[iso-8859-1]
Hi,
Marco Cimarosti va escriure:
>
> I am considering to file in a proposal for two new characters, to be used in
> Italian ordinal numbers abbreviations.
>
> Before I do this, I would like to read some opinions.
Here they are...
> <BACKGROUND>
<snip>
> </BACKGROUND>
Well, the same phenomena occurs in several Romance (or perhaps European)
languages. I am well aware (for quite obvious reasons) of the situation
with French, Catalan and Valencian (one of the few areas where the two
latter differ), but I think one can encounter the same point in other
languages.
In French, we have
FIRST SECOND, THIRD ETC.
sing. masc. 1er 2e, 3e
sing. fem. 1re 2e, 3e
plur. masc. 1ers 2es, 3es
plur. fem. 1res 2es, 3es
Of course, all the letters are superscripts. So this add "r" and "s"
to your list.
Also, a large number of people (incorrectly) believe the form for second,
third etc. is "2ème" rather than "2e" (in fact, if you look at examples
in France, you will find about 75% of 2ème versus 25% of 2e...).
This begs for additional "m" and "è" (U+00E0).
In Catalan, as in Spanish or Italian, there is completely different series
for masculine and feminine forms. Feminine is simply enough, always "a"
in singular and "es" in plural, so it does not add anything.
Masculine is more complex, as the full forms of the adjective differ in
the finals... So we have the singular forms 1r (primer), 2n (segon),
3r (tercer), 4t (quart), 5è (cinquè), but 5é (cinqué) in Valencian,
6è/6é (sissè/sissé), etc. (similar to English, further forms all end
with è or é, according to the language). This will add "n" (but still here,
as U+207F), "t" and "è" for Catalan.
Plurals are 1rs, 2ns, 3rs, 4ts, 5ns (cinquens is the plural form, a
euphonical "n" is added), etc. This add no new character (:-)).
> Unicode lacks the ordinal indicators for the plural forms, that should look
> like a superscript "e" and "i".
So you should consider also "m", "r", "s", "t", "è" (U+00E0) and "é" (U+00E1).
Looks like a bit too much to me.
The real point is why are "ª" and "º" already there. My own idea is that they
come here because at a past point in time, there were some "free" place on
Spanish keyboard layout for some kind of typewriters, and this space was used
for these two "characters". On the other hand, French and Italian did not
enjoy such free space (perhaps because of the biggest sets needed), so no
engineers did have such an idea on this side of the Pyrennean mountains.
One should also notice that even in Spanish, there is exactly the same
problem as Marco pointed out: the plural forms are 1ºs and 2ªs (primeros
and segondas), with superscripts "s"...
And about the use: I believe French has the widely used form, since we
are customary writing the date with superscript "er" when the day is the
first of a month: so ten days ago was "vendredi 1<SUPER>er</SUPER> juin".
Antoine
