Kenneth Whistler wrote at 4:32 PM on Friday, April 30, 2004: >John Hudson said: > >> but all I'm personally questioning is the one >> sentence in which he says the new Phoenician characters should be used >used for > ^^^^^^ >> Palaeo-Hebrew. > >Actually, as long as we are all pretending expertise in philology ;-), we >should refer to the *original* text: > >"The twenty-two letters in the Phoenician block may be used, with appropriate > ^^^ >changes, to express Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician >cursive, >Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, and >Palaeo-Hebrew." > >There is a world of difference, in terms of prescriptive implications, >between a "should" and a "may" in that context.
But the proposal also says, I believe somewhat contradictorily, in the technical section: "4a. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare) Phoenician script is proposed to unify Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite, Punic, Neo-Punic, Phoenician proper, Late Phoenician cursive, Phoenician papyrus, Siloam Hebrew, Hebrew seals, Ammonite, Moabite, Palaeo-Hebrew." Doesn't that sound stronger, almost like a recommendation? 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
