Talk:Iotated A

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move as per the last message in the discussion. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:30, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Jotated A (Cyrillic) → A iotified — In conformance with other characters in Wikipedia and with Unicode naming conventions — Лудольф (talk) 18:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• The title A iotified does not show that Cyrillic A is meant, rather than a Roman or Greek A. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 19:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• True, but neither does the existing E iotified, etc. While I have no objection in principle to "A iotified (Cyrillic)", it would involve further renaming. More to the point, is there any evidence that either iotified Latin A or iotified Greek Α actually exists? They're not in Unicode. Лудольф (talk) 19:39, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• See polytonic orthography for ᾼ, a iotified alpha. It is not the same sound as Cyrillic, but that does not decrease the confusion potential. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Is a vowel with ὑπογεγραμμένη usually (or indeed ever) called "iotified"? In the sort of linguistics that I'm familiar with, a jotated, or iotated, or in Unicode-speak iotified vowel is one preceded by a [j]. Historically, indeed, a vowel with ὑπογεγραμμένη was followed by a [j], but do people actually refer to this as iotification? In any case, the question we're dealing with relates strictly to characters (graphemes) which originated as ligatures of Ι + existing vowel-character. I'm fairly confident that there are none such in Greek. Лудольф (talk) 15:11, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A is the English name of the first Cyrillic letter. A is not the name of Greek alpha. On its own it could be confusable with Latin a, but there is no ambiguity because there is no Latin letter iotated a. Therefore, the disambiguation “(Cyrillic)” is not required.

But... The English word iotified seems to be made up by the Unicode people – it is only used in their code-point charts and nowhere else, and iotify and iotification are completely absent from English. Iotize(d)/iotization is found in the OED, and is in use since ~1850s–80s. Iotate(d)/iotation has been in use since ~1940s–70s.

So I think it would be best if someone put together a proposal to move all four of the respective articles to a correct form, using the more conventional English iotized, and in a grammatical adjective-noun form: Iotized A, Iotized E, Iotized Yat, Iotation →Palatalization in Slavic languages. The respective articles need some editing. Sorry, but I don't have the time to do this myself. —Michael Z. 2009-04-04 16:49 z

True, alpha is Α. Can you see the difference between Α and A? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Iotize has a single quotation in the OED, and they call it "rare". This is likely to mean that it was a nonce-coinage in 1880, which was used once and has failed to catch on. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In principle, yes. In practice, though iotization may be the older word, I have never come across it in this context, whereas iotation is used by Horace Lunt's OCS grammar and in Oscar E. Swann's three books on OCS published last year, iotated in Simon Franklin's "Writing, society and culture in early Rus" and even by Unicode for glagolitic characters (2C27, 2C29, 2C57, 2C59), so it is well attested in contemporary scholarly writing on this subject (and these are only the books I've checked, there are bound to be more). Therefore I would proposed moving to Iotated A and Iotated E, and leaving Iotated Yat under Yat (though that article really does need editing), as there is so little to be said about it. The article on Iotation is so bad that it would probably be best deleted altogether. Would that satisfy everyone? Лудольф (talk) 21:02, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• There is still possibiity for inaccurate descriptions confusing some people between Cyrillic iotated vowela and Greek iota-subscript letters. At least we need disambig hatlinks between the two ideas. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:53, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Right, then. I started off calling it Jotated A (Cyrillic), and it looks as though if I’d spelt it “iotated” everyone would have been happy. This also has the advantage of corresponding to A (Cyrillic), which is the heading for А. It therefore seems that the best solution would be to move Ꙗ and Ѥ to Iotated A (Cyrillic) and Iotated E (Cyrillic) respectively.
But... (as they say) E (Cyrillic) is at present the heading for Э, while Е is called Ye (Cyrillic), so that also introduces an inconsistency. “Iotated Ye” would be an absurdity, so either we live with the inconsistency or else we rename Е and Э “E (Cyrillic)” and “Reversed E (Cyrillic)”. I think the latter would be better in principle, and have serious doubts about whether it is to be preferred in practice.
I realise I’ve started another hare here, so in order not to confuse the discussion, let me say is that what I now propose is to move Ꙗ and Ѥ to Iotated A (Cyrillic) and Iotated E (Cyrillic) (and only this). If there are no objections, I will do it. I am not proposing to do anything to Е and Э. People may, however, like to discuss them. Лудольф (talk) 08:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.