Re: Random Spellings (was: Decorative diacritics)

suzmccarth wrote:

>
> --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
> <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> >
> > --- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:
> > > The problem here is that the precomposed characters, the
> syllabics
> > > plus diacritic, do not represent a widespread indigenous use.
> > There
> > > was once a Cree elder known for using diacritics phonemically.
> > This
> > > skill was recognized as a skill particular to his family, his
> > > specialty. It was remarked on as unusual. One family!
> >
> > Isn't this akin to the Cyrillic yo-letter U+0401/U+0451 (like
> Roman
> > ë) in Russian? This letter is used chiefly for foreign
> learners.
> > There is also the less significant use of accents in English, both
> > foreign (e.g. fiancée) and native, especially poetical,
> > e.g. 'hornèd' and 'learnèd'.
>
> It was the foreign linguists who decided that diacritics should be
> used phonemically (obligatory and consistent) because it is easier
> for them.

I'm having considerable trouble understanding this remark. How would
elements of a writing system be used, other than "phonemically"?

> >I could be more brutal and say that it
> > sounds from your account as though most Cree can't spell.
>
> What a bizarse comment. First, the Cree had *never* established the
> use of obligatory diacritics for themselves. Indigenous Cree

I guess I don't know what you mean by "dotting." Is it something other
than writing the final consonants of CVC syllables? Or wait, is it the
dots that mark voicing? If voicing is not phonemic in the language, they
should not be used, and if it is, they should.

> dotting is usually compared to Hebrew partially marked text. If you

What is a "partially marked" Hebrew text?

> can't produce fully marked Hebrew text does that mean you can't
> spell? I guess I don't know the answer to that. I would be
> interested to hear what the expectations are for Hebrew. But it was
> never a standard for Cree. Partially marked was used but at the
> writer's discretion.
>
> Are Hebrew dictionaries collated by letter *and* vowel marking? I

Of course they are. If successive entries differ only in their vowel
pointing, the words occur in a specific order decided by the points.

> would be interested to hear about this too. If Hebrew letters were
> encoded separately for each possible vowel mark and combination of
> markings wouldn't that create multiple encodings for each word as
> people could produce unmarked, partially marked and fully marked
> spellings? I can't even find any marked Hebrew text on the internet.

Why do you continue to insist on confusing writing with encoding?
Hebrew-speakers can add a point when it's needed to disambiguate, and
there are different degrees of use of matres lectionis (letters that
indicate vowels).

> >I could
> > compare it to my name being misspelt <r><i><ch><a:><silent d><r> in
> > Thai, where the 'diacritic' pattern of <i>..<silent> is right, but
> > unmarkedly silent <r> has been put in its commonest place. It may
> > be common, but it's still WRONG.
>
> There is no WRONG and RIGHT about choosing to dot or not in Cree.
> Dottings are added to the full syllabics at the writer's
> discretion. Why create quadrupled codecharts? Actually I know who
> created the system in the eighties (for a bilingual dictionary) but
> I don't know how this encoding fits into Unicode principles or what
> pragmatic effects result from it.
>
> I am not saying that Unicode charts force a certain collation but I
> am saying that these different collation sequences now exist.

So what?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...