.net/charsets/hproman8.htm. AF is LIRA SIGN and BB is POUND SIGN. Someone must have thought the difference significant to include both glyphs in that set. This might be the source for Unicode. Not including both symbols would have broken encoding to Roman-8. Jim Allan
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
I have added all of the symbols from this discussion to the second table on my page at: http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/currency_symbols.html Alan Wood
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Stefan Persson wrote: > > Similarly, "yen" is just the Japanese (kun) pronunciation of Chinese > "yuan". > > IMHO, the preferred symbol for both currencies should be U+00A5. > > Wrong: > > Yen (円) is U+5186, while yuan (元) is U+5143. > > "Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's > pronounced "en." They are just two different spellings of the same word, "yuán", which means "currency unit" or "circle". A quick search brough up at least six variants, all of which are pronunced "(y)en" or "(g)en" in Japanese on: U+5143 元 U+5186 円 U+5706 圆 U+570E 圎 U+5713 圓 U+571C 圜 _ Marco
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
In the Lonely Planet Guide to China the currency RMB is always abbreviated simply as Y, and this in a volume with no shortage of Chinese characters, and where the Japanese units are indicated as U+FFE5. Raymond Mercier
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Barry Caplan wrote: > Wow ! I brought Ben out of lurk status after 6 months! Wow, someone still remembers me after 6 months. I hope it isn't because I left a bad impression or seriously annoyed someone (smile). As I'm sure many are, I have been busy with work and other projects. I am quite interested in many of the topics here, but am afraid that I am often out of my league for many, so often I do not have anything to contribute. > For instance, IIRC, Isabella Bird wrote in her (British) English travelogue in the early Meiji restoration era (1878 AD) > of travels to Yedo (now commonly called "Edo" in the literature, and known by its modern name to all as "Tokyo"). She called Tokyo "Tokiyo". Just a small correction. The Meiji Restoration was in 1867 (some historians view it as 1868 though). For those who read Japanese, an interesting exchange regarding the spelling of "yen" (and many other topics) occurred in 1998 and 2000 on a bulletin board at the following site. The various posts were collected and put together here: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~hi5k-stu/nihongo/hatuon.htm I have written a _brief_ summary of interesting points regarding "yen" in English below. Some of the topics we have already discussed. There are many, many other broad topics such as /wi, we/ --> /i, e/ and other such changes which I do not intend to get into. (Please note that these are not my postings or ideas. Some I agree with; others I don't.) - the yen currency began in 1871 - a foreigner introducing minting technology at that time found it easier to say "yen", so that is how it was written - it is easier for westerns to say [ye] than [e] - romanization of "en" could be easily mispronounced by English speakers as something close to "in"; to avoid this, "y" was prefixed - common romanization for /e/ at that time was "ye" so "en" just was written as "yen"; the Christian texts used "ye" for /e/. Even though [ye] gradually became [e], the spelling system did not change - Chinese currency is called "yuan" and due to that influence, it is called "yen" in Japan - there are many foreign languages that have common words with the same spelling as "en", so there was a need to avoid this. French and Spanish has an "en" meaning "inside (something)" and Dutch has an "en" meaning "and then". [I really do not know. I am just repeating what it says there.] - English speakers seem to hear "yen" instead of "en" > I also think (but I could be wrong) that "ye" is not one of the characters in the famous Buddhist poem that > uses each of the kana once and only once, and establishes a de facto sorting order by virtue of being the only such poem. Kenneth Whistler was kind enough to respond to this already. Kenneth Whistler wrote kana distinctions in the Iroha poem: > i ro ha ni ho he to > chi ri nu ru wo > wa ka yo ta re so > tsu ne na ra mu > u wi no o ku ya ma > ke fu ko e te > [^ that is one ] > a sa ki yu me mi shi > ye hi mo se su > [^ that is the other -- probably should be (w)e ] Yes, it is and should be /we/. What makes this poem so important is that it shows a contrast between /i/ and /wi/ and a contrast between /e/ and /we/. However, by this time there is no contrast between a /e/ and /ye/, indicating that at this time the distinction between these two sounds were not made anymore. These two sounds are usually thought to have merged into [ye] (of course being written with "e"). In addition to what I wrote before about this merging, Moto'ori Norinaga (1730-1801; one of the four great "kokugaku" (linguist isn't quite right; perhaps philologist is closer) scholars) noticed that the Heian poetry, which was in various 5-7- patterns, would occasionally have an extra mora (called "jiamari") in the 5-line resulting in 6 mora. He noticed specifically that this "jiamari" occurred in mora ending in /a, i, u, o/, but not /e/. He speculates that this /e/ in old texts was different from the other vowels; i.e., not a vowel, but actually [ye]. (I do not think the concept of "glides" or semi-vowels was an issue back then.) > [Attributed to middle Heian, around A.D. 1000.] > BTW, the translation of Kukai's iroha poem at that link leaves much to be desired, though the various version Yes, it is traditionally attributed to Ku[u]kai (774-835). (He is also, incorrectly, traditionally regarded as the creator of hiragana.) However, during the era that he lived, both /e/ and /ye/ should have been distinguished from each other, but they are not in this poem. This implies that it should have been written roughly after 950 or so. Also, the style of the poem is known as "imayou" also indicates a date after Kuukai lived. The oldest source of this Iroha poem that I know of is from the "Konkoumyou saishouou kyou" sutra of 1079. Another important poem often used as evidence for sound distinctions is the "Ametuti no kotoba" (or "Ametsuchi no kotoba" if you prefer). It dates from 967. Like the Iroha poem, it uses 48 kana each once with the exception of /e
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
In the Lonely Planet Guide to China the currency RMB is always abbreviated simply as Y, and this in a volume with no shortage of Chinese characters, and where the Japanese units are indicated as U+FFE5. Raymond Mercier
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
Barry Caplan wrote: > For instance, IIRC, Isabella Bird wrote in her (British) English > travelogue in the early Meiji restoration era (1878 AD) of travels to > Yedo (now commonly called "Edo" in the literature, and known by its > modern name to all as "Tokyo"). She called Tokyo "Tokiyo". As recently as World War II, some major newspapers and wire services in the U.S. were still spelling it "Tokio." -Doug Ewell Fullerton, California
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Thomas Chan wrote, > The Japanese currency may be U+5186 today, but that is just a > simplification of U+5713. Chinese took a different path of simplifiction > and variants, including U+56ED and today's (PRC) U+5143. (The Korean > "won" currency is of the same etymology, though not U+571C "hwan", > although the theme of a circular object--"rounds"?--is still present.) > (Was U+56ED what you saw, James?--I don't have my Krause catalog by me at > the moment, but I think it was present on older PRC coinage.) > There are charts in the front of the section which are much clearer than some of the pictures. The one I was trying to describe turns out to be U+5713, one of the four ideographs listed. U+5713 could be described as rad. 31 enclosing U+54E1, which is also shown. The other two shown are U+5143 and U+571C. The scripts shown on older Chinese coins are amazing. They include Chinese (of course), Latin, Cyrillic, Turki, and Manchu. > (I'm not going to get into 1/10th > and 1/100th units at this time.) I don't blame you. According to Krause... One Dollar (Yuan) = 100 Cents (Fen/Hsien) = 1000 Cash (Wen/Ch'ien) = (=) 0.72 Tael (Liang) = 7 Mace and 2 Candareens ...and, that's just for starters. Best regards, James Kass.
