Unicode Mail List Archive: Re: Exemplar Characters (original) (raw)

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Ysgrifennodd Michael Everson <everson@evertype.com> ar y 15-11-2005 am
10:04:
>> Would this mean that the choice between U+2019 and U+02BC is decided by
>> the phonetic realisation of the apostrophe?
>
> Polynesian languages should all use the modifier letters, for
> consistency. It's a glottal there.

Excuse me while I bounce around a bit here.

Theoretically, perhaps it’s best to always use U+02BC where the apostrophe
has a phonological role in the orthography. This way, there would be a
distinction between the phoneme and punctuation (closing quote) in minimal
pairs.

E.g. from Mohawk:
• ne “the”
• ne’ “that”

I’ve been considering this question for years, and have, personally,
tended to go with U+02BC in all cases where the apostrophe is part of an
orthography. Why not also use the modifier U+02BC in Breton? As there is
no correspondance between character and pronunciation, then the "glottal"
aspect of U+02BC could be ignored. U+2019 could be reserved for
punctuation purposes only.

On the other hand, it would be much more convenient for a language like
Mohawk to always use U+2019 for both glottal stops and closing single
quotes, as U+2019 is far more commonly included in fonts than U+02BC, and
far more accessible. And if the argument in favour for use of U+2019 in
Breton is based on convention, then all languages ought to be using U+2019
even for their glottal stops, as they’ve always been using the ASCII
quote~end quote.

Thank-you
Chris Harvey

-- Gwlad heb iaith, gwlad heb galon ᑭᑕᐢᑭᓇᐤ ᑳᓀᓱᐏᑌᐦᐃᓇᑿᐣ, ᑮᐢᐱᐣ ᐃᔨᐣᑐ ᐱᑭᐢᑵᐏᐣ ᐘᓂᑎᔭᐦᑭ (A country without its language is a country without a heart) www.languagegeek.com www.indigenous-language.org

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