Re: Proposal for the Basis of a Codepoint Extension toUnicodeforthe Encoding of the Quranic Manuscripts

[Abdulhaq Lynch <al-arabeyes at alinsyria dot fsnet dot co dot uk>]

On Wednesday 22 June 2005 13:42, Gregg Reynolds wrote:

> > In that transcription your first sample reads as follows:
> >
> > kitaabu-n (DMG: kitābu-n)
> >
> > The qur'anic assimilation of second one is not yet supported, but it will
> > read like this:
> > khushubu- m:usannadätu-n (DMG: ḫušubu- m:usannadätu-n)
> > As you can see, initial compensatory shaddä is treated differently from
> > morphological shaddä.
>
> Yes; this is an example where a very useful codepoint is unlikely to be
> endorsed by unicode.  We could use  two shaddas, one phonotactic and one
> lexical.  I think there might even be a third case but I can't think of
> it at the moment.
>

By using an idghaam codepoint they could be easily distinguished.

I feel compelled to say (to everyone here, not just you Gregg, and not 
particularly in terms of this thread) that the arabs already have conducted 
an immensely rich analysis of the arabic language and its morphology, 
phonetics etc in respect of the quran. To abandon that (probably out of 
ignorance rather than deliberately) would be an immense mistake.

We should stick to the time-honoured names that all good arab and muslim 
scholars are already familiar with. To try and come up with a new lexicon 
based on western phonetic and morphological terms is a big mistake.

I teach arabic here in the UK and those students who have learned arabic via 
latin grammatical terms (nominative, accusative, cognate accusative etc) are 
at an immense disadvantage in studying the subject compared to those who know 
the far better suited arabic terms. To repeat that orientalist disaster here 
would be extremely negligent.

wassalaam
abdulhaq

> > What's the objection? It would be just as transparent as you solution.
>
> I have to think some more about the paired vowels idea.
>
> > Anyway, I like your approach. If it is to find any acceptance, there
> > needs to be canonical equivalence with legacy encoding accoding to this
> > formula:
> >
> > TANWEEN                         =                 <vowel><small noon>
> > =      conventional tanween
> > TAMWEEM                         =                <vowel><small meem>
> > IDGHAM                              =                <vowel><idgham code>
>
> But I wouldn't call it <small noon>; we want to retain the semantics of
> tanween explicitly in the encoding element so that software doesn't have
> to infer tanween based on two codepoints.  This is the kind of thing I
> mean when I say intelligence should be migrated from software to the
> encoding as much as possible.
>
> -g
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