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From: "Chandrasekaran, Periannan"
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Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 12:09:25 -0400
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Subject: [agathiyar] Re: How many alphabets are there in Tamil
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nagamanickam Ganesan [mailto:nagamani_ganesan@...]
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 1999 10:10 AM
> To: selvakum@...; tamil@...
> Cc: agathiyar@egroups.com
> Subject: [agathiyar] Re: How many alphabets are there in Tamil
>
>
>
> 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.

2050??? even if you threw a number, it is too far away.
I would like to clarify my comment yesterday: I simply intended to
state that Selva's was a new way of *analyzing* the consequences, since
it brought an entirely new but important dimension to the problem.
Now that we need to have that perspective too, still we need to discuss
what weightage is due to it.

Here's where the issue of when we cut over to the new alpahabet.
While I myself am a big supporter of the changes proposed by Ganesan
(actually I would like an even further changes pending full knowledge of
Ganesan's reasoning why they would be unnecessary), I would like to take
into
account the consequences.
But what if the exisiting script itself weakens the survival of the language

(or in a less alarmist way, the computerization of the language) owing to
its complexity?


I have been thinking that if we are "simply" changing the ukaram/UkAram
series the script might still be identifiable.
Does Selva have any toughts about how he would compare the situation in 1978
when the periyar schemes incorporated with the present scheme?

What criteria do we employ to decide when we have satisfactorily put Tamil
corpus
in e-format?
Cangkam and medieval texts? plus modern? plus "important" prose in the last
two centuries?


>
> 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).


>the foreign words right away. Your proposal
> will apply for all words from any non-Tamil language,
> exaple: English or Sanskrit.



>
> Regards,
> N. Ganesan
>
>
>

Chandra