Bob_Hallissy@... wrote:

> Seems like several people believe this character to
> be 06A0. I was
> clueless, so I'll accept the consensus.

No, it's the nearest thing that was in Unicode. We may
be completely wrong.

> My understanding is that "all the points" are needed
> in many (non-Arabic)
> languages where Arabic script is used because the
> phonology of the language
> is such that vowel choice isn't obvious. Whether Old
> Malay is like this or
> not I don't know.

No. That's not the case. "All the points" are only
there if the text will be exposed to someone who
doesn't know the language in any way (as is the case
with Koran, which will be read by many non-Arabs), or
there is a literacy problem. In that text, many of
the vowel points are obvious, even to me who cannot
get any meaning from it.

Something that the Arabic script does with the
language is to kill some of the words which are
written
the same but pronounced differently. People do not
like to write the points.

--roozbeh


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