Dear Mark Davis, Antoine Leca,
Actually in Thamizh, the alpahebet Aayitham (triangular dots) which look like,
o
o o
is not a vowel (even though listed at the end of vowel list) and not a consonent and not a combination letter. The actual pronounsation is Akh (normally end with a sound when teeths strike each other). This is a very rarely used alphabet.
We can only see this letter to be used in olden scripts and old literatures. And used before or after other alphabets in a word to give a stress to the pronounsation of that pirticular alphabets.
For example in Thamizh "Athu" means "that". Some times we can find Aayitham inside "Athu" as "Aakhthu' and should be pronounced as 'Akhthu". and will not change the meaning. Here akh should be pronounced as 'H' with the internal pronounsation of 'K'. We can find alphabets like Aayitham in Arabic Alphabets.
In mordern Thamizh, Aayitham is used in conjunction with 'P' to give the pronouncation of 'F', like 'Ph'.
Thanks
- Padmakumar. R.
(padmaxi_unicode@hotmail.com)
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----- Original Message -----
From: Antoine Leca <Antoine.Leca@renault.fr>
To: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>
Cc: Unicode List <unicode@unicode.org>; <stone_catend@compuserve.com>
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 9:25 PM
Subject: Classification of Tamil Aytam [Was: Script Names]
Mark Davis wrote on the Unicode list:
>
> Why do you think that U+0B83 should be an L*?
>
> Antoine Leca wrote:
>
> > - this also remains me of the status of Tamil aytam U+0B83 "TAMIL SIGN
> > VISARGA", which is tagged "Mc", while it appears it may be a real letter
> > instead (but it cannot begin a word)
["Mc" means "combining mark", that is the classification of the visargas.]
Well, I defer to the Tamil experts (I hope there are some of them since that
Tamil Nadu have decided to participate to the Unicode consortium).
Anyway, here is my analysis:
Based on several sources (among these, Dr. Stone's pages at
<URL:http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/tr6.htm#ayt>,
while the references can be reached from
<URL:http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/stone_catend/trframed.htm>,
I understand that unification (in ISCII) of visarga with the Tamil symbol
named âytam is not completely true, and should be taken with care.
Then, from some (written) conversations with Tamil speaking persons,
I got the impression that âytam is viewed much like another letter,
and quite not as a modifier like the visarga is. For example, visarga
is never shown alone, but always follows a vowel, usually independent a.
OTOH, aaytam was spelled independently by Tamil speakers when I asked
them about the collating order.
But as I said before, this is much more personnal impression rather than
a definitive option, and I am sure Tamil people should be more trusted
than I am on this subject. For example, I have no idea of the way
Sanskrit visargas are written when the Grantha script is used (assuming
that the Grantha script should re-use the Tamil codepoints, which is
another debate).
Antoine
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