NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/comp/std/internat/1299

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-24 | 3.1 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Glenn A. Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.std.internat
Subject: Re: Alphabets
Date: 24 Jan 1993 20:25:00 GMT
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Masataka is right on the comment, but wrong on the example since the
>French and German alphabets are the same.

I disagree.  See below.

>There are about as many Latin alphabets as there are languages written
>with the Latin script, however many of them coincide. But if even if
>they coincide, the languages may use different modifiers.

I believe your terminology is problematic here.  There is only one Latin
alphabet, namely, the one used by the Romans.  What I think you want to
say is that there are many Latin script-based alphabets.  We can distinguish
between the Latin alphabet (as used by the romans), and a somewhat
artificial construct, the Latin script (as used by various alphabets).
It might be better to call the Latin alphabet the Roman alphabet just
to be more clear (and then not use the phrase "Latin alphabet").

The Latin script can be though of as the union of symbols contained in
all alphabets which are predominantly derived from the symbols used in
the Roman alphabet.

The notion of alphabet can be specified further still.  If we define
a "writing system" as a set of conventions and rules (an orthography)
applied to a set of symbols (from one or more scripts) in order to
represent some language (sound, meaning, syntax, style, etc.), then
we can say that for each writing system there is one and only one
alphabet, and that such an alphabet is comprised of the collection
of symbols employed by the writing system; furthermore, certain
conventions and rules of the writing system's use of these symbols
are also captured in the alphabet, in particular, the default order
which convention dictates for these symbols.

From the above definition, it is clear that the French and German
alphabets are distinct because (1) they are different writing systems
(i.e., they write different langauges) and (2) they employ different
sets of symbols, e.g., ESS-ZET in German, and (3) they employ different
conventions about these symbols.

The encoding of character sets for computer usage tends to represent
abstract forms which correspond to the elements of a script, irrespective
of their membership (or properties) in specific alphabets (i.e., in the
context of particular writing systems).

The decision on whether to unify the symbols drawn from a collection of
alphabets (i.e., to form a unified script which can represent the
different alphabets) should be based on the utility of performing
unification and not on linguistic or cultural relations among the
different alphabets [see my previous message on Script unification].

Glenn Adams