RE: Virama after vowel in Indic

From: Andy White (Andy__White@btinternet.com)
Date: Sat Mar 01 2003 - 15:53:33 EST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "RE: Virama after vowel in Indic"

    I think that one of my explanations got a bit muddled in my last post -
    so I am reiterating it here - sorry!

    Anitra wrote:
    > > >As per history of the letter A_YAPAHALAA_AA, there is no
    > > > mention of this composite in original "Varna
    > > > Parichay- Part 2" by Iswarchandra Vidyasagar,
    > > > -unanimously considered by bengalies the original
    > > >alphabet of modern Bengali. This was probably added later to
    > > >tranliterrate words like Academic from English.

    And then Michael Everson wrote in reply:
    > > This is not correct. For example, in Sanskrit and Bengali, we have
    > > the word pratyeka 'each, every'. This is derived from the Sanskrit
    > > root prati (expressing likeness or comparison) plus eka 'one'. In
    > > Sanskrit orthography i + e becomes ye and is so written. Now in
    > > Bengali this word also exists and in both languages what is written
    > > is PA + VIRAMA + RA + TA + VIRAMA + YA + E + KA.

    Michael, you are mistaken here, Anitra was referring to the composite
    letter ' A_YAPAHALAA_AA' and not the composite letter sign
    'YAPAHALAA_AA' which - yes - has been around for *quite some time*)

    Viramas and vowels should not & do not mix in the Unicode encoding
    scheme. That is why we have Vowel Signs.
    E.g. The syllable 'KU' is semantically equivalent to a composite of 'Ka'
    and the Full-Vowel letter 'U'.
    It is encoded as 'Ka' + 'VowelSignU' in the Unicode scheme.
    It could also be said that 'KU' can be encoded as 'Ka'+'Virama'+
    'Full-Vowel letter U' In fact that is just the way it *is* done in some
    existing input methods :- but that would not be in line with the Unicode
    Indic encoding scheme, would it.

    (Incidentally that is also why the example in TUS3.0, Chapter 9, page
    214, Figure 9-3 ("Conjunct Formations"), example (4) is also wrong.
    (references as previously discussed on this list many times before).
    That example 'conjunct' is correctly encoded as Ra+'VowelSignVocalicR'
    in Unicode and not as shown - perhaps you could see that it is corrected
    in TUS4.0

    Thanks

    Andy

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