Reinhard G. Lehmann wrote at 7:37 PM on Tuesday, May 4, 2004: >I myself would never use them, even for teaching, because students >should not learn a certain 'polaroid' of a specialized Phoenician >script, but the structures of that kind of Northwest Semitic linear >alphabetic script and the general parameters and regularities of its >Phoenician, South Canaanite (including Hebrew), and Aramaic branches of >the first millenium BCE.
I agree very strongly with the substance of this view that students and researchers should continue working with all the various glyphs representative of the "Northwest Semitic linear alphabetic script". (Although I do believe that Phoenician, and other ancient fonts, do have their utility.) And I know, of course, that this glyph argument does not bear directly on computer encodings, which are concerned with the abstract characters underlying those glyphs. But Lehmann's statement here highlights something very important about the modern day usage of these "scripts" that may not be obvious to, and may be overlooked by, encoders unfamiliar with the discipline - the ancient documents in this script are typically all studied TOGETHER, with a very high degree of cross- pollinating research taking place. The languages are similar, the diascripts are similar, and there are pervasive political, cultural, linguistic, and religious interactions over the centuries between the geographically proximate users of this script. That's why we study them TOGETHER, and why there are many degree-granting programs around the world in Northwest Semitics. It's the COMBINATION of these factors, along with others previously mentioned, that causes one pause when confronted with an attempt to dis-unify this script into separately encoded Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Samaritan, etc. As just one, albeit shining, example of how interwoven this research arena can be, one could peruse the monumental J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling "Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions", <http:// www.brill.nl/m_catalogue_sub6_id167.htm>. (I know there are examples of multi-lingual dictionaries that unify, across different script systems, lexeme representation via transliteration; the difference here is that the material covered was written in one script, that evolved only gradually over time and place.) Respectfully, Dean A. Snyder Assistant Research Scholar Manager, Digital Hammurabi Project Computer Science Department Whiting School of Engineering 218C New Engineering Building 3400 North Charles Street Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland, USA 21218 office: 410 516-6850 cell: 717 817-4897 www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi
