Add Revised Accented Character Support for Na-Dené (Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit) Languages

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Add Revised Accented Character Support for Na-Dené (Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit) Languages

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Na-Dené Characters.png

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The Na-Dené (Athabaskan–Eyak–Tlingit) family of languages are found across western North America, from Alaska to México. There are a variety of contemporary transcription methods for these languages: the most popular in the United States requires the acute and ogonek accents. Diné Bizaad (Navajo) – the most popular Na-Dené language in use – relies on the acute/ogonek transcription method for typeset text.

Accents are used predominantly on vowels, and are a form of guidance on suitable pronunciation. The acute accent indicates a raised tone, and the ogonek indicates adding a nasal tone. Therefore:

• a = normal tone, oral only
• a-acute = higher tone, oral only
• a-ogonek = normal tone, oral & nasal
• a-acute-ogonek = normal tone, oral & nasal

These accents are used on all five standard vowels (a, e, i, o & u). Some Na-Dené use additional accented consonant characters, such as ‘n-acute’ in Diné Bizaad.

Na-Dené languages always use a centre-positioned ogonek accent on characters, rather than the right-aligned position used in Europe by languages like Polish. Because few typefaces include support for centre-positioned ogonek accents, it has become customary to typeset Na-Dené using right-aligned ogonek accents as a last resort.

The Source family of typefaces already includes partial support for Na-Dené accented characters, but could be improved by adding centre-positioned ogonek accent support for the following characters:

• A-ogonek
• A-acute-ogonek
• E-ogonek
• E-acute-ogonek
• I-ogonek
• I-acute-ogonek
• O-ogonek
• O-acute-ogonek
• U-ogonek
• U-acute-ogonek
• a-ogonek
• a-acute-ogonek
• e-ogonek
• e-acute-ogonek
• i-ogonek
• i-acute-ogonek
• o-ogonek
• o-acute-ogonek
• u-ogonek
• u-acute-ogonek

Many thanks
Andrew