At 11:34 -0800 2003-12-07, Peter Kirk wrote:
Height is a (the?) recognized distinction between upper and lower
case. Width isn't. So a "wide capital" wouldn't be the most
intuitive choice.
But there is a precedent for this choice. When the Latin h was
borrowed into Cyrillic (U+04BB, borrowed c. 1940 for languages which
were forced to change from Latin to Cyrillic orthography at short
notice), the lower case glyph was borrowed unchanged complete with
ascender. But the upper case shape H was already in use for the
sound n (U+041D), and so a new upper case glyph had to be invented.
The shape chosen, U+04BA, was essentially a wide variant of h with
upper case serifs (conveniently also an inverted U+0427).
In principle, but that's not how the Athapascans are drawing their glottals.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
