> > - Is the present hamza convention a development of the two vertical dots > proposal, or are they unrelated? About a year ago I worked with several > Afghan expatriates living in Southern California, and in handwriting they > would typically join two diacritical dots as a squiggle rather than a line > (which is more common in Arabic). One could see how two vertical dots might > develop into a vertical squiggle and later into a hamza, especially given > the note by Vladimir Ivanov cited below. But this is only a conjecture at > this point. >
This sounds pretty much plausible, anyway it seems more plausible than an "original" hamza. In that case U+0682 would be actually a glyph variant of U+0682. Anyway, I'm quite interested in the outcome of yours and others' investigation into that matter. Szabolcs
