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

["Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>]

> 
> 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. 

Bala,

If you want me to say something like "in a given day, of the number of
people who pick up a pen (or other writing instrument, or type on a
keyboard) X percent use new LRN's and Y percent use OLRN's, I can't give
you a figure.  Certainly Tamilnadu's millions of speakers and users
overwhelms any dissidents left either in the aging population in TN or
elsewhere (Sri Lanka etc.)  I do not receive Tamil printed materials from
SL because of the troubles there; haven't seen anything from there in a
long while, so I can't answer.  

If numbers are to be crunched, the numbers will crunch the old users,
certainly.  I await a response from someone in Sri lanka who has thoughts
about this, or Sri Lanka Tamils in asylum in other countries to voice
their thoughts...

Hal Schiffmanb