Mixing scripts (Re: Unicode versions (Re: Criteriaforexceptional characters))

[Martin Duerst]

At 23:07 06/12/24, John C Klensin wrote:

>As I trust everyone knows, there are controversies in the
>anthropological linguistics community about how many writing
>systems there are whose origins are completely independent, but
>the number is not large -- some scholars would claim as few as
>two or three.  We also know that writing systems evolve, adapt,
>and absorb characters from geographically or culturally close
>other ones.  To use Martin's example, it is not an accident that
>the Roman-derived character "W" is called double-u.  It not a
>character that Virgil or Cicero ever saw, even though its usual
>glyph is more commonly constructed to resemble a "VV" ligature
>than a "UU" one (e.g., characters with curvy parts are rather
>hard to chisel into stone).

Well, I don't think we can say that the old Romans never saw
a "U" or a "V", but for them it was one and the same character.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Latin_alphabet)
says that the separation only became standard in the 18th century.

Regards,    Martin.


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst at it.aoyama.ac.jp