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Barry Caplan wrote [further morphing this thread]: > I also think (but I could be wrong) that "ye" is not one > of the characters in the famous Buddhist poem that uses > each of the kana once and only once, and establishes a > de facto sorting order by virtue of being the only such poem. > > OTOH, I am pretty sure that poem is either from or > post-dates the Heian era, so it wouldn't rule out your point. In a totally different context, I was looking into this recently and found some stuff the list might find amusing. The kana that is usually missing from the poem is -n, i.e. U+3093. P.S. In case you don't have it already, the i-ro-ha order is: i ro ha ni ho he to chi ri nu ru wo wa ka yo ta re so tsu ne na ra mu u wi no o ku ya ma ke fu ko e te [^ that is one ] a sa ki yu me mi shi ye hi mo se su [^ that is the other -- probably should be (w)e ] See, e.g., http://ccwww.kek.jp/iad/fink/western/wIJ2.html [Attributed to middle Heian, around A.D. 1000.] It was actually printed in the Unicode 1.0 book, when the circled Katakana characters at U+32D0..U+32FE were in i-ro-ha order. That was changed for Unicode 1.1, to synch up with the preferring a-i-u-e-o order for these characters in 10646. BTW, the translation of Kukai's iroha poem at that link leaves much to be desired, though the various version shown in hiragana, katakana, and with kanji are interesting. A much, much better translation can be found at: http://www.raincheck.de/html/i-ro-ha___english.html or, in German(!), at: http://www.raincheck.de/html/i-ro-ha.html The English translation is quite literal. The German -- how shall I put it -- takes some poetic license. ;-) Or, for a really challenging version, you can try puzzling out: http://www.miho.or.jp/booth/html/imgbig/3247e.htm which shows a manyoogana version (all kanji, used syllabically), tacking on the epenthetic U+65E0 mu for the "-n", which some versions of the poem do, just to be tidy. --Ken
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Lots of confusion. I don't know the origin of "yen" for the Japanese currency, aside from hearing that it was the way it was spelled (perhaps in Hepburn's dictionary) and adopted as such in English, and that the source of the "ye" might have either historical and/or regional pronunciation--i.e., not a phonemic difference distinct from "e". (Corrections appreciated here.) I do have the following (other) remarks on the characters that some have brought up, though: Marco Cimarosti wrote: >Similarly, "yen" is just the Japanese (kun) pronunciation of Chinese >"yuan". Stefan Persson wrote: >Yen (4~6~D^4~DC^4~DC) is U+5186, while yuan (4~6~D^4~D6~^A) is U+5143. > >"Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's pronounced >"en." James Kass wrote: >How about U+5143 ? (smile) >Looking at pictures of Chinese coins in the Krause catalog, some >coins used an ideograph other than U+5143, but a quick search of >CJK BMP ranges didn't find it. (Doesn't mean it's not there.) >This other character looks like rad. 31 surrounding stacked rads >30, 72, and 9. (The pictures are a bit fuzzy, though.) The Japanese currency may be U+5186 today, but that is just a simplification of U+5713. Chinese took a different path of simplifiction and variants, including U+56ED and today's (PRC) U+5143. (The Korean "won" currency is of the same etymology, though not U+571C "hwan", although the theme of a circular object--"rounds"?--is still present.) (Was U+56ED what you saw, James?--I don't have my Krause catalog by me at the moment, but I think it was present on older PRC coinage.) I wouldn't seriously advocate U+5143 :) --that is a word and not a symbol, cf., "$100" vs. "100 dollars"--the symbol is prefixed out speech order, but the word is suffixed per pronunciation. But if we are to get into writing out currency amounts in longhand words, there is at least also U+6587, formerly approxiately 1/1000th of a yuan, but now promoted to equal status as the yuan in Cantonese-speaking areas unofficially (i.e., it appears on price tags, but not money). This "man" is also ridiculously written U+868A 'mosquito'. (I'm not going to get into 1/10th and 1/100th units at this time.) Thomas Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Wow ! I brought Ben out of lurk status after 6 months! Interesting post too - my limited understanding goes back only to Heian era (~970-1100 AD OTTOMH). That combined with various early western transliterations into what we now call romaji, before Hepburn became semi-standardized. For instance, IIRC, Isabella Bird wrote in her (British) English travelogue in the early Meiji restoration era (1878 AD) of travels to Yedo (now commonly called "Edo" in the literature, and known by its modern name to all as "Tokyo"). She called Tokyo "Tokiyo". It is these types of early Western writings form Japan where I have seen the "Ye" used, but since they are also littered with plenty of other examples of weird transliterations, I just wrote it off to that. I also think (but I could be wrong) that "ye" is not one of the characters in the famous Buddhist poem that uses each of the kana once and only once, and establishes a de facto sorting order by virtue of being the only such