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

Next message: Michael Everson: "RE: Exemplar Characters"

On Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 07:13Z,
Christopher JS Vance wrote:
>
> The letters taught as their alphabet (or other type of repertoire) to
> school students with that first language would prima facie be correct.

I agree it can be used as a start point if you do not have anything better,
yet I see a pair of inherent problems:

- My son does not learn accents (used to mark stress), so you can easily
drop accentuated letters with such a reasonment;
or in other words, perhaps we should put some indication of the level of
education that is implied here; of course, this will lead us directly toward
concepts such as the minimal sets of kanji (not obligatory a bad idea).

- Please bear in mind the point showed by Mark Davis Monday (17:27Z) about
digraphs where one part is not used otherwise.

- Also, often the most complex combinations could be canceled (or concealed)
from the schoolbooks; the most classical examples are the accents over
capitals in France, where they are not commonly taught (could be different
in Canada), yet it is generally considered that good pratice is to mark them
if one can do it (easily), so I interpret it as meaning they are part of the
exemplar set (please bear with me: I know the exemplar set as it stands now
only lists lower case.)

> It's up to the speakers of the language concerned to decide whether

You meant writers, don't you?

> something is a letter or letter-plus-accent, and we know these
> decisions are inconsistent between languages, and sometimes even in
> the same language across time.

... or for the same language on the two sides of a political barrier (that