Re: Tamil sha (U+0BB6) - deprecate it?

From: Richard Wordingham (richard.wordingham@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sun Jun 26 2005 - 17:08:19 CDT

  • Next message: Patrick Andries: "Re: Tamil sha (U+0BB6) - deprecate it?"

     Sinnathurai Srivas wrote:

    > Unicode is not justified in forcing Tamil to accept a Sanskrit letter in
    > Tamil. It is like forcing French to accept a special character (say it
    > exists) ng to French.

    Actually, Unicode has added such a character, ŋ (U+014B), to the *script*
    used by the French *language*. I don't know how often it appears in French,
    but I have seen it in the spelling of Bangladesh on a map apparently in
    English, and it occasionally turns up in Indian names and terms written in
    English.

    The fact that a letter is available in the Tamil script block of Unicode
    does not force its use in the Tamil language, nor change whether or not it
    is grammatical in Tamil.

    From what SS writes, it seems that Tamils are desperate to borrow foreign
    words ultimately from Sanskrit, and that the Pure Tamil Movement needs all
    the help it can get to suppress Tamils with such desires. Protect Tamil!
    Deny Sanskritisers their characters!

    Is Tamil really so inadequate that such defences are needed?

    Richard.



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