Unicode

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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 (), ‘t’ with dot below (), Semitic Ain (), Egyptological Alif ().

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] New Athena Unicode
Charis SIL
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 layouts

Creator programs

Ready layouts

Unicode character programs and links

Required Unicode characters

Character Unicode
number
Character Unicode
number
Fonts Languages
ʿ U+02BF New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian
ʾ U+02BE New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian
 [2] U+A725 U+A724 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
 [2] U+A723 U+A722 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
č U+010D Č U+010C New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
č̣ U+010D&U+0323 Č̣ U+010C&U+0323 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+1E0F U+1E0E New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+1E25 U+1E24 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+1E2B U+1E2B New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Hittite
U+1E96 'H'+ U+0331 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
'h'&U+032D 'H'&U+032D New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
ı͗ U+0131&U+0357 'I'&U+0357 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
'i'&U+032F New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
ï U+00EF New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+1E33 U+1E32 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+032E U+032D New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian
ś U+015B Ś U+015A New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
š U+0161 Š U+0160 New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Hittite
U+1E6F U+1E6E New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+1E6D U+1E6C New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian
‘u’&U+032F New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL Ancient Egyptian
U+2E17 New Athena Unicode Ancient Egyptian
U+2E22 U+2E23 New Athena Unicode text critical markup
U+2329 U+232A New Athena Unicode, Charis SIL text critical markup

References

  1. Daniel A. Werning. 28.7.2016. Egyptological Transliteration in Unicode, PID http://hdl.handle.net/21.11101/0000-0000-9E1A-2; Wikipedia, Ägyptische Hieroglyphen. In der elektronischen Datenverarbeitung.
  2. 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.