From Thu Sep 23 07:07:23 1999
Delivered-To: listsaver-of-agathiyar@egroups.com
Mailing-List: contact agathiyar-owner@egroups.com
X-Mailing-List: agathiyar@egroups.com
X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/agathiyar/
Received: (listserv 1.259); by m5; 23 Sep 1999 14:10:23 -0000
Reply-To: agathiyar@egroups.com
Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-agathiyar@egroups.com
Received: (qmail 15065 invoked from network); 23 Sep 1999 14:10:21 -0000
Received: from law-f126.hotmail.com (HELO hotmail.com) (209.185.131.189) by qg.egroups.com with SMTP; 23 Sep 1999 14:10:21 -0000
Received: (qmail 81143 invoked by uid 0); 23 Sep 1999 14:10:21 -0000
Message-ID: <19990923141021.81142.qmail@...>
Received: from 204.68.140.34 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; Thu, 23 Sep 1999 07:10:20 PDT
X-Originating-IP: [204.68.140.34]
From: "Nagamanickam Ganesan"
To: selvakum@..., tamil@...
Cc: agathiyar@egroups.com
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 07:10:20 PDT
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: [agathiyar] Re: How many alphabets are there in Tamil
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 2208


Selva makes a very good point. Let us wait.
May be 2050 AD. No problems. My dream is *one day*
a simple, aesthitically pleasing, and fitting with Tamil orthography
is chosen for Tamil "ukara-uukaara uyirmey" letters.
This is the only change needed, when? It does not matter.
as I said, may be 2050 AD.

Then, teaching Tamil to Children will be easier than present:
Only 38 symbols to represent Tamil, 12 for uyir (existing today),
18 for mey (existing today), 1 aaytham (as existing today),
7 for uyir-mey. Only 38 symbols in all! (Compare to 52 symbols
for even English).

BTW, I very much like your propsal to use single quotes
to represent alien sounds from other languages. That is
the use of single quotes (mun-koTTu) for f,h,j,g,s,D(.d),d,b,sh.
Stripping those "munkoTTu"s will render the naturalized
Tamil forms for the foreign words right away. Your proposal
will apply for all words from any non-Tamil language,
exaple: English or Sanskrit.

Regards,
N. Ganesan


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


When tamil.net was started, a lot of discussion tookplace
about this very same ukara Ukaara reform. I argued with Germany Kannan
and others for not advancing this reform at this stage. While the
reform is certainly needed, it is NOT the time; what we will lose
in the process is all that we have got now.
Numerous books (hundreds of thousands), numerous magazine
issues of past 100 years, pamphlets. We would need specialists like
archelologists (kalveTTu padippaaLarkaL கல்வெட்டு வல்லுனர்கள்) to know what
is written. Connectivity with our literature and heritage is crucial.
Tamil is in a delicate situation now (due to the situation
in India, Sri Lanka, unprecedented impact of technology etc.)
We *CAN* and *SHOULD* implement the reform for ukaram and
Ukaaram, at a time when we have electronically and digitally stored
all our documents (it *is* possible) using OCR etc. so that we can
substitute any symbol for our letters and still read without any
difficulty. And when the GDP or economic affluence of an average
Tamils is significantly better than now. Until such time it is
*UNWISE* to effect this reform. It is not same as the previous
reforms or like the ones for grantam. I don't think even the
introduction of Roman letters is bad (for the whole of India),
except that I believe we don't have to due to the availability of
terrific technology. I earnestly hope that people will spend more
time and effort on creating valuable content in Tamil than proposing such
critically dangerous reforms. Sometimes, a small
critical disturbance can destroy the whole system. I believe
we are at a critical juncture at this point in time and it would be
unwise to implement reforms of the type suggested for ukaram and Ukaaram.
Dr. Ganesan's systems are excellent and I like them;and people like Dr.
V.C. Kulandaiswamy have suggested many
reforms in the past, but is it wise to do it when Tamils are in
the state they are in. காலம் அறிதல் அறிவுடைமை !


செல்வா

N. Ganesan wrote:
> Grantham is not the only choice; It is just one among
> many options.
>
> Another option:
> Pl. consider inverted "oRRai cuzhi kombu" and
> the same with a knot at the end.
>
> Regards,
> N. Ganesan
>




______________________________________________________