--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:

>
> Eastern Cree (Cree School Board) set 1
>
> ᐊᑎᒥᓐ A-TI-MI-N Snowshoe

harness
...
is almost as much gibberish to me as if it had appeared as intended.
Those with the fonts can quickly cut and paste into an HTML document
to read them. For those who rely on the Unicode charts, the hex-
encodings are:

E: Eastern Cree (Cree School Board) set 1
N: Naskapi Lexicon (Collections Canada) set 2

E: U+140A U+144E U+14A5 U+14D0 A-TI-MI-N Snowshoe harness
N: U+140A U+144E U+14A5 U+14D0 A-TI-MI-N snowshoe harness

E: U+140A U+144E U+14BB A-TI-M dog
N: U+140A U+144E U+14BB A-TI-M dog

E: U+140A U+144E U+1426 U+1484 A-TI-H-K caribou
N: U+140A U+144E U+1484 A-TI-K caribou

E: U+140A U+1456 U+14D0 A-TAA-N anvil
N: U+140A U+1455 U+14D0 A-TA-N anvil

E: U+140A U+14A5 U+1505 U+146F U+152E U+14D0 A-MI-S-KU-YAA-N beaver
pelt
N: U+140A U+14A5 U+1505 U+146F U+152D U+14D0 A-MI-S-KU-YA-N beaver
pelt

E: U+140A U+14A5 U+1505 U+1484 A-MI-S-K beaver
N: U+140A U+14A5 U+1505 U+1484 A-MI-S-K beaver

E: U+140A U+14F5 U+14BB A-SAA-M snowshoe
N: U+140A U+14F4 U+14BB A-SA-M snowshoe

E: U+140A U+1505 U+144E U+1505 A-S-TI-S mitten
N: U+140A U+1505 U+144E U+1505 A-S-TI-S mitten

E: U+140A U+1426 U+1404 U+1432 A-H-II-PII net
N: U+140A U+1403 U+1431 U+153E A-I-PI-Y net

E: U+140A U+1426 U+1491 U+1432 A-H-CHAA-PII bow
N: U+140A U+1490 U+1431 U+153E A-CHA-PI-Y bow

E: U+140B U+144E U+152B U+1426 U+1473 U+14D0 AA-TI-YUU-H-KAA-N legend
N: U+140A U+144E U+152A U+146D U+14D0 A-TI-YU-KI-N legend

E: U+140B U+14A6 U+1424 AA-MII-W spawn
N: U+140A U+14A5 U+1424 A-MI-W spawn

E: U+140B U+14A8 AA-MUU bee
N: U+140A U+14A7 U+1424 A-MU bee

E: U+140B U+1426 U+1456 U+1505 U+1431 U+14F2 AA-H-TAA-S-PI-SUU
change clothes
N: U+140A U+1455 U+1505 U+1431 U+14F1 U+1424 A-TA-S-PI-SUW change
clothes

E: U+140B U+1426 U+146F U+14F2 AA-H-KU-SUU sick
N: U+140A U+146F U+14F1 U+1424 A-KU-SU-W sick

> The difference between these two sets (both in Quebec)does not
> represent a difference in pronunciation. Diacritics show altered
> vowel length, labialization and preaspiration of consonants.

Why do you call the Eastern Cree pre-aspiration symbol U+1426 a
diacritic?

> It seems to me that there would be many encodings possible for any
> one word, depending on how one wanted to point it, like set 1, set
> 2, or something in between.

For starters, in this script 'encoding' and 'spelling' seem to have
the same meaning! Given the decision to only provide composed forms,
the only Unicode-related issue I can see is that 3 forms for
labialised long vowels, when the marking can be described a overdot
(for length) plus side dot (for labialisation), seems excessive.
From the Unicode introduction's calling the encoding 'essentially a
glyphic encoding', it sounds as though the issue has been debated and
the argument for unification of the 3 forms lost. Given that
decision, one must expect two labialised forms, corresponding to
dotting on the left and dotting on the right.

> How many possible encodings would there
> be for the word "legend"?

Is this a trick question? The two spellings, namely

E: U+140B U+144E U+152B U+1426 U+1473 U+14D0 AA-TI-YUU-H-KAA-N legend
N: U+140A U+144E U+152A U+146D U+14D0 A-TI-YU-KI-N legend

suggest different pronunciations to me. Assuming there is a typo,
and one can omit each distinction individually, I would say up to 2
(A/AA) times 3 (YU/YUU/YU-W) times 2 (optional H-) times 3 (KI/KII/KI-
Y) or 2 (KA/KAA) = 36 or 24. That's what you get if you have
optional features in spelling. Reduce the count to 16 if -YU-W- is
only acceptable at the end of a word.

A much more serious issue is the way the symbols have been unified.
Similar but different symbols used by the various Cree languages have
been unified not with one another, but with identical glyphs having
different meanings. Perhaps this does not matter.

Why did you call your message 'Cree collation sequence'? Collation
sequences are not defined by Unicode, and could not be, for they are
language-dependent. English and Welsh have different collating
sequences even though they seem to share the same alphabet when push
comes to shove. (I believe it has been admitted that the
surname 'Jones' is acceptable when writing Welsh.)

Richard.