From: "John Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Donald Z. Osborn wrote: > > > According to data from R. Hartell (1993), the latin alpha is used in Fe'efe'e (a > > dialect of Bamileke) in Cameroon. See > > http://www.bisharat.net/A12N/CAM-table.htm (full ref. there; Hartell names her > > sources in her book). Not sure offhand of other uses, but I thought it was > > proposed for Latin transcription of Tamashek in Mali at one point (I'll try to > > check later). In any event it would seem easy to confuse the latin alpha with > > the standard "a," which would seem to either require exaggerated forms (of the > > alpha, to clarify the difference) or limit its usefulness in practice. > > The Latin alpha is usually distinguished from the regular Latin lowercase a by making the > latter a 'double-storey' form, whereas the alpha is a single-storey form. Of course, this > means that the distinction cannot be adequately made in typefaces with a single-storey > lowercase a, such as Futura.
I agree with you but almost all font designs make a clear distinction between lowercase alpha (latin or greek), and lowercase a: the alpha is a single continuous stroke, whereas the Latin letter a is almost always (in either single-eye or double-eye forms) a closed circle/ellipse and a tangeant vertical stroke on the right. I was speaking about the distinction between single-eye and double eye forms of the Latin letter a (excluding "Latin" alpha), where: - the single-eye form is generally an x-height circle or vertical ellipse and a x-height tangeant vertical stroke (possibly curved on the lower end to become tangeant to the baseline to become the start of a connecting edge), - and the double-eye form is generally an half-x-height flat ellipse and a x-height vertical tangeant curved above the ellipse to become tangeant to the x-height horizontal line; so it has two eyes (one closed below, one open eye above it). The Latin small letter alpha is always a single-eye form, but sometimes there's a second open eye on the right of the closed eye (which should not be a ellipse, but should present some angle on its right edge). My question was about the distinction of letter a only, even if there are some fonts where it will be difficult to see the difference between the single-eye letter a and the small letter alpha.
