Unicase
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A unicase or unicameral
alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...
is a writing script that has no separate cases for its letters.
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
, Brahmic scripts like Telugu,
Kannada Kannada () is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka in southwestern India, and spoken by a minority of the population in all neighbouring states. It has 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a ...
,
Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...
, Tamil and
Devanagari Devanagari ( ; in script: , , ) is an Indic script used in the Indian subcontinent. It is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental systems: alphabets, writing system), based on the ancient ''Brāhmī script, Brā ...
,
Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
, Iberian, Georgian, Chinese, Syriac, Thai and
Hangul The Korean alphabet is the modern writing system for the Korean language. In North Korea, the alphabet is known as (), and in South Korea, it is known as (). The letters for the five basic consonants reflect the shape of the speech organs ...
are unicase writing systems, while scripts like
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, Greek,
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
, and
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...
are ''bicameral'', as they have two cases for each letter, e.g. B and b, Б and б, Β and β, or Բ and բ. Individual characters can also be called unicameral if they are used as letters with a generally bicameral alphabet but have only one form for both cases; for example, the ʻokina as used in Polynesian languages and the
glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...
as used in
Nuu-chah-nulth The Nuu-chah-nulth ( ; ), also formerly referred to as the Nootka, Nutka, Aht, Nuuchahnulth or Tahkaht, are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast in Canada. The term Nuu-chah-nulth is used to describe fifteen related tri ...
are unicameral. Most modern writing systems originated as unicase orthographies. The
Latin script The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...
originally had only
majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally '' majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing syste ...
forms directly derived from the Greek alphabet, which were originally viable for being chiseled into stone. During the Early Middle Ages, scribes developed new letterforms for use in running text that were more legible and faster to write with an ink pen, such as Carolingian minuscule. Originally, use of the two forms was mutually exclusive, but it became a common compromise to use both in tandem, which ultimately had additional benefits in areas such as legibility. The later minuscule became the "lowercase" forms, while the original majuscule became the "uppercase" forms. A modern unicase version of the Latin alphabet was proposed in 1982 by Michael Mann and David Dalby, as a variation of the Niamey
African Reference Alphabet The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal (one in English and a second in French) were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organi ...
, but has never seen widespread use. Another example of unicase Latin alphabet is the Initial Teaching Alphabet. Occasionally, typefaces make use of unicase letterforms to achieve certain aesthetic effects; this was particularly popular in the 1960s. While the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
is not used for ordinary writing of any language, its inventory does not make a semantic case distinction, even though some of its letters resemble uppercase and lowercase pairs found in other alphabets. Modern orthographies that lack a case distinction while using Latin characters include that used for the
Saanich dialect Saanich (also Sənčáθən, written as in Saanich orthography, ) is the language of the First Nations Saanich people in the Pacific Northwest region of northwestern North America. Saanich is a Coast Salishan language in the Northern Straits ...
in Canada, which uses majuscule letterforms save for a single suffix, and that used for
palawa kani Palawa kani is a constructed language created by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as a composite Tasmanian languages, Tasmanian language, based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various languages once spoken by the Abo ...
language in Tasmania, which uses only minuscule letterforms.


Web typography

"Unicase" has been specified as a display variant in the CSS standard. For example, one can use the property to render text as unicase in supported browsers. The underlying OpenType specification is the unic tag. Any given letter can be displayed as upper-case or lower-case according to the font design, unlike an all-caps display or use of small-caps for lower-case, but the same character is always displayed in that same case. On your system, this appears like so: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. The preceding sentence may or may not render in a distinctive way, depending on your browser. For instance, it may appear like this image: Since only the presentation of the text is styled, no actual case transformation is applied and readers are still able to copy the original plain text from the webpage.


See also

* Alphabet 26


References

{{Reflist *Georgian Nuskhuri, ''Unicode 4.1.0''

Orthography Typography