language question re: IDNs
Cary Karp
ck at nic.museum
Wed Oct 7 15:13:17 CEST 2009
Quoting Michael:
> OED does not have homoglyph. It has homograph, in a very short
> definition:
> ...
> 2. Philol. A word of the same spelling as another, but of
> different origin and meaning.
>
> 1873 F. HALL Mod. Eng. 170 Homographs, identical to the eye; as base,
> bore, dun, fair..in their various senses.
Homography is used here as a property of words -- by definition things
that are not random concatenations of elements of different scripts. When
the term was nonetheless widely expropriated to designate domain name
labels that were multi-script strings, it became necessary to find a more
precise way to denote the purely graphemic concern.
/Cary
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