Re: [WMASTERS] Re: Old Orthography, response to Kalyan

[Bala Pillai <bala@apic.net>]

Dear Hal,

George has succinctlly addressed this. 

Just so I'm clear on this (off-the-encoding-not-glyph-topic) issue, a
question:-


At 09:06 AM 9/16/97 -0400, Harold F. Schiffman wrote:

>As those of us who were at the Tamilnet 97 conference in Singapore saw,
>Sri Lanka Tamils do not necessarily follow the so-called new orthography,
>nor are they required by international law or whatever to do so.  I think
>Tamils in India and elsewhere need to be aware of the tremendous feelings
>of being jerked around that SL Tamils often feel, and the executive
>decision by TN government to abandon the ORNL's may be one of them.
>
>Fortunately because it was only a
>> small change to the Tamil character set, it has become universally
>> accepted. 
>
>NOT!

Hal - can you help me pin this down some more. Okay it is not universal in
the 100% sense and no language will ever be unless we have a Shih Huang Ti
:-) But what do you think its acceptedness is? i.e. - choose a best guess
between 0 and 99.99 to denote what you mean by "NOT".

Re: Sri Lanka - what's your call on the bottom line - is the Tamil media
there using new or old? Can you be specific? I know that in both Malaysia
and Singapore all newspapers and school textbooks are in "new" form. 

I'm ccing this note to a Colombo-based Tamil.Net participant - we'll get
his concrete observations too.

regards.../bala
bala@tamil.net
sydney, australia

Note for Naren, Colombo: Naren - with regards to the usage of the old or
new Tamil characters for nai, rai and lai in Sri Lanka - can you confirm
which is more prevalent ( consider Tamil newspapers, textbooks, other
written material) - old or new? Please provide specific concrete
observations...anbudan...../bala


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