poem. OTOH, I am pretty sure that poem is either from or post-dates the Heian era, so it wouldn't rule out your point. Barry Caplan www.i18n.com At 03:16 PM 9/30/2002 -0700, you wrote: >Barry Caplan wrote: > >> To: Stefan Persson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> At 10:08 PM 9/30/2002 +0200, you wrote: >> >"Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's >> >pronounced "en." > >> Really? I have no sources either way, but I always assumed >> "yen" was a Western transliteration of "en", since there is >> no "ye" entry in the kana table. > >Modern Japanese has 5 basic vowels, /a, i, u, e, o/. >Old Japanese most likely had 8 vowels, /a, i1, i2, u, e1, e2, o1, o2/. >These can further be traced to a proto-Japanese 4-vowel system /a, i, u, >o/. >In the y-line, there is currently /ya, yu, yo/. During the Nara period >where the first extant literature appears, there is evidence that the >man'yougana (precursor to modern kana; Chinese characters) regularly >distinguished between two types of /e/ (called Kou/Otu or A/B sounds, >among others). This is usually taken by most scholars as /e/ and /ye/. >By the early Heian period, with the emergence of the kana syllabary, >this Kou/Otu distinction vanished, specifically the /e/ and /ye/ >distinction by around 938 AD. It is usually assumed that the /e/ and >/ye/ (which is written with /e/) merged into [ye] (or [je], if you >like). Notice that the Portuguese dictionary of 1603 spells this /e/ as >"ye". Other documents indicate that this /e/ [ye] must have become [e] >(as modern) by 1775 or earlier. Also note that some dialects in Kyushu >still retain the [ye] pronunciation for /e/. > >I do not really have the time to go into more details right now. >I hope this will suffice. > >Ben Monroe
Re: Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
Kenneth Whistler scripsit: > "The High Ogonek is symptomatic of one of the things >wrong about the character standardization business, >which encourages the blithe perpetuation of mistaken >'characters' from standard to standard, "Charadords", one might call them. See http://www.snopes.com/language/mistakes/dord.htm , the best account of "dord" I can find quickly, but with two significant omissions (read it first, then come back here): 1) The entry for "dord" was not mis-sorted; rather, abbreviations were originally to be listed separately, but late in development the decision was taken to merge words and abbrevs into one list. 2) M-W's convention for typing headwords on index cards was to Germanspace them, thus: "D o r d", making the confusion with "D or d" highly plausible, given the erratic spacing behavior of manual typewriters. -- Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, || http://www.reutershealth.com Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau, || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.-- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
Barry Caplan wrote: > To: Stefan Persson; [EMAIL PROTECTED] > At 10:08 PM 9/30/2002 +0200, you wrote: > >"Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's > >pronounced "en." > Really? I have no sources either way, but I always assumed > "yen" was a Western transliteration of "en", since there is > no "ye" entry in the kana table. Modern Japanese has 5 basic vowels, /a, i, u, e, o/. Old Japanese most likely had 8 vowels, /a, i1, i2, u, e1, e2, o1, o2/. These can further be traced to a proto-Japanese 4-vowel system /a, i, u, o/. In the y-line, there is currently /ya, yu, yo/. During the Nara period where the first extant literature appears, there is evidence that the man'yougana (precursor to modern kana; Chinese characters) regularly distinguished between two types of /e/ (called Kou/Otu or A/B sounds, among others). This is usually taken by most scholars as /e/ and /ye/. By the early Heian period, with the emergence of the kana syllabary, this Kou/Otu distinction vanished, specifically the /e/ and /ye/ distinction by around 938 AD. It is usually assumed that the /e/ and /ye/ (which is written with /e/) merged into [ye] (or [je], if you like). Notice that the Portuguese dictionary of 1603 spells this /e/ as "ye". Other documents indicate that this /e/ [ye] must have become [e] (as modern) by 1775 or earlier. Also note that some dialects in Kyushu still retain the [ye] pronunciation for /e/. I do not really have the time to go into more details right now. I hope this will suffice. Ben Monroe
Pound and Lira (was: Re: The Currency Symbol of China)
