X-Sender: naga ganesan@...
X-Apparently-To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Received: (EGP: mail-8 0 1 2); 13 Dec 2001 22:30:00 -0000
Received: (qmail 53984 invoked from network); 13 Dec 2001 22:29:59 -0000
Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m4.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 Dec 2001 22:29:59 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO n20.groups.yahoo.com) (216.115.96.70) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 Dec 2001 22:29:58 -0000
Received: from [216.115.96.135] by n20.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 13 Dec 2001 22:24:14 -0000
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 22:29:54 -0000
To: agathiyar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: ukara uukaara uyirmey
Message-ID: <9vba53+hjm9@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 3521
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
From: "naga ganesan"
X-Originating-IP: 12.13.248.3
X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=9040551
X-Yahoo-Profile: naga ganesan
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 13960
--- In infitt@y..., SiSrivas@a... wrote:
> Dear Ravin,
>
> I think by chance, we have the best solution possible provided by
>Unicode to Tamil. I undestand your concerns and having 512 slots
>seems better on the out set.
>
> The Tamil character reform project, which was started by Periar
> and stiull continuing at it's slowest ever phase is the ultimate
>solution that we are going to have in the future. By chance the
>ultimate reformed solution is going to be more or less in the
>format of how Unicode is designed.
>
> what we have now in written form was introduced recently (mainly
>by Viramaa munivar) is decisively wrong in its principles. This
>was not the way Tamil was written prior to this recent changes.
>
> So having the UTF-8 as it is defined now is a good start. We
>must give due considerations to how Tamil is going to be written
>in the future and not how it was erroneously changed in the recent
>past and being used in its erroneous form at present.
Dear Srinivas & INFITT listers,
If permitted, I want to submit a few words.
Tamil orthography is changing over the centuries. What
the Jesuit missionary, Viiramaamuni (Costantino Giuseppe Beschi
(1680-1747)) did was to simplify Tamil letters graphically.
Beschi introduced the "iraTTaic cuzik kompu", and also
found ingenious solution for writing the "kuRil" e and o. Because
short e and o are not found in Indo-Aryan, Tamil script created them
to represent the unique short e and o found in Dravidian family.
Originally Tamil Brahmi put the puLLi characters on top of what we
write as letters, "e" and "o" now, and this is explained in
TolkAppiyam grammar. I don't see what's wrong with Viiramaamuni's
reform that succeeded.
A historical note: What came to be known popularly as "PeriyAr ezuttu"
reform has precedents. KaaraikkuTi Co. Murukappaa, and few Malaysian
Tamils published newspapers and books incorporating those reforms.
Periyar recognized the need for it, and used it in his KuTiyaracu
paper later.
The letter, puLLi is useful in our script to get rid of
the consonant-clusters. The different combos of consonants
makes the Sanskrit samyuktaakshara "ligatures" running into
pages together. That's why all the Devanagari letters for
Sanskrit is extremely difficult on a typewriter in direct
contrast to Tamil.
The presence of non-clustered alphabets in Tamil
is what made Tamil printing with movable type,
typewriting, computerization, ... to be achieved first
among Indian and even Asian languages. Tamil OCR announced
last week in Chennai is lot simpler.
Taking "C" to stand for a consonant, Cu and Cuu
syllabaries only remain clustered in Tamil. They can be
more systematized than the current form, and I've
given a suggestion at:
http://home.swbell.net/speri/ganesan/u-uu-uyirmey.jpg
This is same as the lower half of the page at:
http://home.swbell.net/speri/ganesan/ezhuththu.jpg
However, even better than the above is choosing a separate
symbol for -u- and -U- vowels when joining with
consonants. My suggestion for this -u and -U "uyirmey" letters
is the first recommendation in the top of the page:
http://home.swbell.net/speri/ganesan/ezhuththu.jpg
Writing Tamil moves from handwriting to computers everyday.
When Tamil adopts the breaking of the clusters in
Cu and CU syllabary, with C = a consonant,
there are only 40 letter-forms to learn the entire tamil!
That's all, it's a set even smaller than english(roamn)
with 52 letter-forms (small letters 26 + capitals 26).
Regards,
N. Ganesan
