John, thanks for the quick reply.

I had seen this, but wondered about it because I have been looking at
Nakanishi's book and in the Scripts of Europe chapter (first one) and it
remarks about each language being the Latin script plus a couple characters.
For example Denmark use a-ring, ae ligature and O with stroke in addition to
the Latin script. I can understand wanting to contrast the symbol collections
with one well known, historic set, for ease of defining how each is similar
and different. However, Latin script as defined here included some changes
since Latin was used (e.g. arabic numerals, gothic characters) but not these
other character additions. I thought there might be some criteria for what was
in and what was not in.
Similarly with Cyrillic, and countries having variations outside the script. I
would have thought "modern Latin" would be amended to include these other
characters.

Maybe it is just convention or tradition for what is considered "Latin" or
"Cyrillic"?

tex

John Cowan wrote:

>
> Tex Texin scripsit:
>
> > Can someone provide me either a definition for "script" or a link to
> > one, that is acceptable to linguists and accessible to novices.
> >
> > I want to include it as part of a page on related concepts. If I
> > publish it, I am happy to provide attribution.
>
> The Unicode 4.0 glossary says:
>
> Script: a collection of symbols used to represent text in one or more
> writing systems.
>
> Writing system: a set of rules for using one or more scripts to write
> a particular language. Examples include the American English
> writing system, the British English writing system, and the
> Japanese writing system.
>
> --
> "Do I contradict myself? John Cowan
> Very well then, I contradict myself. jcowan@...
> I am large, I contain multitudes. http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> --Walt Whitman, _Leaves of Grass_ http://www.reutershealth.com

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