Re: Quranic Proposal - So we're discussion German now.. :-)

[Mohammed Yousif <mhdyousif at gmx dot net>]

On ثلاثاء 15 يونيو 2004 07:54, Mete Kural wrote:
>
> I speak German myself (not a native speaker though).
> Yes I know that the umlaut letters are not part of the
> German alphabet. But this does not mean that they are
> not graphemes. As you know very well neither "taa
> marbuta" nor "hamza" is part of the 28-letter Arabic
> alphabet, but this does not mean that taa marbuta and
> hamza are not graphemes, they are. They make a
> difference in the meaning, they carry a phonemic load.
> Could you say that taa marbuta is simply a variation
> of the letter heh?

  No, it's a variation of Teh and you can't get it by combining
  two characters.
  The same for Hamza, it's a variation of Alef and you can't get it
  by combining two characters.
  Both Teh and Alef are in the Arabic alphabet but Hamza/Teh marbuta/
 heh marbuta/alef maksura...etc are NOT part of the Arabic alphabet
  they are merely variations.
  For example, the case with Teh Marbuta it has the SAME meaning
 as a Teh and it has the SAME pronouncation as a Teh (with an added rule,
 to pronounce it differently if you have you stop at it). It's merely
 a variation that is used in the end of *some* words instead of a regular
 Teh.
 The case with Alef Maksura, it has the SAME meaning as an Alef and it has the
 SAME pronouncation as an Alef (well, not exactly because it's shorter). It's
 merely a variation that is used in the end of *some* words instead of a
 regular Alef.

 and etc etc...

 And since you mentioned it, the difference between fathatan and sequential 
 fathatan is the same as the difference between Teh and Teh Marbuta and maybe
 even more powerful for the case of the Qur'an.

> Of course not (except if you are a 
> Farsi speaker perhaps :-) ...). They are different
> letters (graphemes), although they share the same
> archi-grapheme (the base skeleton).
>

 No, they are not different letter at ALL, Teh and Teh marbuta
 is the same letter.
 In fact the name "Marbuta" implies that it's closed (in shape) ة
 while a normal Teh is open (again, in shape) ت
 But they are the SAME letter and in some cases with the SAME
 pronouncation.

> In German whether you use the regular vowel or an
> umlaut vowel can change the meaning of the word. For
> example, if you want to say "we could do that," in the
> sense of "we were able to," then you use "wir konnten"
> (no umlaut).
> But if you mean it in the sense of "we 
> might be able to" or "it's a possibility," then you
> must say, "wir k�nnten" (the subjunctive form, with an
> umlaut, based on the past tense form).
>

  No, it's still the same verb, here you are using the pronouncation
  to differentiate between them but that doesn't mean that they
  are separate letters and even if they are not the same verb,
  it's still a way to differentiate between them.

  In English for example 'Free' is used for totally two different words
  but since there are no umlauts in English, it has to be like that.
  But for German, you have the advantage of using the umlaut to
  differentiate between such words (but you are still using the same
  letters).

  To give you another example, in Arabic you can find loads of words that
  have the _same_ letters but have different meanings but unlike English,
  Arabic has harakat which are more complicated than German umlauts
  so harakat are used _exactly_ like the German umlaut except that there
  are too many of them compared to German. By using your logic, I could
  request that every letter be encoded with all the possible harakat as
  separate letters because they can have different meanings based on the
  haraka which is associated with each letter.
  There are plenty of those, but I'm giving you one sample:
    The word مسك
    It can be:
        1- caught "مَسَكَ"
        2- Some kind of perfume(called Misk) "مِسْكُ"
        3- applied some kind of perfume(called Misk) to something "مَسَّكَ"
        4- Skin "مَسْكُ" or "مُسُكٌ"
        Plus more derivations that have different meanings like:
        5- Good Mind "مُسْكَةُ"

 Can now I say that these are different letters just because they can have
 different meanings and different pronouncations?
 If so, then I would like to propose to add for each Arabic letter at least 6
 characters :-)
 Clearly, this just can't be done, but I only said so to clarify my point that
 German umlauts are not different letters, they are the regular letters with
 some marks to differentiate between words that have the same spelling
 for both pronouncation and writing (exactly as in Arabic which is much more
 complex and such it wouldn't be wise to add about 28*6 characters :-)

> And this is just German. In my native language
> Turkish, the umlauts generally cause even a greater
> difference in the meaning. For example if you say
> 'kup' it means 'cup', if you say 'k�p' it means
> 'cube', if you say 'g�l' it means 'lake', if you say
> 'gol' it means 'goal'. And in fact in Turkish, the
> umlaut characters � and � are part of the alphabet
> also. I hope you get my point.
>

 And I hope you got mine.

>
> I hope you understand that the umlauts are not like
> the sequential fathatan by now.

 I'm not saying that they are like umlauts, I'm saying that
 they should receive more than what umlauts recieve, they 
 are much harder to encode than umlauts but yet umlauts are
 there and sequential tanween is not there (its priority is higher
 than German umlaut and since the umlaut is there, they have
 to be there too).

> They belong to a 
> different category.

 I have to disagree here, please read above with an open mind, the
 umlaut is used for pronouncation only but it just happened that different
 pronouncations of German words have different meanings
 (exactly as in the Arabic harakat case, which is more complicated).


> While the regular vowels vs.
> umlaut vowels cause a difference in the phonemic load
> of the word the regular fathatan vs. the sequential
> fathatan does not cause a difference in phonemic load
> of the word. 

  But they cause different Qura'nic "rules" not only pronouncation
  change.

> But it does cause a difference in the 
> "phonetic" load of the word, therefore it needs to be
> somehow distinguished from regular fathatan in the
> plain text and supported by Unicode. Our difference
> lies in how this should be done.
>
  
  Since the umlaut (which can be very very easily be encoded
  with the current technology as vowel+two dots) is there,
  sequential tanween has to be there too (what you suggest
  is much more complicated than the umlaut).

 In short if you insist on calling a vowel with an umlaut on top of
 it a separate letter then you have to call an Arabic letter with different
 harakat a separate letter and we can propose to add them to unicode
 (very unlikely).
 But if you are convinced with what wikipedia says, then you agree that
 an umlaut is used for getting a different pronouncation of a given letter
 and hence sequential tanween should be added as it has higher priority here
 because it needs a logic code as you suggested and all.


-- 
Mohammed Yousif
Egypt