> Marco Cimarosti scripsit: > > > The same should be true for the £ sign. > > > > But unluckily, for some obscure reason, Unicode thinks that currencies > > called "pound" should have one bar and be encoded with U+00A3, while > > currencies called "lira" should have two bars and be encoded with U+20A4. > > "Every character has its own story." > > Can the old farts^W^Wtribal elders shed any light on this one? Not much. The proximate cause of the inclusion of U+20A4 LIRA SIGN in 10646 was: WG2 N708, 1991-06-14, Table of Replies (to the ballot on 10646 DIS, "DIS-1"). That document contains the U.S. comments asking for all the additions which would synchronize the DIS repertoire with the Unicode 1.0 repertoire, and that included U+20A4 LIRA SIGN. It is a deeper subject to figure out how the LIRA SIGN got into Unicode 1.0 in the first place, and I don't have all the relevant documents to hand to track it down. It was certainly already in the April 1990 pre-publication draft of Unicode 1.0 which was widely circulated. I do recall the issue of one-bar versus two-bar yen/yuan sign being researched in detail and being explicitly decided. I also recall explicit (and tedious) discussions about the various dollar sign glyphs. I do not, however, recall any time spent in discussing the analogous problem of glyph alternates for the pound/lira sign, although it was probably mentioned in passing. So it is possible that the lira sign simply derives from a draft list that was standardized without anyone ever spending time to debate the pound/lira symbol unification first. It was probably in the same lists that distinguished yen/yuan sign before it was determined that distinguishing those two as a *character* was untenable. Those were heady days. It is generally much easier to track down why something was added post-Unicode 1.0 than it is to figure out how something got into Unicode 1.0 in the first place. To quote from a particularly memorable email I sent around on April 4, 1991 about an unrelated mistake that was almost made: "The High Ogonek is symptomatic of one of the things wrong about the character standardization business, which encourages the blithe perpetuation of mistaken 'characters' from standard to standard, like code viruses. At least, in the past, the epidemic was constrained by the fact that the encoding bodies only had 256 cells which could get infected by such abominations as half-integral signs. Now, however,... the number of cells available for infection is vast, and the temptation to encode everybody else's junk just seems to have become irresistible... "...I don't think I would be telling any tales out of school if I revealed that Unicode almost got a 'High ogonek', too, since Unicode was busy incorporating all the 10646 mistakes in Unicode while 10646 was busy incorporating all the Unicode mistakes in 10646. ..." --Ken
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
At 10:08 PM 9/30/2002 +0200, you wrote: >"Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's pronounced >"en." > >Stefan Really? I have no sources either way, but I always assumed "yen" was a Western transliteration of "en", since there is no "ye" entry in the kana table. Barry Caplan www.i18n.com
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
- Original Message - From: "Marco Cimarosti" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'John Cowan'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 8:20 PM Subject: RE: The Currency Symbol of China > Similarly, "yen" is just the Japanese (kun) pronunciation of Chinese "yuan". > IMHO, the preferred symbol for both currencies should be U+00A5. Wrong: Yen (å) is U+5186, while yuan (å ) is U+5143. "Yen" is an ancient "on" pronunciation for U+5186; today it's pronounced "en." Stefan _ Gratis e-mail resten av livet på www.yahoo.se/mail Busenkelt!
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
In the Lonely Planet Guide to China the currency RMB is always abbreviated simply as Y, and this in a volume with no shortage of Chinese characters, and where the Japanese units are indicated as U+FFE5. Raymond Mercier
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
Jane Liu posted: "In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not included in Unicode standard ? Instead of it, "Yen" is being used which is the name of Japanese currency. Does Chinese authorities agree to use the same currency symbol as Japan?" It would seem the currency name and symbol were borrowed into Japan from China. See http://www.mint.go.jp/qa/qa_e03.html for a reference. Note the the Unicode Standard under U+00A5 for ¥ YEN SIGN gives the annotation "= yuan sign". Apparently all symbols are equivalent. Jim Allan
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
Jane Liu wrote, > 2. In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not > included in Unicode standard ? How about U+5143 ? (smile) Looking at pictures of Chinese coins in the Krause catalog, some coins used an ideograph other than U+5143, but a quick search of CJK BMP ranges didn't find it. (Doesn't mean it's not there.) This other character looks like rad. 31 surrounding stacked rads 30, 72, and 9. (The pictures are a bit fuzzy, though.) Didn't spot any pictures showing coins with the Yen-like symbol, but older coins from Hong Kong use the dollar ($) symbol with one stroke. Best regards, James Kass.
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
Marco Cimarosti scripsit: > The same should be true for the £ sign. > > But unluckily, for some obscure reason, Unicode thinks that currencies > called "pound" should have one bar and be encoded with U+00A3, while > currencies called "lira" should have two bars and be encoded with U+20A4. "Every character has its own story." Can the old farts^W^Wtribal elders shed any light on this one? -- John Cowan[EMAIL PROTECTED] At times of peril or dubitation, http://www.ccil.org/~cowan Perform swift circular ambulation,http://www.reutershealth.com With loud and high-pitched ululation.
