Re: Tamil Collation vs Transliteration/Transcription Encoding

From: Sinnathurai Srivas (sisrivas@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: Sun Jun 26 2005 - 14:52:38 CDT

  • Next message: Richard Wordingham: "Re: Tamil Collation vs Transliteration/Transcription Encoding"

    Though this method is one, it was never a scientifically designed system.
    Unicode legitimising every dick and Harry publishing in Tamil is not the way
    to do things. Tamil is a very well throughout and sophisticated language.
    Changes or additions need to go through extensive research process.

    There are other advanced methods available to do transliteration. It is not
    for Unicode to legitimise ever dick and Harry.

    Numbered consonants also need to be deprecated as they have a major fault in
    relation to aytham. The numbered consonants discards defined properties of
    Aytham and goes on to create numerous number of aspirated consonants, as is
    done in other indic languages. Some one did not understand what an aytham
    created this numbered consonant that is now illegally legitimised by
    Unicode.

    Srivas

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "N. Ganesan" <naa.ganesan@gmail.com>
    To: "Unicode List" <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 4:09 PM
    Subject: Re: Tamil Collation vs Transliteration/Transcription Encoding

    Srivas wrote:
    >For example, Tamil writing system is based
    >on phonemic based Alphabet system, while
    >Devanagari is based on phonemic only system.
    >In Tamil k = k, h, g, x, q, c (mahaL, magan, makkan,
    >quil, xavier, etc..).

    In round trip transliteration between Indic scripts,
    a one-to-one letter correspondence between Tamil
    letters and other Indic scripts exist, and works
    quite well.

    This fact is recorded in the Tamil chapter of
    the Unicode standard also. The unicode std.
    mentions using 2,3,4 as subscripts on the
    Tamil letters (k, c, T, t, p in transliteration).
    There are hundreds of books existing using
    2,3,4 as subscripts or superscripts upon
    க், ச், ட், த், ப் (= k, c, T, t, p respectively in transliteration)
    to transliterate voiced and aspirated letters
    (called varga letters of k, c, T, t, p) on Indic scripts
    into Tamil.

    A proposal to change the text in the Standard
    mentioning 2,3,4 as subscripts and superscripts
    can easily be done. In it, will provide usage samples
    from Kannada, Telugu, Sanskrit, Hindi etc.,

    Because Tamil script is non-conjunct these
    2,3,4 super(sub)scripts come in handy.
    Tamil script is for writing Tamil language books,

    Of course, in Tamil Grantha script to write
    Sanskrit texts, the "varga" letters are independently
    defined, and they also conjugate heavily.
    The main difference between the two Southern scripts
    is the language it uses, the sort order and
    the nature of conjuncts in each.

    >In Devanagari individual glyph shapes represent
    >each of these phonemes. In Tamil aspirated and
    >many other sounds are written using a single
    >modulating indicator called Aytham,

    Quite untrue.

    Devanagari and other Indic scripts'
    aspirated letters are never written in Tamil script
    books with Aytham (in Unicode, Tamil Visarga sign).
    The super(/sub) scripts 2 and 4 are used
    for unvoiced aspirate and voiced aspirate letter
    for each of the 5 varga letter in Tamil script
    transliteration.

    N. Ganesan

    >yet an
    >unacceptably high number of code points
    >allocated for Tamil is deprecated and made
    >unusable because of this
    >transliteration encoding that never works.



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