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> From: Mark blum <blummark@gmail.com> > Subject: printing diacritics > > > I am troubled by a publisher claiming that Buddhist words in English > dictionaries can no longer retain their diacritical marks. It is my > understanding that the major reason why publishers balked at > including diacritics had to do with printing issues, as the people > in the printing factory setting type had difficulties with such > characters. As I understand it, the simple rule is that the English language does not include diacritics. Hence words determined to be English (I imagine by dint of their being included in an English dictionary) *should not* have diacritics. I personally am not a purist in this regard, tho I usually do follow this guideline. > Another reason why the form of a word that appears in a English > language dictionary without its diacritics should not legitimate > that form of the word as the only publishable form in English is > that words like nirvana have come to mean something in Western > culture that can be quite different than their Buddhist or Indian > usage precisely because they have become English words. If I want to > make sure the reader knows I am talking about the Buddhist sense of > nirvāṇa, I will insist it is printed with the diacritics to > distinguish it from the English word nirvana. > If this is the case, then I would suggest that you put your _nirvāṇa_ in italics to really indicate that you mean the "Buddhist sense" (or do you really mean to say "Sanskrit sense," as opposed to the Chinese sense or Japanese sense or Shinran's sense rather than Nichiren's, etc.-- I leave to your imagination how to do all that). I guess we have left simple orthography and are into the swamp of meaning now. I would vote to put the list up, hopefully with the English dictionary in which it is found, with diacritics, and let everybody make their own choices. Lordy only knows what the _pṛthagjana_ will make of tathagatagarbha, but hey. . . only eggheads care about distinguishing a bahuvrihi from a _tatpuruṣa_ (and I really have no idea which of those might actually be English these days). Jamie Smith College -- H-Buddhism (Buddhist Scholars Information Network) Web Site: http://www.h-net.org/~buddhism Posting Guidelines: http://www.h-net.org/~buddhism/posting_guidelines.html Account Handling: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=h-buddhism
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