At 18:03 -0400 2003-08-07, Karlj�rgen Feuerherm wrote:
My knowledge of Aramaic script is a little scanty, but my understanding is
more or less the same as Peter's. Which leads me to suggest that encoding Aramaic separately would be a bit like encoding Old Akkadian (Cuneiform) separately from NeoAssyrian (Cuneiform). Which would be a bit silly (and not what we are planning in that arena).... Note that some people are even willing to argue that the substrate languages might be considered distinct, too--in case that is the argument which would be applied to Aramaic.
We do not encode languages. Would somebody please read http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2311.pdf before deciding what it is that is meant by Aramaic in the Roadmap? Note that Hebrew descends FROM it, and that as do number of other scripts which clearly do NOT descend from Hebrew.
I disagree. The other scripts DO descend from square Hebrew, because square Hebrew is the Aramaic ancestral script of the other scripts, with some minor developments.
Your argument is a bit like saying that classical Greek is a different script from modern Greek because Coptic and Cyrillic did not descend from modern Greek. Obviously that would be an anachronism. But modern Greek, complete with small letter forms etc, is clearly a development of classical Greek rather than a separate script. The same with Aramaic and Hebrew.
Unicode encodes Square Hebrew.
But I take your point, Michael, that this one is on the back burner. I would be very happy to leave it there indefinitely!
-- Peter Kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) http://www.qaya.org/
