Re: [indic] Re: Discussion about two Telugu consonant signs...

From: N. Ganesan (naa.ganesan@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2006 - 09:42:07 CST

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    Richard W. wrote:
    >There's a complication in using nakarapollu for final /n/ in
    >the word 'pooyen', now written పోయెన్. Apart from
    >the issue of how 0C2A 0C4B 0C28 0C4D 0C2F 0C46
    >(PA + OO + NA + virama + YA + E) should be rendered with a
    >font etc. supporting nakarapollu, there is an argument that,
    >as the former could be read as 'poonye', that one should
    >encode the nakarapollu-using 'pooyen' as
    >0C2A 0C4B 0C2F 0C46 0C4D 0C28 (PA + OO + YA + E + virama + NA).
    >The argument is the precedent of Khmer (TUS Figure 10.3),
    >where [ha@i] 'already' is encoded as HA +OE + coeng + YA
    >rather than HA+coeng+YA+OE. (There is a difference in this
    >case *unless* the rendering is wrong - the vowel appears above
    >the HA, whereas for a stack with a spacing subscript
    >consonant superscript vowels normally align with the superscripts
    >ascender on the hanging baseline.) A related argument is the
    >dictionary order - PA + OO + YA + E + virama + NA would
    >sort close to PA + OO + YA + E + NA + virama, the modern spelling.

    Richard, I don't think the tradition of spelling in Telugu
    words need to be changed, code point sequence should
    reflect Telugu dictionaries, is it not? Take Sanskrit
    words, brahma, brAhmaNa 'brahmin', subrahmaNya 'Lord Murukan
    of Dravidian culture', vahni 'fire' - they are spoken out
    as bramha, brAmhaNa, vanhi. But still the spellings do not
    change in Indian scripts.

    ----------------------

    Let us say we have in (future) Unicode
    MALAYALAM SIGN CILLU with a dotted circle in front
    (cf. malayalam sign virama)
    which can be annotated as
    " . works upon ka, na, nna, la, lla, llla, ra, ta and ma
      . can occur word-medially or word-finally"

    Because Telugu nakarapollu (I think Kent said
    he does not know the meaning of n., it's 'pulli on letter NA' )
    is Telugu equivalent of cillakSaram,
    a Unicode code-point in Telugu codechart will be
    TELUGU SIGN CILLU at a codespot parallel with
    MALAYALAM SIGN CILLU.
    (cf. tamil sign virama, using a sanskrit name.
    cillu 'small/fragment etc.' is common all
    4 Dravidian languages and has cognates).
    The future TELUGU SIGN CILLU codepoint
    can be annotated (something like) as
    " . works upon letter NA
      . called nagarapollu "

    have given some 25+ cillaksarams attested
    in Dravidian language scripts, and the cillu
    sign will come in other Dravidian scripts also.

    An appropriate and parallel naming convention
    is after danda sign disunification in Unicode:
    DEVANAGARI DANDA
    DEVANAGARI DOUBLE DANDA
    BENGALI DANDA
    BENGALI DOUBLE DANDA
    TAMIL DANDA
    TAMIL DOUBLE DANDA
    KANNADA DANDA
    KANNADA DOUBLE DANDA
    ORIYA DANDA
    ORIYA DOUBLE DANDA
    etc.,
    -----------------------------

    A.Leca>> How does it deal with valapalagilaka
    >>(the old-fashioned repha-like)? Another
    >symbol? ZWJ?

    NV> Possibly. If you are going to design a
    >special symbol, this is a very good scenario -
    >to signal something that is rarely seen.

    I agree. Overburdening joiners is not the solution,
    one problem is they get ignored in collation
    (Eg. K.SSA conjunct or non-conjunct with zwnj
    in Tamil words are the same words, hence can
    be treated equivalent.) But not the valapalagilaka,
    nakarapollu - their occurence in a Telugu text,
    tho' less frequent, is important and needs to
    be diffrentiated.

    A codepoint in Telugu codechart with a
    valapalagilaka mark is recommended.

    N. Ganesan



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