The bug
When Unicode font is forced, GUI scale sizes 1 and 3 round up to the next "even" GUI scale size, even if that size would normally be disallowed because of the window being too small. This only happens when Unicode font is forced; if Unicode font is not forced this does not happen, even if the language uses the Unicode font (such as Arabic).
To Reproduce
This bug still affects 20w46a and up, but in a more subtle way: Forcing Unicode font in an odd numbered GUI scale does not round up the scale to the next even number immediately: Rather, it preserves the odd scale until the GUI scale is changed manually in the video settings (or until the game restarts). In this case, the rounding is applied even if the window is too small for the rounded-up GUI scale.
UPDATE: 1.16.5 and up pre 1.17 snapshot versions (including 1.16.5) have the pre-20w46a behaviour.
UPDATE 2: 1.17.1 has the pre-20w46a behaviour.
Can confirm for 1.13-pre8