Talk:ʻ

Usage

I believe this symbol is used by Ajarian in Հայ Բարբառագիտութիւն, page 10. Սէրուժ (talk) 07:54, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

@Սէրուժ: An apostrophe-like symbol for indicating aspiration is standard in Armenian dialectology. I have been using U+0559 on Wiktionary just for that purpose (see e.g. գազար (gazar)), but I devised this usage myself. I do not know if Unicode had it in mind when creating the codepoint. --Vahag (talk) 08:08, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Vahagn Petrosyan:, My comment was in regard to this line in the article ("There appears to be no recorded usage of U+0559 ARMENIAN MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING in Armenian text; its presence in this block is thus probably spurious.") which I think might need to be removed, perhaps replaced with some examples where this symbol has been used in literature, including Աճառեան's work above. What do you think? Սէրուժ (talk) 08:23, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

While we are here, let me also call to your attention the recent creation of the upside-down ա symbol in the Armenian Unicode block (as far as I know, this has been recently done in the last 1 or 2 years), which seems to have been inspired by the same Ajarian book above.Սէրուժ (talk)

I changed the definition. What's the URL to specific print pages of Ačaṙyan 1911?

I did not know about ՠ. It is useless. Ačaṙyan created the symbol by turning over the ա (a) to save printing costs, otherwise they would have to mould a new symbol. In the electronic era, ա̈ (ä) does the job much better. Apparently there is also a ՠ. --Vahag (talk) 11:23, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi Vahagn, yes, there are a couple new symbols in the Armenian block of the Unicode standard: the upside-down ա and the յ with a dash in it. I'm not sure who decided on these, but they are welcome changes as far as computing is concerned: both are preferable to have their own Unicode symbols, as opposed to the double-dots or other methods, for at least two reasons: the first is that it's much easier to find these symbols while doing a search (both in human user interfaces as well as inside software code), as opposed to adding the two dots; the second is that it's much easier to add these characters to a keyboard, as opposed to providing the double-dots. In any case, you're right that the physical printing need is no longer there. Սէրուժ (talk) 22:37, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The specific page for the upside-down ա is page 9 of Հայ բարբառագիտութիւն. It seems that he describes the letter there, but doesn't actually print it (I'll try to find where he actually does use it). The person who created the article for the upside-down ա (which most Armenian fonts don't yet support) mentions Ajarian's work. (By the way, I'll try to add support for linking to Imaged Books on Nayiri via the printPage URL parameter.) Thanks. Սէրուժ (talk) 23:02, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

The Շամախի բարբառ and Ղարաբաղի բարբառ sections (and I'm assuming any region near Persia) make extensive use of the upside down ա. Սէրուժ (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Okay. I added support for the printPage parameter in Imaged Books. Now you can link Հայ բարբառագիտութիւն directly via the page number in print, as such: page 9. Would be great if you can modify the template for the book with the new parameter. Thanks.Սէրուժ (talk) 00:30, 30 January 2020 (UTC)