[Egyptian] Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents about Egyptian Hieroglyphic (May 2017)

[Marwan Kilani]

"Well, you’re stuck with it. The name of the mark is spiritus lenis, and
the reading rule for it in Egyptian and Ugaritic is probably /ʔa ʔi ʔu/."

No it is not.
In egyptological transcriptions it indicates a sign that can be EITHER a i
OR a glottal stop, while in Ugaritic it depends on the context: in some
context it indicate a vowel followed by a glottal stop, in other a glottal
stop followed by a vowel - and this is what it is represented as a vowel
with a glottal stop above it.

Seriously: you clearly do not know what these characters are meant to
represent (and i wonder how you can assume you know how to encode something
you don't understand why has that specific shape in the first place - we
are not talking about since that have randomly evolved for centuries as all
the other examples you mention, we are talking about specific characters
that have been developed by scholars and that have that specific shape
because of what they want to represent), i was saying, you clearly do not
know exactly what these characters are meant to represent, you ask what
we egyptologists think about your suggestion, we (not only me, three
egyptologists so far) say that no, we don't think "spiritus lenis" should
be in the name, we offer an alternative which
a) you have not yet validly dismissed (why the name "glottal stop *above*
i/a/u" should not work? leaving aside the fact you want it to be a spiritus
lenis)
and
b) which has much more general than your suggestion, and has much more
potential to be useful as a unicode character even outside egyptian and
ugaritic, because it is hard that a linguist will need a "vowel + spiritus
lenis" because the "spiritus lenis" is mainly a 19th century concept
(except in greek, obviously), but there could be various contexts, for
various languages, in which a linguist could make use of a "letter x with
superimposed glottal stop". For intende to transcribe ambiguous forms, in
which the glottal stop may occur both before and after the main
letter/phoneme.


But still, no.
Because you want ti to be a spiritus lenis. And you have encoded names for
to decades. And you know what you are talking about.
Great arguments.

Good like with you next 17 years of attempts.


P.S.

"Because the name we have chosen is more accurate and more useful, and
because the name you prefer (A WITH GLOTTAL STOP) is ambiguous anyway,"

I suggested a second version: "A WITH GLOTTAL STOP ABOVE IT" (or something
like that) which is not ambiguous, i think?

---

"Moreover, what is A WITH GLOTTAL STOP? It it a glottalized a? Is it /ʔa/?
Is it /aʔ/?"

"No, iˀ represents i followed by a glottal stop. Glottalization is a
different process."

If this is what you are talking about, then no: you clearly don't know that
you are talking about.

/iʔ/ represents a i followed by a glottal stop. /iˀ/ represent
a glottalised i which in some languages can be realised as "creaky voice"
and can be transcribed *also* as /ḭ/
I quote:

"Glottalization varies along three parameters, all of which are continuums.
The *degree* of glottalization varies from none (modal voice
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_voice>, [d]) through stiff voice
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiff_voice> ([d̬]) and creaky voice
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creaky_voice> ([d̰]) to full glottal closure
(glottal reinforcement or glottal replacement, described below). The
*timing* also varies, from a simultaneous single segment [d̰] to an onset
or coda such as [ˀd] or [dˀ] to a sequence such as [ʔd] or [dʔ]. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottalization#Types

Perhaps if you were listening to people who actually know what they are
talking about, you wouldn't have been spending 17 years trying to encode
these things..



On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 6:32 PM, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
wrote:

> On 1 Jun 2017, at 15:57, Marwan Kilani <odusseus at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also, it would be worth remembering that Egyptologists (and
> "Ugaritologists") use these characters to represent and express
> *linguistic* concepts, *not* typographical concepts.
>
> You use the letter “w”, don’t you? You call it “double u”, don’t you? You
> use the letters ḥ and ḫ, do you not? They are named H WITH DOT BELOW and H
> WITH BREVE BELOW, not PHARYNGEAL H and UVULAR H.
>
> > If we use in our transliterations the character "i + semicircular
> diacritic on top of it" it is to represent a *linguistic* concept, i.e. the
> fact that a given sign may linguistically behave both like a "i" and like a
> *glottal stop*.
>
> Writing systems are not languages. Writing systems are graphs on paper,
> wood, stone, metal, etc. In the UCS we often use descriptive names.
>
> Moreover, what is A WITH GLOTTAL STOP? It it a glottalized a? Is it /ʔa/?
> Is it /aʔ/?
>
> (Glottalized a is “creaky voice” and is written /a̰/.)
>
> > We don't use such character to indicate the typographical anecdote that
> in the 19th century people fancied using the spiritus lenis to represent
> the glottal stop.
>
> Get over it.
>
> > This is irrelevant, from and for an egyptological point of view.
>
> Really, you’re going to have to get over it.
>
> > therefore, that "semicircular diacritic on top of it" should be equated
> with what it represents, i.e. a glottal stop, and not with what it may
> looks like, i.e. a spiritus lenis.
>
> What does the letter “c” represent? What do the acute, grave, circumflex,
> breve, inverted breve, and caron represent?
>
> > Because egyptologist use it (and will use the new character you want to
> encode in Unicode) because of what it linguistically represents, not
> because of what 19th century people fancied and not because of what it
> looks like in some fonts.
>
> If you want it to look good in fonts, then the origin of the diacritical
> mark should be known.
>
> You have not convinced me, and I have been naming UCS characters for two
> decades, and I know what I am talking about.
>
> Michael
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>
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