Unicode name questions

A.Schmolck a.schmolck at gmx.net
Wed Apr 17 11:08:21 EDT 2002


Philip Swartzleonard <starx at pacbell.net> writes:

[skipped bit about unicode character names]
> 
> Hm. I was browing through some of their code charts for the heck of it, 
> and I noticed that they listed certain kata/hiragana characters's primary 
> names as SI, TI, TU, etc. I've listened to a considerable amount of 
> japanese media, and AFAICT the correct romanization of those sounds would 
> be SHI, CHI, TSU, etc.

(bear in mind I'm not an expert either...)

Depends what you mean by "correct": the *pronounciations* are better
transcribed by SHI, TSU etc. but that romanization is more for the benefits of
foreigners than what japanese themselves resort to when they must use romanji,
by my experience. The japanese syllabic alphabet is ordered something like:

...
KA    KI      KU    KE    KO
SA    S(H)I   SU    SE    SO 
TA    TI(CHI) T(S)U TE    TO
...
MA    MI      MU    ME    MO
..


So TSU is really just an irregularly pronouced TU, if you want (there is no
"tu" sound in japanese) and since it's unambigous and shorter to type, that's
what japanese seem to be using when they have to use latin characters and
don't need to provide pronounciation hints for ignorant foreigners :)


> 
> But then they also have some other wierdness, e.g., listing VA, VI, VE, VO 
> as WA, WI, WE, WO + diacrit, where WI and WE are old, obsolite* characters 
> as mentioned in my dictonary, and to the best of my knowledge the methods 
> for doing V sounds are eihter old-style use of B sounds, or new-style use 
> of A,I,E,O + diacrit. And there's this 'katakana iteration symbol' (and 
> hira, and voiced of both) that i've never so much as heard of... :\
> 


I can't see what's weird here: the sounds "vi" and "wi" etc. which do not
occur in (modern) japanese are tranliterated either
'katakana-U-with-diacritical followed by small-katakana-i' (new style) or
"katakana BI" (old style) in loan words. But these transliterations are
tranliterations, i.e. some kludge to write "VI" when the language in fact has
no such thing -- rather than an *unique character* WI / VI. Thus they don't
belong to the japanese character table, they are comprised of symbols taken
from it.

But there *used to be* unique katakana characters WI / VI (WI with
diacriticals) which are no longer used in modern japanese, but they should
certainly be in the unicode table and WI, VI seem pretty appropriate names to
me!



alex



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