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Should initials() skip Burmese script, as it skips Han and Hangul? (ကြည် ကြည် ဌေး gives 'က. က. ဌ.') #1234
Description
R7 (no initials in a script that writes none) gives no initial for a word in Han, Hangul or kana. A Burmese word gets its first character with a period, which for a syllable with a medial is not even the syllable's onset as written (measured on ccaf6ad):
| Input | initials() |
|---|---|
ကြည် ကြည် ဌေး (Kyi Kyi Htay) |
က. က. ဌ. |
က ဇော ဦး (Kyaw Zaw Oo) |
က. ဇ. ဦ. |
ဦး နု |
ဦ. န. |
ကြည် begins with က plus the medial ြ (U+103C); its initial drops the medial, so ကြည် (Kyi) and က (Kyaw) both give က..
Questions
- Do Burmese writers ever abbreviate a name to a letter in Burmese script? I found none in the 2,604 Wikidata labels, but that is labels, not running text. If not, Myanmar joins R7's scripts.
- The same question stands for Thai and the other Brahmic scripts the parser reads (Devanagari writes initials, Should a Devanagari or Bengali initial like
एम.read as an initial, not a title? (एम. एस. वर्माgives titleएम. एस.) #1191, so the answer is per script, not per family). Ask it once for all of them? - If Burmese does write initials, should the initial keep the medials and the vowel sign that make up the onset (
ကြ.)?
Activity
derek73 commentedon Nov 9, 2026
On the question of the other Brahmic scripts: Sinhala and Tamil do write initials in their own script, so they shouldn't join R7's scripts. But
initials()doesn't give back the initial the writer wrote. Measured on master ccaf6ad over Wikidata's labels of Sri Lankan citizens (1,185 Sinhala, 1,520 Tamil): of the dotted one-syllable initials in them,initials()returns the same initial for 25 of 186 Sinhala and 118 of 464 Tamil, the ones that are a bare letter (ඒ.,க.). The rest lose the vowel sign or the virama:ඩී. එස්. සේනානායක(D. S. Senanayake)ඩ. එ. ස.ඩී. එස්. සේ.එම්. ඩබ්ලිව්. එච්. ද සිල්වාඑ. ඩ. එ. ද. ස.එම්. ඩබ්ලිව්. එච්.…எஸ். ஐ. நாகூர் கனிஎ. ஐ. ந. க.எஸ். ஐ.…மு. கருணாநிதிம. க.மு. க.Two kinds of initial are written:
එස්.S,ඩබ්ලිව්.W,எம்.M,டபிள்யூ.W. That's 69 of 186 in Sinhala and 146 of 464 in Tamil, andinitials()gives a different letter (එ.is E).ඩී.,කේ.,மு.,சு.,நா.. That's 92 of 186 and 200 of 464, andinitials()drops the sign, as R3 (initials honor the fold) says for "a mark that never composes with its letter".So for these two scripts the answer to the third question seems to be yes: an initial already written as an initial should come back whole, and a word's initial should keep its vowel sign (the syllable's onset as written). Whether a whole Sinhala or Tamil word's initial is the spelled Latin letter or the first syllable, the labels can't tell: both are written.
ჯეკ MA,ကြည် ကြည် ဌေး,एम. एस. वर्मा) #1256