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Unicode U+1807 is defined as a Mongolian punctuation and named “Mongolian Sibe Syllable Boundary Marker” (SSBM). The marker represents as the grapheme of the middle form of letter A.
The Unicode Standard, Version 5.0
Syllable Boundary Marker. U+1807 MONGOLIAN SIBE SYLLABLE BOUNDARY MARKER, which is derived from the medial form of the letter a (U+1820), is used to disambiguate syllable boundaries within a word. It is mainly used for writing Sibe, but may also occur in Manchu texts. In native Manchu or Sibe words, syllable boundaries are never ambiguous; when transcribing Chinese proper names in the Manchu or Sibe script, however, the syllable boundary may be ambiguous. In such cases, U+1807 may be inserted into the character sequence at the syllable boundary.
At first, I’m curious about SSBM.
1. The mark is not mentioned in any book.
2. It looks the same as the medial form of the letter a.
3. It is a mark, not a letter.
4. How to distinguish SSBM from the letter a?
5. Can it be used after or before all of the vowel letters?
6. Can it be used after or before a consonant letter?
I have discussed this with Sure. He gave me a few example from books published in Qing dynasty. I found some examples in Traditional Mongolian.
Two pages in 《點名簿》 (Dian Ming Bu):
Here i in pei is an informal form.
Take the name 耆英 (Qíyīng) as an example. There are three explanations:
1. ki|ing: The tooth (字牙) between ki and ing is SSBM.
2. kii^ng: The second i is followed by FVS1 to get the form of a tooth and long tooth (长牙).
3. kiing: The second i is transformed to the form of a tooth and long tooth automatically. (Suppose this is the default form for i after i.)
The Unicode Standard chose Option 1. I choose option 2. Some people will choose Option 3.
Wait a moment. Let’s refer to Traditional Mongolian – the double radical issue.
If a syllable is beginning with a vowel letter and the syllable is not the first syllable in a word, we need to put an additional tooth before the vowel letter of the syllable. The syllable in the front can end with a vowel or consonant letter.
A few intrinsic words in Mongolian have this kind of syllables.
See the Mongolian word in the right. The green tooth is n and the blue belly (字腹) is o. The red tooth is the one to separate the syllables. The red tooth and the blue belly together form o. It is not SSBM.
It’s said that the rule can be used before all vowel letters but a and e probably will follow another rule.
If we need such a mark, we can't name it as Mongolian Sibe Syllable Boundary Marker – we should name it as Mongolian Syllable Boundary Marker. But people will say that there is no Mongolian Syllable Boundary Marker in Mongolian.
We can't treat Mongolian and Sibe in different ways because they share the same writing system.
Then we should use the traditional way:
If a syllable is beginning with a vowel letter and the syllable is not the first syllable in a word, we need to put an additional tooth before the vowel letter of the syllable.
Put FVS1 after the vowel letter when input the word.
In Dao, x^ is recommended. But |x is also accepted. Here x is any of the vowels. |x is compatible with SSBM.
All the written forms of the vowels of Traditional Mongolian, Manchu and Sibe with the additional tooth.
Read my later post about a and e in this situation.
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