In fact two of the six examples cited for LATIN LETTER THORN WITH STROKE are Old English, contrary to what the casual reader might assume. It is an odd thing about the proposal that Latin, Old Norse, Irish, Welsh and even Cornish are frequently cited as languages using a particular proposed character, but Old English is only cited for a single character ( COMBINING DOUBLE CIRCUMFLEX ABOVE, which is an editorial mark used in some editions of Old English poetry) and there are only two other mentions of Old English in the entire 51 pages of the document, when quite a few of the proposed characters are applicable to Old English (three primarily used for OE), and six of the examples provided are actually of Old English text (figs. Which is true enough as far as it goes, but I suspect that most of my readers will be more familiar with the letter thorn with a stroke through the ascender in the context of Old English, where it is the ubiquitous abbreviation for þæt (and unlike Old Norse, only þæt). LATIN LETTER THORN WITH STROKE is used for Old Norse þat, þess, þor-, þæt (Figures 29, 32, 33, 40, 73, 79). However, there is one proposed letter that I have a little quibble with. At present it is impossible to transcribe into Unicode many early texts as special abbreviation letters are so common, so I am very pleased to see that these letters are finally being encoded. N3027 ("Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS") proposes to encode a wide range of abbreviation letters used in medieval manuscripts and early printed books.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |