Manuscript forms

[ohbendy]

I've had a closer look through some of the images of manuscripts and found some characters I'm uncertain about.

1 Above mark

From Mahosatha (Stephen sent me before):

What is the doubled mark shaped like ົ above the Na and e- vowel at the beginning of the line? At first I thought it was asat, but the asat is a completely different shape. It shows up in plenty of other manuscripts too, here are some more examples:

These are from AiLunKhong PhaMeuMauKhon (again from Stephen):

This is the Mahāsupina Jātaka (BL OR3494):

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2 long -aa vowel

In quite a few of the manuscripts, we see this shape which I presume is a variation of -aa ႃ [1083] with a wave in the top:

If that's the correct interpretation, I wonder what these are:

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3 Form of 105E ◌ၞ

It's very odd to me that a character encoded as the Mon medial consonant Na should be used in the Phake vowel -aeu, and described as a medial Wa, especially when our attestations have the loop on the right (Mon medial Na has the loop on the left). This character is much more similar to a medial Ma ◌ၟ [105F] or ◌ᩜ [1A5C (this will probably appear in Noto Sans Tai Tham, where the shape is not correct)].

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4 Below mark

I'm not sure what this is, maybe the 105E again as above, but doubled? From Kensan's email:

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5 Numerals

As Stephen pointed out, we see the symbols for 1 ꩸ [AA78] and 2 ꩹ [AA79 — the shape is wrong in Noto Sans Myanmar], but then the counting continues with digits, so we get ꩸ ꩹ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉ ၁၀ ၁၁ ၁၂ in the Lik Phe Khang Song that Kensan sent. The ၁ takes the shape of ဒ and most of the others get dotted forms.

I don't read Khamyang, but it looks like these pages count all the way from 1 to 30 (I can't find the 9 however). Some of them are spelled out or partially spelled out (green) in words, so we get 19, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty 6, twenty 7, twenty 8, twenty 9, 30.

Should we include the numerals as they appear here, or the standard Burmese shapes, or the ones we got from Chow Kalingna Mannoi last year?

(Forgot to say, the numeral shapes here are the same as what I've found in Arakanese/Mogh/Mugh manuscripts too.)

[StephenMorey]

Ben, these are very interesting issues. (1) the two types of 'sat'; I think we need two separate encodings for these and this looks as if we do need the addition of another character to the Unicode set, which I suppose is going to slow down the ability to use this font. Unless we can put this symbol on a personal use area location to start with

[StephenMorey]

(2) I'm going to need to do some further research here. This will involve downloading all these photos and asking people to explain some of them. I think this one is a NYA ![Uploading image.png…]()

[StephenMorey]

(3) I think the examples you have given here are all 105E. This one, for example, is the WA + 103D + 1083 - it's the word wa meaning 'speak'

[StephenMorey]

(4) I don't know the answer to this. Needs further information

[StephenMorey]

(5) You are correct that this is numbering from 1 to 30. Number 9 followed by wan 'day' (WA + NA + Sat) is at the end of line 4.

[StephenMorey]

This is the word kau meaning '9' Looks to be KA + 103D + the alternate form of 103A (see your comment (1) above)

[ohbendy]

This is the word kau meaning '9' Looks to be KA + 103D + the alternate form of 103A (see your comment (1) above)

Ahh good! I was misreading that 103D as a medialYa ◌ျ [103B].

[ohbendy]

(3) I think the examples you have given here are all 105E. This one, for example, is the WA + 103D + 1083 - it's the word wa meaning 'speak'

Do you mean not all 105E? I thought these were all 105E. In this particular manuscript I had this one as 105E because of the knot and open tail, while 103D seems to just be a single closed loop, and much more elongated, if I'm interpreting the letters correctly.

Let me try transcribing how I interpreted a couple of parts with both of those characters:

I thought ယွ်ဝ။ ဝၟႃတီ.

I thought လီကူဝ်ၸွတလႃံ။ ၵၟံ.

But maybe I'm distinguishing the 105E and 103D wrongly.

[ohbendy]

I think we need two separate encodings for these

Gosh, two asats, yes that would mean a new character is needed in Unicode. We'd need to know how the two shapes contrast in function or behaviour, for example, if one is used as a tone mark, or with vowel letters, or represents a different register of consonant than the other.

I've also forwarded to Jayasaro Bhikku who has passed it onto another Khamti person who may be able to enlighten us. I'll email Chow Kensan and Chow Kalingna to see if they can advise too.

[StephenMorey]

I think you are correct in the transcription of this as ယွ်ဝ။ ဝၟႃတီ. But in this case 105E is being used where, I believe, 103D would be used by writers today. ယွ်ဝ။ ဝွႃတီ

The second example does look like လီကူဝ်ၸွတလႃံ။ ၵွံ

What this means, I think, is that the 105E was earlier as a variant of /o/ (otherwise 103D) as well as it's use to create the diphthong /ɯu/ (also written as /ɨu/.

