Re: [WMASTERS] charset and grantha

[Nagarajan Chinnasamy <nagu@ncms1.cb.lucent.com>]

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Dear Selvakumar, Mani, Kathiravan Dr.Kalyan and others,

My comments on the contents of your webpage:

  1. "aq" + a = ha is an excellent idea. It comes very naturally
     Thats very important. Though lot of suggestions sound very
     logical, it should look very simple and natural for the
     people to adopt it. I think aq+a=ha can be successfully
     implemented.

  2. For other letters (sa, sha, and ja), I dont find them so
     natural as "aq"+a=ha. But I really appreciate the idea
     behind that. Yes you have used those letters that pulls
     tongue inside and converts the sound of "ca" to sa, sha
     and ja. But it is still a kind of technique. I doubt if
     people will take it. You can notice that this technique
     works very naturally in the case of aq+a=ha.

  3. Also, usage of z and nj will become ambiguous.

  4. Same point applies to G, D and B sounds.

  5. For F sound, as you said we can use aq+v=f technique.

  6. Regarding aq+p, I think its actually used in the place
     of "ph" sound not in the "f" sound.

     Eg. pharmacy is written as aq pa r ma ci


One more point I want to add (which you have mentioned in you web
page) is:
   **We have grammar** to support these sounds in majority of the
   cases. In the name of finding new letters/letter combinations
   we should make these rules ambiguous and we should leave these
   rules behind. If we do that, I dont know what will be there to
   say that it is Tamil.

Regarding your encoding again:
    I just want to warn(please do not think that I am discouraging you
    and its not used in a harsh way) any of the effort of this kind
    that We should always have the simplicity of Tamil in mind. Touching
    the script (particularly adding something to it based on the sound)
    should be avoided as much as possible. We should not just think
about
    the sounds that have come into Tamil in these recent(say 100/200)
years
    and add a letter to the script. If that is the rate a script gets
    modified (particularly addtions based on new sounds!), We'll not
have
    Tamil after 1000 years.

anbudan,
nagu.
PS: I do not know anything about linguistics. But somehow I love Tamil
    in all of its present form(except for some difficulties that we
    face in ukara uukaara varisai).

C.R. Selvakumar wrote:
> 
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>     iNaiya naNbarkaLE:
> 
>     vaNakkam.
> 
>     First I want to thank Prof. Hart, Kumar, Maa Angiah and
>     Kathir for expressing their views about one or both
>     of my two proposals about characters to be used in tamil and
>     in the context of tamil-computing.
> 
>     I know many must be very busy at this time, but
>     I would like to hear comments ( positive or negative or neutral),
>     if it would be possible, from Tamil Nadu Standardization Committee
>     members, Muthu, Dr. K. Srinivasan, Kalyan, Thiru Naa Govidasamy, Thiru
>     Anbarasan, Thiru Nagu Chinnasamy,
>     Mani Manivannan, Dr.N. Kannan of Germany, Dr. Anu, Dr. Sam
>     Swaminathan, and several others like Gopinath, Dr. Vasu Ranganathan
>     Dr. Kuppusamy(kalvi) et al.
> 
>     I've briefly described  a proposal for writing an extended
>     set of non-tamil phonemes. You can visit
>     the following URL for more details:
> 
>        http://valluvar.uwaterloo.ca/~selvakum/grantha.html
> 
>     The merit of this system is that we avoid 8 or more explicit symbols
>     but still we represent more phonemes. If we use this system even a
>     few times, I believe, we'll quickly be able to assimilate the idea.
>     When we read a word, normally we don't read all the individual
>     letters but our eyes quickly pick up 'patterns' and learn to associate
>     with the trained 'sound', so I believe, it won't take long for us
>     to learn to ignore the first pure mey in a word that helps to modify the
>     following letter etc.
> 
>     The second proposal is more conventional in the sense I've retained
>     four common grantha letters plus the sri symbol, but I've added
>     a symbol for 'fa' which looks very close to tamil 'va'. In addition
>     I've suggested a new uyir (Ekaarath thiriboli which we can call it
>     vERREkaaram, or puththEkaaram) for which I've provided two symbols.
>     This second proposal is at the URL
> 
>       http://valluvar.uwaterloo.ca/~selvakum/newtamil.html
> 
>     The drawback of the second proposal is it can not represent
>     additional phonemes like G, B , Dh, D at the beginning of a
>     word. Of course we can adopt a part of the previous proposal
>     but that would be mixing two approaches less optimally.
> 
>     Further I've provided a character table, for a start, where the
>     positions I've chosen can be changed, based on other considerations,
>     if need be. I've devoted two places for diacritical markers
>     specifically for a later needs such as  to denote other phonemes.
>     I've included greek symbol mu ( since it is used for micro meter and
>     other purposes as well), copyright symbol and registered trade mark
>     symbol. I've omitted nju, njU, ngu, ngU, but I've indicated how
>     these can be written if ever we need to use. Also I've omitted
>     the numerical symbols for 10, 100, 1000. In tamil we have symbols
>     for various fractions etc. but these are not needed today. We
>     need to move forward with some insight and also as Kumar puts it
>     with some backward compatibility.
> 
>     When you find time please give some thought and consideration.
> 
>     Thanks
> 
>     anbudan selvaa
> 
> _______________________
> @
> @The attempts by Selva is remarkable in trying to
> @write grantha characters.  On the other hand in his
> @character set he is adding another grantha (?) character
> @for fh sound.
> @
> @I really like the idea of writing the grantha by using
> @"oitham".  It will take a humongous effort to train ourselves
> @to write in that fashion.  May be new grammer rules have to
> @be built to handle these styles.
> @
> @On the other hand, having these  characters provides
> @flexibility to the language to express some sounds
> @that are not present in the system.  So what we should
> @do:  Add more grantha characters (like fh) or drop all
> @these characters and resort for "Aitham"?
> @
> @One best way is to keep these grantha characters for
> @transition in the character set and encourage people
> @to write these without grantha characters,  use alternate
> @Tamil words (Like Maa. Angiah's efforts) and eventually
> @we may one day be able to live without these extra
> @characters.  Until then, we should have them.  I always
> @expects a backward compatibility to the earlier systems
> @how so ever  falty the earlier system is.  It may be
> @hindering the development in rocket speed but will allow
> @everyone to catch-up with the development.
> @
> @Even when E.V.Ra introduced new schemes to get rid of ORNL
> @the T.N. Govt., did not phase out these ORNL over night.  They
> @allowed a time period for everyone to change and adapt to the new
> @system.  That is the way it should be.
> @
> @Kumar Mallikarjunan, Ph.D.
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