New Thread - Isolates

NEW THREAD - ISOLATES

We have had some comments on Mongolian isolates so far - could we start from the ground up with the discussion? Let's say that we are teaching a young student how to type Mongolian. This person only knows the alphabet and you are beginning to teach him the orthography. So, you start with the U1800.pdf chart and teach him/her the letters 1820-1842. You show him/her the keyboard and where to find the various characters. He/she is typing fine and getting all of the variants, positional and otherwise fine. Then he/she begins to look more closely at the chart and he/she asks "What is that figure there called an isolate?" and points to the 1820 Second Isolate character. Not so hard - you explain that this is a word used in isolation - all by itself to express surprise as in the English "ahhh".  Seems to be no problem.

He/she looks down the list and finds the 1824 second isolate and notices that it is identical to the 1823 presentation form and asks why. I explain that the two letters are identical in form at the medial position - even being identical with the 1825 and 1826. Then I explain that 1823 and 1824 are identical in the initial position but different from 1825/1826 in the initial position. I go on to explain that all four letters are distinctly different in form when not connected to any other letter. I add some simple explanation about the linguistic distinction between front vowels and back vowels, but keep it simple, and the student is satisfied. This is how I teach on the distinctions/similarities within the 1823-1826 vowel set.

Could we look first at our various font implementation's shaping of 1820-183B in isolation? Not the variants yet ...

MS BAITI
[cid:image003.jpg@01D0ED7E.0C71EF40]


FANGZHEN
[cid:image009.jpg@01D0ED7E.0C71EF40]


NOTOSANS
[cid:image007.jpg@01D0ED7B.F9AEFEE0]


WHITE
[cid:image008.jpg@01D0ED7B.F9AEFEE0]


BS MONGOLIANSCRIPT
[cid:image010.jpg@01D0ED7E.0C71EF40]



MENKHGHUL
NOT AVAILABLE

So, my first question is - should we not make all of our isolated letters unique? As they are on the keyboard, so they will be on the screen?
Do we have to match entirely the method of the past where the 1823 was written with the quill pen in the same fashion as the 1824? The 1825 identical with the 1826?
It would seem in the digital age that we are that this is one area of change, that would be legitimate, it would benefit the student/user young and old.
This discussion is limited now just to the Mongolian proper script. The same issues come up with the Todo, Manchu, and Sibe.
I am preparing the other three scripts now.

Greg