[ohbendy]

(2) I'm going to need to do some further research here. This will involve downloading all these photos and asking people to explain some of them. I think this one is a NYA

Can't see which image this refers to. All those examples came from the images Chow Kensan recently sent.

In Thai and Khmer manuscripts we find ๚ะ and ๚ะ๛ as markers at the end of sections, so I wonder if we have a similar thing in these Tai manuscripts. The first element is very similar to the ฯ and I can't see what else it could be.

[ohbendy]

Speaking of punctuation, these show up in one of the manuscripts Kensan sent:

Again, Thai and Khmer (and Lao) use those, and have codepoints ๏ [0E4F] and ☸ [2638]. I can happily include them in the Phake Ramayana font, and was already considering proposing them for the Myanmar Unicode block since they show up in other languages of Burma too.

[StephenMorey]

Ah yes, some quite wonderful punctuation symbols. So please, yes, add to the Ramayana font

[StephenMorey]

This is the one that I think is ၵိၺ်ကံ

[ohbendy]

This is the one that I think is ၵိၺ်ကံ

Interesting. So it seems we have two slightly different versions of Nya, one with the right bowl open on top and one with it open on the bottom:

Currently the Phake Ramayana font has the latter, which does seem more prevalent. Is that ok?

[StephenMorey]

Yes, I think that's OK. I think this form is probably best.

[ohbendy]

Yes, I think that's OK. I think this form is probably best.

I checked UTN11 again; it gives ꩥ [AA65] for Khamti and Shan letter ၺ [107A] for Aiton & Phake. So if we're trying to support all those languages (?), I can include dotted versions of both letters.

There is also Tai Laing Nya ꧧ [A9E7] which has the foot pointing the right way and the right bowl opening at the bottom. I don't know how Phake people would prefer to type it or what Craig's keyboard is using (UTN 11 is not an official Unicode document or recommendation).

[ohbendy]

I couldn't find examples of letter Da (borrowed from Burmese) in any of the manuscripts, would it be better with or without a dot?

[StephenMorey]

Ben, going right back to point (1) at the top of this thread, you said "What is the doubled mark shaped like ົ above the Na and e- vowel at the beginning of the line?". This is an abbreviated form of the words pin nang, written as 1015 102D AA6B 103A 1004 103A (which is p i n sat ng sat). What is happening here is that the final n of pin is not repeated as the initial of nang. This is a stock phrase, literally 'be like', meaning something like 'it was like this' and begins a very large proportion of manuscripts, so we don't need to know what it is to be able to read it. So this is not a double sat. I hope that's clear.

[ohbendy]

4 Below mark

Stephen's email concerns this exact phrase, in which the first syllable has the -uu below, and the last before the double danda is a doubled -u below.

The -uu vowel here differs from what we have currently — the left leg is curved and has a dot at the top in this manuscript. Shall I use the manuscript form for this? If so, should the -u be adjusted, and how should a doubled -uu look?

[ohbendy]

Ben, going right back to point (1) at the top of this thread, you said "What is the doubled mark shaped like ົ above the Na and e- vowel at the beginning of the line?". This is an abbreviated form of the words pin nang, written as 1015 102D AA6B 103A 1004 103A (which is p i n sat ng sat). What is happening here is that the final n of pin is not repeated as the initial of nang. This is a stock phrase, literally 'be like', meaning something like 'it was like this' and begins a very large proportion of manuscripts, so we don't need to know what it is to be able to read it. So this is not a double sat. I hope that's clear.

Interesting. So it means that one asat is on the Na and one is on the Nga.

Although the Na appears to act as a "two-way" consonant (once for piN and once for Nang), the two-way nature is not indicated with any grapheme in the text and so not relevant for our purposes. (Some scripts do mark two-way consonants of this sort.)

[StephenMorey]

Ben, I'm not sure if I'm responding in the right thread on this, but Kensan has sent his 'explanation' of the əi / AA77 MYANMAR SYMBOL AITON EXCLAMATION as it appears in manuscript as follows.

[ohbendy]

I realise it would have been better if I'd split all of these questions into different threads rather than all in one, sorry!

This is very nicely written! If I interpreted it correctly, it's an abbreviation of ဢိုၺ. From the font's perspective the derivation of the sign doesn't matter so much, because the sign is encoded as a single character. I'll use Kensan's lovely example in the bottom half of this image as ꩷.

Do we think the other examples in 2 above are just variations of this sign?

[ChowKensan]

2 long -aa vowel Yes, this is a variation of -aa vowel. The wave in the top in this vowel also appears in Grierson’s specimen of Nora writing. But it is infrequent, so I think regular -aa vowel will be better.

[ohbendy]

Thanks! I'm intrigued to know more about Grierson's specimen and Nora writing, where could I see that?

[ChowKensan]

From Grierson's book.

[StephenMorey]

I couldn't find examples of letter Da (borrowed from Burmese) in any of the manuscripts, would it be better with or without a dot?

I think Da can be without dot.

