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Re: [WMASTERS] vikramAthithanum vEthALamum




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   Thanks Kannan and Velmurugan for your kind words.
   I read the Vikramathiththan story but didn't think
   I should reply. I'll try to clarify here.
   I'm not sure I'll succeed.

   Please read on..

*In a message dated 97-10-05 17:37:03 EDT, pvmurugan@usa.net write:
*
*<< I beg to differ here. At first, any new idea will seem to be far from
* reality. But in reality, they are not. Take the case of New aikAra
* letters(in stead of ORNL's). How many people are exposed to the new scheme?
* Had not the old letters well established? How the transition has been made
* possible? I'm not talking about long long ago. It happened nearly 20 years
* ago. And the new letters have been accepted and become standard. 
* 
* I'm not telling that we should ignore Grantha letters. But we should think
* of other possibilities also. Discarding something new only because it's more
* different from the old or there'll be lot of practical problems implementing
* that, will do no help for us.
* ............
*
* That is the exact worry of people like Dr.Anu. We may disagree with them.
* But we should give respect to the sentiments of them. If we don't use
* anything, eventually it will become useless.
* 
* My point is,we should have to be open minded to new things.
*  >>
*
*Dear Velmurugan,
*
*First of all if any of you sense any disrespect in my tone, my apologies.
*Let me make my point clear. We are not doing any comercial/profitable
*business here. We are trying to set some standard which will be used by
*millions of people mainly in Tamilnadu, Sri Lanka and whereever they teach
*in Tamil medium. 

   Okay.

*
*The moment I saw Dr.Selva's new proposal (ofcourse I know it is only a
*proposal, not a final document) I couldn't go any further but thinking about
*the new proposal. This proposal is not just for the computer but it also
*changes the Tamil. Mr. Velmurugan, you and me are sitting here in America
*and using Tamil only to surf the net and to kill some time (may be more)
*But the same Tamil is used in business, life, day-to-day activities by a lot
*of
*people in Tamil Nadu.
*
*What do we really achieve by giving a different character or combination of
*existing characters to replace a grantha character? This is nothing but HATE.
*We don't LOVE Tamil. We HATE grantha characters. We should think it in a 
*different way. See how grantha characters helped to pronounce/write lot of
*foreign (English) words till today. LOVE them for that. I don't really know
*why we
*HATE grantha characters. Let us teach the new generation how to LOVE and not
*how to HATE.


     I'm sorry you had perceived my proposals as HATE for grantha.
     The considerations are about what is best for Tamil. Hating
     grantha or anything can not give much help. I've tried to
     articulate how we can try to express sounds similar to
     G,J,D,Dh,B occuring at the beginning of a word, and how we can
     say 'sh', S and even F. If you understand the economy and 
     optimization that results and a better utilization of
     aytham ('q'), you'll see merit. I have NO hatred for grantha letters
     but their use in tamil can pose problems of many kinds and I've
     articulated these in another posting 
     (Subject: Tamil language and glyph codes standardization).

     In the character/glyph code table I proposed I had included 
     all grantha letters except ksha. I have even suggested that 
     we include 'fa'.  Probably you had not seen my webpages 

          http://valluvar.uwaterloo.ca/~selvakum/newtamil.html
 
     and also see 

          http://valluvar.uwaterloo.ca/~selvakum/charset.gif

     You probably have no idea how tamil is systematically weakened
     hated by some so called tamils. Sri Caaminaatha Desikar, a tamil
     who had even written a tamil grammar called 'ilakkaNa koththu'
     said of tamil language as follows:

       "Intelligent persons will be ashamed
        To call it a language
        That posseses only five letters"

                   [ See : A History of Tamil Literature by 
                     Dr. Mu. Varadarajan
                     Sahitya Academi Publication. Translated from Tamil
                     by E.Sa. Viswanatharn. (year 1988) page 10. ]

     What the Desikar said is Tamil got all the rest from Sanskrit
     including uyir 'a', 'aa' etc. and 'ka' etc. The five tamil
     letters are 'z, R, n' and short vowels 'e' and 'o'.
     Of course Thiru Ci.Vai Damotharar, who guided Sri.u.vE.Saminatha Aiyar
     and who was an earlier pioneer in bringing out tamil classics,
     defended Tamil and showed the illogicity of Caaminatha Desikar's
     claim. This is happening today in so many fora in so many ways.
     Tamils have been called children of incest and tamil language had been
     denigrated in so many ways in soc.culture.tamil. Tamil scholars
     of great knowledge had been denigrated. All these are by people 
     who call themselves by tamils. There are still many here in this
     tamil.net who know what I'm talking about. Tamils are being hated
     and tamil language is being hated. Why simply because they have
     a view and their language is an embarrassment to the claim that
     Sanskrit is the mother of all indic languages and Sanskrit is the
     mother of all indian cultures ( music, drama, religion..). 
     Tamil works had been burned and destroyed - how many times ? 
     No Sir, tamil has been hated. 
     The sad thing is many tamils don't know our heritage and 
     and culture.

     selvaa

     
      
*
*Shanmugavel Ponnaiah,
*New Jersey.
*
*
*
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