Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!elwell From: elwell@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Clayton Elwell) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat,sci.lang Subject: Re: Computers and human languages (was Re: What is a byte) Message-ID: <183@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 08:44:49 EDT Article-I.D.: tut.183 Posted: Mon Sep 21 08:44:49 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 04:50:20 EDT References: <203@minya.UUCP> Reply-To: elwell@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Clayton Elwell) Organization: The Ohio State University, CIS Dept. Lines: 97 Xref: mnetor comp.std.internat:254 sci.lang:1436 jc@minya.UUCP (jc) writes: There's also a cute historical quibble to the effect that English actually has an accented letter: 'i'. This is one of many letters that ultimately derives from Greek, where the dot is in fact an accent on the iota, which is properly dotless. The really weird thing in English is that we use the accent mark on the lower-case letter, but not on the upper-case 'I'. This is basically a result of historic ignorance, confusion, illiteracy, and so on, in the development of the late Latin alphabet into a 2-case form. John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393) ARF! That's not a historical quibble, it's a falsehood. Let's take things from the beginning, so that hopefully we can get back to international standards ... The Phonecians were the first people to develop an alphabet (i.e. a writing system based on phonetics instead of pictographs). Around 800 B.C., the Greeks decided that this was a good idea, and in 403 B.C. they came up with an official alphabet. Meanwhile, the Etruscans, who were the first reasonably-sized civilization on the Italian peninsula, had gotten their hands on an early version of the Greek alphabet [this is where the term "beta test" comes from :-)], which they futzed around with to suit their language. In 700 B.C., they decided to occupy Rome and invent urban renewal, thus giving the early Romans an alphabet to play with. They, in turn, fiddled with it and started writing it with a pen, which changed the letter shapes some more. The Roman alphabet is usually thought to have reached its highest aesthetic point in the inscription on the Trajan column. This type of letter, which is sometimes called "Roman Square Capital," or more often just "Roman," is the direct source of modern upper case, and the indirect source of modern lower case. The biggest problem with roman capitals is that they are rather slow to write, and so Roman scribes developed a variety of cursive forms, some of which are completely unreadable to modern eyes, bearing as they do a strong resemblance to Old Martian. This caused some problems, and by the 4th century a compact, informal script called "Roman Rustic" or "Capitalis Rustica", a remarkably graceful alphabet. This was still an all-capital script. Well, the early Christians seemed to think that since this alphabet had been used for (gasp) pagan writings (such as Virgil), it just wouldn't do, and so they developed an official script, called "uncial" by modern scholars. It began as a majuscule script, but since it was designed to be written quickly, many of the letterforms started to resemble modern lower case. This was where ascenders and descenders made there first appearance, for example. People finally agreed that punctuation was a good idea, although they still ran all of the words together. Dots were placed above letters, but only to signify corrections. As the early Christian monasteries got richer, the script got more ornate again, and word spacing was introduced, albeit fitfully. Still no diacritic marks, except for corrections and abbreviations (usually a horizontal stroke above two or three letters). About this time (6th century or so), the Christians had decided to convert England, which turned out to be more difficult than they had hoped, but they kept working at it. They brought with them an informal script called "half-uncial", which contained even more letterforms that eventually made it into modern lower case. The Irish, and to a lesser extent the Anglo-Saxons, took this script and produced a script called "Insular Majuscule," one of the most beautiful versions of the roman alphabet ever produced. They also produced a script called "Insular Miniscule" (suprise, suprise) that was used at first for commentary and other 'unofficial' uses. For the next several centuries, things went downhill when it came to legibilty, although punctuation was approaching its modern form. At the end of the 8th century, a very important thing happened. Charlemagne and his adviser Alcuin (a Benedictine monk) founded a scriptorium at which developed a new script called "Carolingian Miniscule", which, when revived during the Renaissance, was the direct predecessor of the modern lower case alphabet. Even so, diacritics were still only used for abbreviation. This is the origin of "accents" in European languages. For example, the circumflex in French was originally an abbreviation for "s." As this script slowly metamorphosed into Gothic, it became more compact and less legible, since it had a more even texture. The "i" and "j" were still undotted, but "y" *was* dotted, so as to make it stand out more. By the fifteenth century, "i" sometimes had a dot as well. This custom continued into the Renaissance, at which time the dot was dropped off of the "y" and added to the "j". It was only with the development of printing that it was standardized. The use of accents and "breathing marks" is a feature of modern Greek, not classical Greek. It developed in parallel with accents in Europe, not as a precursor to them. Now that I've beaten this into the ground, can we get back to international standards? I'd be happy to continue via mail, but it does seem to be off the subject for this newsgroup. -- Clayton M. Elwell The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science (614) 292-6546 UUCP: ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!elwell ARPA: elwell@ohio-state.arpa (not working well right now)