[StephenMorey]

I am asking for opinions of people about this

[StephenMorey]

I realise it would have been better if I'd split all of these questions into different threads rather than all in one, sorry!

This is very nicely written! If I interpreted it correctly, it's an abbreviation of ဢိုၺ. From the font's perspective the derivation of the sign doesn't matter so much, because the sign is encoded as a single character. I'll use Kensan's lovely example in the bottom half of this image as ꩷.

Do we think the other examples in 2 above are just variations of this sign?

Yes, I think these are variations.

[ohbendy]

For the 'one symbol' encoded at AA78 (꩸) we have the following examples:

From section 5 above:

Other examples:

These don't look much like the 'official' shape we find in the Unicode chart, please could you confirm (or draw in your lovely writing) the best way for this to look?

And I believe these three would be stored as a dotted form of Shan 'exclamation sign' 109F (႟):

[StephenMorey]

Thank you for this. I think that the Shan Exclamation Mark 109F probably has many of the same functions as AA78, but it's good that Unicode has two places so that we can have two separate symbols. In my view AA78 is the same as the first character above If we examine the 'sample' of AA78 (꩸), it consists of three crescent, facing up, left and down. and then a longer symbol heading upwards on the right. If we removed the small crescent on the left, it would be conceptually the same as the first set of characters.

[ohbendy]

I was mainly thinking it would be good not to limit our font to such a few examples, so if Kensan knows the best shape of this symbol it might give better results. I wonder also whether we could know the derivation of this symbol, like we had the 'explanation' above for AA77 — it looks like it might derive from ပ and ရ and sat/killer?

In Unicode AA78 sits on the baseline, but these examples all use the subscript space, so I'm thinking we should follow that approach.

[ChowKensan]

I agree with sir Stephen's explanation for AA78. This existing shape (if without the left crescent) is fine for Tai font having smaller dots. But for manuscript font I think it is better if we can get bigger dots like the following example:

[ohbendy]

Nice drawing! Do you intend it to sit on the baseline, or use the subscript space as in the manuscripts?

[ChowKensan]

The crescent facing up should be on the line and the crescent facing down should be written below the line.

[ohbendy]

Thanks, very helpful :)

I noticed Martin uses different forms for Aiton (top row) and Phake (bottom row):

[StephenMorey]

This table comes from the fonts that I made together with community members back in 1997-98. The difference between the two fonts in terms of AA77, AA78 and AA79 were made after discussions with Tai Aiton and Tai Phake speakers respectively back in January 1998. At that time neither I nor the the speakers who were advising me had much clear idea that ultimately these differences would be examined so carefully! Essentially the AA77 was conceived of as a KHA symbol with additional curved lines running from it. AA78, the numeral for 'one' is basically the same thing but the additional crescent was preferred by one speaker; and in the case of AA79 the two symbols are again basically the same but with a difference in where the curves and bends are. I can't remember exactly how we did it - it's a generation ago - but probably what happened was that the speaker looked at what I had proposed and drew something on paper and then I tried to represent that in the program I was using, Fontographer. I do recall that the Aiton font was designed entirely with one speaker, Nabin Shyam Phalung. The Phake font was slightly different and changed after a community meeting in January 1998 with a lot of discussion between speakers. I remember sitting on the floor and trying to make the changes while a crowd of people around were making lots of suggestions. There's a photo taken at the same meeting but showing the late Ngi Lek sitting and looking at the screen.

[ohbendy]

It's lovely to see the involvement of the community here! That kind of feedback is so hard to get. Hopefully when we publish this Ramayana font people might also offer feedback and we can continue to improve it :-)

When making fonts, those Unicode documents are one of very few resources that discuss the letterforms, but with just a single example of some characters, it's very hard to figure out an archetype. As you say, we don't ideally want to base a font on a single person's preference...it's quite a responsibility to make a font for languages where fonts don't exist already because each font then becomes a resource for later designers to refer to. Unfortunately any mistakes or biases are easily ingrained into later fonts if designers copy them, that's an important reason I prefer to set the Unicode charts aside and examine manuscripts so closely. (There are a few characters in Myanmar Unicode that I'd consider wrong, and even existing fonts like Noto have some characters upside-down, so there really are no reliable references.)

[ohbendy]

For AA79, I think we have two manuscript examples:

This looks like the first piece of AA77 we discussed earlier:

Is it fine to use the same exact shape for AA79?

[StephenMorey]

Thanks Ben. I think that AA79 (the numeral 2) does tend to appear similar to the 'first piece' of AA77, though usually slightly rotated to clockwise. But it would probably work.

[ohbendy]

Re Q4 above we decided not to include reduplicated -U and -UU. Reduplicated -U and -I are not possible since they would be followed by a final consonant, and reduplicating those syllables would be handled by a doubled say.

Reduplicated -UU looked ambiguous and confusing so users will have to type doubled asat to indicate a doubled -UU syllable.

[ohbendy]

I think we've covered all the questions here! Closing this thread for now, we can always refer to it from the archive later.