Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>
> Michael Everson wrote:
> > > > Sorry, Peter, that's a dodge. Just because they are obligatory
> > >> doesn't mean they aren't the points QAMATS and PATAH.
> > >
> > >They were, historically. In Yiddish, they aren't.
> >
> > Of course they are. We shall agree to disagree.
>
> IMHO, there is no need of disagreeing here: both analyses are correct, in
> their own domain.
>
> Peter's statement is correct by the linguistic/grammatological point of
> view: in the spelling of the Yiddish *language*, Qamats Alef and Patah Alef
> are two separate *letters* and should be regarded ad indivisible units.
> This parallels with Spanish "ch", which is considered as a single letter.
>
> Michael's statement is correct by the typographical/encoding point of view:
> in the Hebrew *script* Alef, Qamats and Patah are separate *character*. This
> analysis correctly disregards the orthography of any particular language, as
> when one design a Hebrew fonts she should't assume whether it will be used
> to typeset Hebrew, Yiddish, Judezmo or what not.

Although _graphically_ as well, Yiddish doesn't look happy in a modern
Hebrew font like the one (I forget its name) that was the default in the
Mac WorldScript I system.

> This parallels with the two characters in string "ch", which are typed or
> written as separate letters regardless how they are considered in the
> spelling of any single language.
>
> This argument is quite of a déja vu on this mailing list... Aren't there any
> proper terms available to refer two the two kinds of analysis above? E.g.
> something like "functional analysis" vs. "surface analysis"?

What I was doing in Chicago was speaking at the Symposium in Honor of
Gene Gragg upon His Retirement, and the volume editor has requested long
and subsantial papers. At that symposium I introduced the notion of
"functional history of writing" (as opposed to the "formal histories" of
Diringer, Jensen, et al.). The ms. is wanted by the end of June, so in a
month I will have laid out the _right_ ;-) way to look at writing.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...