[idn] Re: language scripts classified

["Soobok Lee" <lsb@postel.co.kr>]

Some corrections.
someone suggests that these two should be moved to #1.
These are modern scripts used by some minorities. sorry.

Syriac: only used for for liturgical purpose 
Unified Canadian ABoriginal Syllables:  

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Soobok Lee 
To: idn@ops.ietf.org 
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2001 9:28 AM
Subject: language scripts classified


While gathering  usage frequency data for many language scripts,
I classified them into 6 categories (see enclosed ):

  Will all of these scripts  be frequently  used in IDN ?
  At least #3 archaic scripts and #4 won't and 
  for #1 and #2 , i am neutral yet.
  I am working on #5.

I can find many similarities and ambiguities across these language scripts.
Many Indian language scripts came from the same mother language 
'Brahmi' and have  similarly-looking scripts and numerals .

 see http://www.omniglot.com/writing/yi.htm


Soobok Lee 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

#0  already in ML.com testbed  (I got huge usage frequency samples for these)
Hebrew:
Arabic:
Thai:
Hindi(Devanagari):
Cyrillic:
Greek:
Hiragana:
Katakana:
Hangul:
Han Ideograph:


#1 few native speakers

Georgian: < 3.5 millions
Cherokee:  100,000 (North America)
Thaana  :  100,000 (Maldives)
Armenian:   2 millions


#2 two languages in one country:

bengali: Indian language ( > 180 millions )
gujarati: Indian language  
gurmukhi: Indian language
kannada: Indian language
malayalam: Indian language
oriya: Indian language
telugu: Indian language

tibetan : chinese (mainland china)   , < 5 milliions
yi syllables: chinese (mainland china), < 5 millions


#3 Archaic
Ogham: 
Runic:
Gothic:
Syriac: only used for for liturgical purpose 
Unified Canadian ABoriginal Syllables:


#4 Written only vertically
mongolian:  (once had been abolished and restored)


#5  others

sinhala : Sri lanka
tamil : Sri lanka
khmer : Camobodian
lao  : Laos, Thai
ethiopic : Ethiopia
myanmar : Burmese