Zawgyi Tonemarks in Latin Script

Richard Wordingham richard.wordingham at ntlworld.com
Wed Feb 17 16:31:01 CST 2021


On Wed, 17 Feb 2021 21:48:38 +0200
"Jukka K. Korpela via Unicode" <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> I don’t quite understand the original problem. If you Romanize text,
> why would you use marks of the original script? I think Romanization
> schemes typically map marks to some combining marks commonly used for
> Latin letters or some punctuation or special characters.

It tends to happen when there isn't an obvious transliteration, or the
scheme just doesn't match.  For example, it is not uncommon to find
Sanskrit in the Roman script using danda and double danda as
punctuation.  The consonant nasalisation mark, candrabindu, has been
borrowed for writing Sanskrit in the Roman script, which is why we have
U+0310 COMBINING CANDRABINDU.  I have seen this 'Latin' candrabindu in
print outside Sanskrit text books, I think in the journal 'Word'.

I couldn't find many examples on-line, but one can be found in the Pali
Text Society 2019 publication "The Catalogue of Manuscript in the U Pho
Thi Library, Thaton, Myanmar" (ISBN-13 9780 86013 081 9) - an
extract is accessible at
<https://www.cari.ne.jp/MyanmarPJ/1109G/UPT%20Catalogue%20Oct%2028Web.pdf>
The quotation I was cleaning up is a quotation of one of the authors of
that catalogue. There is some vacillation between using the Burmese
marks and a full stop and colon, but the Roman punctuation marks are
avoided when they might be misinterpreted as punctuation.

Richard.



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