Question for Malay Jawi letter in Unicode - three quarter hamza

[Lorna Evans]

I believe you should use 0674;ARABIC LETTER HIGH 
HAMZA;Lo;0;AL;;;;;N;ARABIC LETTER HIGH HAMZAH

As you say, some fonts like Amiri position it lower.

I have a document being discussed to bring the position of the glyph 
down a bit from where it is in the codecharts so it's about even with 
the top of the alef rather than much higher. Your examples look lower 
than that, but that would be a font issue, not an encoding issue.

Maybe we should consider adding an annotation for U+0674 to say that 
this character should be used for Jawi.

Lorna

On 10/13/2020 7:00 PM, Yaya MNH48 via Unicode wrote:
> 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]