P8: Marathi eyelash RA

Last updated: November 7, 2004

TDIL proposes the encoding of

The representative glyph is an eyelash RA.

The Dravidian languages have a retracted R sound, which is still written in modern Malayalam using the sign and in modern Tamil using the sign ; that sound is written in older Telugu using the sign , and in older Kannada using the sign . (older is very relative; e.g. the Telugu sign was still taught a few decades ago). Those signs have the usual inherent vowel, which is "removed' in writing by the usual devices (half-form, explicit virama, whatever).

Those four signs are encoded as characters: U+0D31 റ MALAYALAM LETTER RRA, U+0BB1 ற TAMIL LETTER RRA, U+0C31 ఱ TELUGU LETTER RRA and U+0CB1 ಱ KANNADA LETTER RRA.

Hindi does not have that sound, and the “core” Devanagari script does not contain a sign for it.

In order to transcribe the Dravidian languages in Devanagari, the combination of a RA with a nukta is used as the target of the various RRA signs. (although this may not be universal, the Malayalam പ്ലാറ്റ്ഫൊമില്‍ [PA-VIR-LA-AA.RRA-VIR-RRA-VIR-PHA-O.MA-I.chilluLA] (platform) seems to be transcribed प्लाटफ़ोमिल [PA-VIR-LA-A.TTA.FA-O.MA-I.LA] - see the TDIL doc on Malayalam, colloquial examples)

The sign [eyelash-RA] is used when writting Marathi, Nepali and Newari.

It is used contrastively in those orthographies with the RA: e.g. Marathi आचार्यास [AA.CA-A.RA-VIR-YA-A.SA] “to the teacher” vs. आचार्‍यास [AA.CA-A.eyelashRA-YA-A.SA] “to the cook”; or Marathi दर्या [DA.RA-VIR-YA-AA] /darya/ “ocean” vs. दर्‍या [DA.eyelashRA-YA-AA] /darya/ (valleys) .

The sign [RA + nukta] is not used natively in those orthographies (but is presumably used when transcribing from the Dravidian languages).

Unicode 2.0 prescribes the use of RA+VIR+ZWJ to represent the eyelash-RA. This is captured in what was then rule R5 (which is now rule R5a, with the words “for compatibility with Unicode 2.0” inserted).

ISCII1991 encoded the RRA (at D0 208) and gave it the name “Consonant Hard RA (Southern Scripts)”. ISCII also described the eyelash-RA as the half-form of the RRA (on page 12, under a note).

However, there is no basis to make the eyelash-RA the half-form of RRA. Those two signs have different origins.

Unicode 3.0/4.0 reflected this choice, in what is now rule R5: “for conformance with ISCII, the half-consonant form RRA_h is rendered as eyelash-RA: RRA + VIR renders as [eyelash-RA]”.

From Acharya’s A descriptive grammar of Nepali.

Acharya states that Nepali syllables are of the syllabic peak type, with a vowel as the peak. He analyzes the syllables as (C)(G)V(G)(C), where the first C is the onset consonant, G is a glide (/y/ or /w/) he calls the pre-peak satellite, V is the peak vowel, G is a glide, the post-peak satellite, and C is the coda consonant. The Cs and Gs are optional.

Pre-peak glides, which pronounced more like consonants, are written with य and व. Post-peak glides, which are pronounced more like vowels, are written with इ and उ.

Words borrowed from Sanskrit retain their original orthography, i.e. there can be written with CC clusters in word-initial position, which does not match the syllable structure. The majority of the speakers pronounce those clusters according to the Nepali syllable structure, using epenthesis (insertion of a vowel sound between the consonants, e.g. trāsa pronounced /taraːs/), metathesis (transposition of the vowel sound, e.g. pramāṇa pronounced /parmaːn/), deletion (e.g. stotra pronounced /totra/) or replacement (e.g. jñāna pronounced /gyaːn/).

He then describes the display of र in a conjunct:

when र is the second member of a conjunct: either as a stroke attached to the first member (eg on प), circumflex-like shape below (eg on ट), or special case (eg. on ह, inside the bottom loop)

when the symbol र stands for the phoneme /r/ that is in the onset position of the second syllable as in CV.CGV structure, the /r/ is represented by the symbol [eyelash-ra], e.g. पर्‍यो pa.ryo 'it fell in', गर्‍यो ga.ryo 'he did it'.

when the symbol र stands for the phoneme /r/ that is in the coda position of the the [sic] first syllable as in CVC.CV, the /r/ is represented by the symbol [reph] e.g. गर्न gar.na 'to do (inf.)', मर्न mar.na'to die (inf.)'.

(The last two points are verbatim from the book).

I checked the rest of the book. The only other relevant example I could find is दोहोर्‍या-ए, dohorya-e 'repeated'. Another interesting case is भित्र्याइसकी bhitryā.isaki, which shows (I believe) that a ra following a ta will preferably form a conjunct with it, rather than take an eyelash-ra form.

I could not find an example of ra onset + va.

See Berntsen’s A Marathi reference grammar, pages 21 and 22.

The eyelash vs. repha is based on the position of र in its syllable, much like Acharya describes.

See Kale’s Leaning Marathi, pages XXVI, XXVII and XXVIII.

Again, the eyelash vs. repha is based on the position of र in its syllable.

First draft of a paper for the UTC.

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