At 08:24 AM 5/25/2004, sharon_correll@... wrote:

Please also refer to the attached PDF with my poor handwriting... Sharon,
if you get a nice Windows-systemed Mongolic input system I'll be *very*
happy and appreciative.

>(1) Some consonants followed by "a" or "e" have an alternate final form,
>which (from what I understand) is indicated in Unicode by a variation
>selector character in the data. Do these forms appear in words of one
>syllable, for instance in "ra" or "ne" (assuming such words exist), or
>only in longer words like "nara"?

According to Janhunen (2003), <a/e> is written as detached from
the following letters preceding it:

Classical Written Mongolian:
a/e/n, i, l, m, q, r, u

Modern Written Mongolian adds to this set:
n, qh

examples are as follows:
nar-a "sun; age", sir-a "yellow", qar-a "black", etc.

however, if memory serves me write, there are cases of non-separation (i'm
kind of fuzzy on this; I'll double-check tonight):

tal-a "steppe(s), plain" vs -tala/-tele [terminal postposition],

>(2) I'm realizing that until yesterday I was assuming that Mongolian
>syllables always showed up in a nice CV pattern, with maybe a spare
>initial vowel or final consonant. I guess this was because of the chart
>I've been working from. Now I'm suspecting that may not be the case. If
>you have a series of consonants, are "a" forms used for all but the last?
>(ie, "bgmno" would be written the same as "bagamano"?) Similarly, can you
>have sequences of vowels?

<bgmno> would not occur in Written Classical Mongolian...
The only Mongolic script that I know of that would do anything
like this is the Cyrillic Kalmuck script where <eknr> = ekener 'women'.

<a/e>, if present, is written, often missed by a beginning student
as a 'tooth' for another consonant.

<e> is often subsumed by the preceding letter's "tooth"-like
portion, <a> is never subsumingly combined:
ke-r-e-g (let the hyphens indicate distinct glyph separation/identity)
q-a-m-a-r

>(3) My chart did not include the Uncode characters LHA, ZHI, and CHI. Is
>there something special about them?

These are used for transliterating other languages, primarily
Tibetan and Chinese. There is also a separate set of <ka> <ga> etc which
are also used for foreign transliteration which do not necessarily follow
the usual q/k/G/g patterns.

>(4) Any idea where can I find a nice-quality, *free* Mongolian TrueType
>font that I might be able to get permission to modify (add tables)?

Marco posted on this already...
-patrick

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