Question for Malay Jawi letter in Unicode - three quarter hamza

[Yaya MNH48]

Hello everyone, I'm new on this list.

I've got question for Jawi (Malay in Arabic script) in Unicode.


## The codepoint for Jawi Letter Hamza Three Quarter High?

I have been seeing "Jawi Letter Hamzah Three Quarter High" (sic)
mentioned on many local documents, that it was not in Unicode but said
to be proposed back then to be included after Unicode 5.0, but I could
not find it on Unicode even on the current version 13.0. Is "Jawi
Letter Hamzah Three Quarter High" even formally proposed and encoded
yet? If so, what is the actual codepoint for it in Unicode? or did no
one brought it to Unicode's attention in the first place?

Note: The spelling "Hamzah" in all those documents are influenced from
Malay (and also pronounced as such in Malay, with an H sound at the
end), seemed like none of them realized that the final H does not
exist in the English spelling "Hamza", and they just carried over the
Malay spelling "Hamzah" in all of their English documents. For
consistency, I'm using the proper English spelling "Hamza" instead of
the actual spelling being used over here "Hamzah".


While most of the documents are local, some of them do exist online,
such as this document (linked after quote) in 2009 from Malaysia
Network Information Center (MYNIC) to Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority (IANA) for inclusion in their repository of
Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) tables for .my Malay
(macrolanguage) (Malaysia) entry, in which the document ends with
(sic)
> This character is not in the Unicode Table 5.0. The linguist came up with the decision to propose the inclusion of Jawi Letter Hamzah Three Quarter into the Unicode table.
Link: https://www.iana.org/domains/idn-tables/tables/my_ms-my_1.0.pdf
(via https://www.iana.org/domains/idn-tables )


The Jawi letter Hamza Three Quarter High (marked as HTQ in the
examples from now onwards) is part of everyday use words, for example
in the Jawi spelling of the word "air" which mean "water" or "drink"
(noun) which is [alef-HTQ-yeh-reh]. Another example would be in the
Jawi spelling of the word "perduaan" which mean "binary" (term in
computing, science and mathematics) which is
[PA(Veh)-reh-dal-waw-alef-HTQ-noon].

These are the most common usage of Hamza Three Quarter High in Malay Jawi:

[A] consecutive vowels for au, ai, and ui, mostly in native Malay words.
Example:
• "laut" [la·ut] (meaning: sea) is spelt [lam-alef-HTQ-waw-teh]
• "baik" [ba·iʔ] (meaning: good / nice) is spelt [beh-alef-HTQ-yeh-qaf]
• "buih" [bu·ih] (meaning: bubble) is spelt [beh-waw-HTQ-yeh-heh]

[B] diphtongs for au and ai, mostly in Malay words loaned from English.
Example:
• "audio" [au·dio] (meaning: audio) is spelt [alef-HTQ-waw-dal-yeh-waw]
• "aising" [ai·siŋ] (meaning: icing) is spelt
[alef-HTQ-yeh-seen-yeh-NGA(AinWithThreeDotsAbove)]

[C] suffix -an after vowel a, and suffix -i after vowels a and u, as
part of Malay grammar rule which attaches affixes to modify word form.
Example:
• "kenyataan" [kə·ɲa·ta·an] (meaning: statement) is spelt
[keheh-NYA(NoonWithThreeDotsAbove)-alef-teh-alef-HTQ-noon], it got
affixed from root word "nyata" [ɲa·ta] (meaning: to state)
• "cintai" [t∫in·ta·i] (meaning: love (conjugated verb)) is spelt
[tcheh-yeh-noon-teh-alef-HTQ-yeh], it got affixed from root word
"cinta" [t∫in·ta] (meaning: to love)
• "melalui" [mə·la·lu·i] (meaning: via / through) is spelt
[meem-lam-alef-lam-waw-HTQ-yeh], it got affixed from root word "lalu"
[la·lu] (meaning: to pass through)

[D] spelling of Malaysian Chinese names in Malay.
Example:
• "Ng" [əŋ] (multiple family names including 吳) is spelt
[HTQ-NGA(AinWithThreeDotsAbove)]
• "Ong" [oŋ] (multiple family names including 黄) is spelt
[HTQ-waw-NGA(AinWithThreeDotsAbove)]

Image of the word spellings:
https://jawi.mnh48.moe/assets/img/email/word-with-hamza-three-quarter-high.png

Image of sample sentences:
https://jawi.mnh48.moe/assets/img/email/sentence-with-hamza-three-quarter-high.png


I'm seeing people using either superscripted version of Arabic Letter
Hamza (U+0621) or abuses Arabic Letter High Hamza (U+0674) but those
doesn't help in plain text where none of the abused formatting would
work in the first place. Some people even gave up and just create
image with the correctly positioned letters and uses that image in
place of text. Some font, notably Amiri, actually displayed Arabic
Letter High Hamza on three-quarter high, probably (but not necessarily
the case) to accommodate Jawi users who abuses that letter for their
Hamza Three Quarter High, but that would lock users to use only that
font as other fonts still display the original height.

Link to Amiri font: https://www.amirifont.org/


The letter is the same size as regular Hamza, not any smaller like the
size of High Hamza or the Hamza above/below Alef. It is positioned at
three-quarter height of the writing line, unlike Arabic Letter High
Hamza that displays on the highest position on the line nor regular
Hamza that displays on the baseline.

The letter is also separate from regular Hamza, which is mostly used
for Arabic or Sanskrit loanwords in Malay. Regular Hamza and Three
Quarter High Hamza co-exist in Malay Jawi, could exist in the same
sentence or even the same word, but should not be shown at the same
height in all cases including plain text, otherwise it could cause
confusion when reading since it could signal different sound, and it
is grammatically wrong as well.

To recap the questions from first paragraph in case you are still
unclear on the actual questions: Is "Jawi Letter Hamzah Three Quarter
High" even formally proposed and encoded yet? If so, what is the
actual codepoint for it in Unicode? or did no one brought it to
Unicode's attention in the first place?

I'm looking forward for more information regarding this.

Best regards,
[Yaya]
Yaya MNH48

[A PDF version of this email is also attached as attachment, however
it has slightly different formatting as I could directly mark the text
in formatting so that it will be displayed correctly and so the
additional images are not needed, unlike the plaintext email where
none of the formatting would work]
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