User:Babr/Kazakh High-Hamza

بِالنِّسْبَه (b-i-n-nisba) فِالحَال (fi-l-hāl)

There are 5 high-hamza characters in unicode, encoded specifically for Kazakh (in the Arabic script): High-hamza itself ٴ (Ux0674) and 4 ligatures ٵ (ä) (Ux0675), ٶ (ö) (Ux0676), ٷ (ü) (Ux0677), ٸ (i) (Ux0678).

Usage

Looking at Unicodes website I came across this request from SIL international requesting that the Kazakh high-hamza ligatures for this reason. Claiming that the high-hamza ligatures are not actually used in practice. (seems to match what I found below.

I initially tried using google results tp compare how much these letters are used, but that turned out extremely low results. As in, much lower than would be expected considering many media organizations in Kazakhstan also publish content in the Arabic script. I'm not going to discuss the google results too much since they seem a bit unreliable, but to anyone interested, here's the results:

google search results, possibly flawed

cyrillic test word encoded character results Үрімжі ءۇرىمجى normal hamza 33 ٴۇرىمجى high hamza 23 ٷرىمجى hamza ligature 13 үшін ءۇشىن normal hamza 42 ٴۇشىن high hamza 28 ٷشىن hamza ligature 4 ісі ءىسى normal hamza 40 ٴىسى high hamza 13 ٸسى hamza ligature 10 әрі ءارى normal hamza 64† ٴارى high hamza 21 ٵرى hamza ligature 15 бір ءبىر normal hamza 61 ٴبىر high hamza 36 † some results seemed to be in Uyghur and Arabic, though it seems the majority are still in Kazakh so I still included it.

Seeing the google test as unreliable I decided to find Kazakh websites that publish content in the Arabic script (I tried to look for websites that would be more likely to use "correct" spellings, like news agencies/goverment websites/educational institutions) and see what unicode characters they use. This test does seem more reliable but I obviously cannot search every website and may have missed some. These results seem to be pretty much in-line with SIL's request:

Websites using normal hamza (no high-hamza characters are used)

• Kazinform
• Yegemen Qazaqstan (government owned newspaper)
• infohub.kz example
• KIMEP University example
• Aqsham News example
• Qazaq times example

Websites using high-hamza (but not high-hamza ligatures)

• this chinese website I'm not sure what type of organization it is, but it seems to be a government news agency.

Overall

HH ligatures do not seem widely used, even by Kazakh-language media organizations that publish in the Arabic script. The websites I found that did use High-Hamza seemed to be government websites from china using the isolated high hamza, but even they usually did not use the ligatures.

My first thought would be to deprecate high-hamza ligatures (encode them all as high-hamza [isolated] + character) but make you can still search using regular hamza or ligatures, but we don't really have entries in the Arabic script, we tend to just have the Arabic spelling in the Cyrillic entry so that entries are still searchable.