RE: The Currency Symbol of China
John Cowan wrote: > My suspicion is that the one-bar-vs.-two is normal glyphic variation, > the same as with the $ sign. The same should be true for the £ sign. But unluckily, for some obscure reason, Unicode thinks that currencies called "pound" should have one bar and be encoded with U+00A3, while currencies called "lira" should have two bars and be encoded with U+20A4. The problem is that "lira" is just the Italian for "pound"... So, for instance, the currency called in English "Cyprus pound" is called "lira cipriota" in Italian. Should the currency of a Greek/Turkish speaking country be encoded differently depending on whether it is pronounced in English or Italian? (Rhetoric question) Similarly, "yen" is just the Japanese (kun) pronunciation of Chinese "yuan". IMHO, the preferred symbol for both currencies should be U+00A5. (BTW, U+FFE5 is just a compatibility variant of U+00A5, and I don't think it's a good idea using it for anything apart round-trip conversion of CJK character sets.) The ono-bar vs. two-bars variant is just one of many typographical differences that may be noticed in Japanese vs. Chinese typography. Just my ¥0.02 :-) Ciao. Marco
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
- Original Message - From: "Jane Liu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Sarasvati" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 6:40 PM Subject: The Currency Symbol of China > So, my questions are: > > 1. Do you know which symbol is declared as the standard by Chinese official authorities ? Presumably U+FFE5 (fullwidth/å ¨è§) or U+00A5 (halfwidth/åè§), if any. > 2. In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not included in Unicode > standard ? Instead of it, "Yen" is being used which is the name of Japanese currency. > Does Chinese authorities agree to use the same currency symbol as Japan ? I would guess that most people agree that the same character be used for both å ãand å. After all, that's the code point Chinese fonts use for å . If the Chinese authorities do, however, I don't know. Stefan _ Gratis e-mail resten av livet på www.yahoo.se/mail Busenkelt!
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
I don't know which (if either) of the two variants is regarded as official, but I think it is highly probable that the version with two horizontal bars is the original form of the yen sign, as this symbol was almost certainly created by analogy with the pound (£) and dollar ($) signs, both of which had two bars in their original forms (though both also have variants with one bar). Séamas Ó Brógáin
Re: The Currency Symbol of China
Jane Liu scripsit: > 1. Do you know which symbol is declared as the standard by Chinese > official authorities ? Despite the late Euro typographical mess, national authorities really do not own the symbols used for their currencies: those symbols belong rightly to the public domain. > 2. In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not > included in Unicode standard ? Instead of it, "Yen" is being used which > is the name of Japanese currency. Does Chinese authorities agree to > use the same currency symbol as Japan ? What matters is not what the Chinese Government thinks (unless you are contracting for them, to be sure), but what people who refer to this currency think. My suspicion is that the one-bar-vs.-two is normal glyphic variation, the same as with the $ sign. -- John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan http://www.reutershealth.com Unified Gaelic in Cyrillic script! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Celticonlang
The Currency Symbol of China
Hi Unicoders, Thanks to Sarasvati just pointed out that my previous message with the attachment was too large. I've reduced the attached file size and send this message again. Please take a look at the (RenminbiMark.bmp) first. The Unicode code point U+FFE5 is being rendered differently by various True Type fonts (SimSun, Arial Unicode MS, MingLiu, Gulim, MS UI Gothic ...) on Microsoft Windows system. According to some people, only the glyph from font "SimSun" or "SimSun-18030" is exactly following the Chinese standard. I double checked the latest standard of Unicode, in the Code Chart( http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf ), U+FFE5 is also rendered differently from "SimSun". So, my questions are: 1. Do you know which symbol is declared as the standard by Chinese official authorities ? 2. In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not included in Unicode standard ? Instead of it, "Yen" is being used which is the name of Japanese currency. Does Chinese authorities agree to use the same currency symbol as Japan ? Thanks. Jane __ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
The Currency Symbol of China
Dear Unicoders, It seems this Mail Server doesn't allow the message that contain attachment? I have to post the bitmap file (RenminbiMark.bmp) that I want to show you on Yahoo group by following URL : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/unicode/files/ Please take a look at the (RenminbiMark.bmp) first. The Unicode code point U+FFE5 is being rendered differently by various True Type fonts (SimSun, Arial Unicode MS, MingLiu, Gulim, MS UI Gothic ...) on Microsoft Windows system. According to some people, only the glyph from font "SimSun" or "SimSun-18030" is exactly following the Chinese standard. I double checked the latest standard of Unicode, in the Code Chart(http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf), U+FFE5 is also rendered differently from "SimSun". So, my questions are: 1. Do you know which symbol is declared as the standard by Chinese official authorities ? 2. In China, the currency is called "Renminbi Yuan", why is it not included in Unicode standard ? Instead of it, "Yen" is being used which is the name of Japanese currency. Does Chinese authorities agree to use the same currency symbol as Japan ? Thanks. Jane __ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com
