Unicode
From Glossing Ancient Languages
Transliterations and transcriptions of ancient languages usually use some special characters, e.g. Greek signs, like alpha (α), ‘s’ with caron (š), ‘h’ with breve below (ḫ), ‘t’ with dot below (ṭ), Semitic Ain (Ꜥ), Egyptological Alif (Ꜣ).
In order to produce a robust file for e.g. a publisher, i.e. a file that is going to be displayed correctly on any electronic device, it is advisable that the encoder uses strictly Unicode fonts to enter his/her data. Characters that have been entered with a Unicode font cannot be confused on any other device. This is because the file actually contains the unique Unicode number of the intended character, e.g. U+1E6D. This number is unique and reserved for this very character all across the world in any Unicode font. With Unicode fonts, the only things that can happen are: a) The character cannot be displayed at all on the receiver’s device; b) The style of the font may be different, depending on the actual Unicode font that is installed on the receiver’s device.)
Recommended fonts
For glossing in general or for editing specific languages, we recommend to install the following fonts:
| Language | Fonts | Character examples |
|---|---|---|
| Glossing in general | Charis SIL | diacritics, IPA symbols, ā ē ī ō ū, ⌈ ⌉ 〈 〉 |
| Akkadian | Charis SIL New Athena Unicode Antinouu |
ʾ ʿ ḫ ṣ š ṭ |
| Coptic | Antinouu | ⲁ ⲉ ⲙ ϣ ϩ ϭ ϯ ⳉ ⳁ |
| Ancient Egyptian[1] | Charis SIL New Athena Unicode |
Ꜣ ʾ ı͗ i̯ ï Ꜥ u̯ ḥ ḫ ẖ h̭ ś š ḳ č ṯ ṭ ṱ č̣ ḏ |
| Greek | New Athena Unicode | α ζ ς ή ω ᾆ ἧ ὧ but uses non-standardized Private Use Area for some few characters: e.g. . |
| Hittite | Arial Unicode MS Charis SIL New Athena Unicode |
ḫ š |
Recommended programs and links
Keyboard layout creators
- Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (Windows).
- Mac OS Keyboard Layout Editor Ukulele
Unicode character programs and links
- BabelStone BabelMap (Windows)
- Fileformat.info Unicode character search (online)
Required Unicode characters
| Character | Unicode number |
Character | Unicode number |
Fonts | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ʿ | U+02BF | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian | ||
| ʾ | U+02BE | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian | ||
| ꜥ [2] | U+A725 | Ꜥ | U+A724 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ꜣ [2] | U+A723 | Ꜣ | U+A722 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| č | U+010D | Č | U+010C | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| č̣ | U+010D&U+0323 | Č̣ | U+010C&U+0323 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ḏ | U+1E0F | Ḏ | U+1E0E | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ḥ | U+1E25 | Ḥ | U+1E24 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ḫ | U+1E2B | Ḫ | U+1E2B | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Hittite |
| ẖ | U+1E96 | H̱ | 'H'+ U+0331 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| h̭ | 'h'&U+032D | H̭ | 'H'&U+032D | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ı͗ | U+0131&U+0357 | I͗ | 'I'&U+0357 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| i̯ | 'i'&U+032F | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian | ||
| ï | U+00EF | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian | ||
| ḳ | U+1E33 | Ḳ | U+1E32 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ṣ | U+032E | Ṣ | U+032D | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian |
| ś | U+015B | Ś | U+015A | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| š | U+0161 | Š | U+0160 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Hittite |
| ṯ | U+1E6F | Ṯ | U+1E6E | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian |
| ṭ | U+1E6D | Ṭ | U+1E6C | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian |
| u̯ | ‘u’&U+032F | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian | ||
| ⸗ | U+2E17 | New Athena Unicode | Ancient Egyptian | ||
| ⌈ | U+2308 | ⌉ | U+2309 | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | text critical markup |
| 〈 | U+2329 | 〉 | U+232A | Charis SIL, New Athena Unicode | text critical markup |
References
- ↑ Daniel A. Werning, Egyptological transliteration in Unicode; Wikipedia, Ägyptische Hieroglyphen. In der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 The characters U+A725 LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL AIN and U+A723 LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF are not supposed to be smaller than the respective capitals. This seems to be a mistake in the original Unicode definition. For print typesetting (but not for database encoding), we recommend to use the respectice CAPITAL letters instead.