Modern Orthographic Reformations in Indian Scripts

[nagarajpaturi]

Branching out from the thread on Marathi Vyutpattikosha:

Prof. BVK Shastry's question :

Namaste Paturi ji

 

Thanks for your valuable observations and pointing the following. I am putting them together before formally articulating my  clarification/question request.

 

Observed Points in the post:

 

1.a)   ‘scripting convention changes’ in <  local Dekkhani speakers of Hyderabad>  and the observation  < But in the local pronunciation , the distinction between dantya and taalavya ch does not exist >.

 

1.b)  Education about the scripting of regional language in school < Till recently Telugu children were taught two different orthographic symbols for the two. During modern orthographic reformations they removed the symbol for dantya ch considering it obsolete. >

 

1.c)  < they put the Telugu script symbol for the digit 2 above the script symbol for ch>.

 

 

2. Clarification /Question request :

 

2.a)  <  On 1.c- ‘ they ’….   1.b)  ‘ till recently’…>  :      What was the trigger and time line when ‘ learning model of orthography of  telugu regional language got changed  for ‘Telugu children’  ?

 

            Was it a quiet, unnoticed issue ? OR   Initiative from some scholar-administrators brilliant idea  to impose ‘ uniform simplified scripting for many (south) Indian languages’  OR  some printer who found a convenient mechanism to solve a composing problem ?   

 

              How is the TELUGU –TEXT- CHAACTER- READING Taught in schools , by what norms of ‘ linguistics  for regional language education’ ?  Is it aligned to local pronunciation ? Anglicized ? Sanskritized ?

 

          [ Note: Similar conventions  have been adapted by Maharashtrian Printers, in previous centuries,  in printing ‘ Veda Books’  using Devanagari  Script and Marathy Orthography based type-faces. For more details, explore the introduction of sign conventions in introduction part,   books printed by Satwalekar].  These conventions of local context and technology have created a ‘ irreversible impact on the way of reading the printed text, causing a great split between the voice traditions ( relied upon by traditional schools) and Print-Symbol book based  Transliterations of Vedas by ( relied upon by  Out of India – Scholars of Veda ‘ Unbound  by norms of  Tradition’.)  This over-ride of ‘  scripted symbol over the live voice tradition and  scant  respect for ‘ Voice guidance rules (Shikshaa) placed as foundation at early schooling for linguistic studies of Sanskrit’-  has percolated to become  an integral part of many digital standards and software’s; causing confusion on what is the right shape of the ‘ character in which language tag and how to associate a phonetic value for it’? 

 

 

 

2.b)    Professor Deshpande has noted   the challenge in  associating the   TEXT READING / PRONUNCIATION OF SCRIPT SYMBOL  in MARATHI  ORTHOGRAPHY , which needs to be learnt  in a  ‘ Native speaker Natural way’.     

           How will IPA/ Diacritics convention/ Harvard Kyoto  widely adapted in UNICODE help in   resolving / facilitating this  ‘ pronunciation  distinctions’  OR even the orthographic distinctions for regional languages of India  ?

           Is it to be treated as a ‘ limitation of current typography related technology’ –(  An issue I am working  through my project of ‘Shruti-Kranti’)   to build a language appropriate technology, in contrast to ‘  English dependent Indian Language representation conventions’?   

 

 

Regards

BVK Sastry

 

[K S Kannan]

I guess Dr PRamanujan, Sri Nityananda Misra, and Dr. BVK Sastry  have been steadily concerned with these issues. Would be ideal if they can have a discussion, including others serious about this, and proffer suggestions to the competent authorities.

Prof Varakhedi would do well to take this up as a key issue in the conf he is organising shortly, and have a full-scale session on this issue, which is rather serious, and should not be left to the whims of amateurs/merely those under heavy political patronage in the past.

The South Indian clout - which had its key say in TDIL, and was inimical to Sanskrit (conveniently branding it North Indian/Brahmin/Aryan) - has done no small damage, I gather. Time to put things on the right track.

Thanks to BVK Sastry for raising his voice here.

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[Nagaraj Paturi]

Dear Prof. B V K Shastry garu,

> How is the TELUGU –TEXT- CHAACTER- READING Taught in schools , by what norms of ‘ linguistics  for regional language education’ ?  Is it aligned to local pronunciation ? Anglicized ? Sanskritized ?

...................

> Is it to be treated as a ‘ limitation of current typography related technology’ –(  An issue I am working  through my project of ‘Shruti-Kranti’)   to build a language appropriate technology, in contrast to ‘  English dependent Indian Language representation conventions’?  

----------- I mentioned in my earlier posts on the orthography related threads on this list, that the scripts of each language suits the phonemic system of that language, following  the principle of minimal tools for maximum use.

 It is a popular level misunderstanding, not based on a professional understanding of linguistics, phonology, orthography etc., to think that --- "this 'sound' (popular parlance for the technical 'phone') has no (script) symbol in this language. That is the weakness of this 'language' (keeping script in mind)" But most scripts have a symbol or a sequence/group of symbols for a phoneme of that language leaving all the allophones 'within' that phoneme to be represented by that symbol or a sequence/group of symbols.  Classic example of that such a misunderstanding is the popular impression (sometimes unfortunately among Tamilians themselves) that Tamil script having the same symbol for p and b or k and g etc. is its weakness. But the fact is that in Tamil phonology , p and b are not two different phonemes. They are allophones 'within' the same phoneme. i.e. Tamil speakers do not pronounce p in a certain position of a word (say , immediately after m ) and do not pronounce b in a certain position of a word (say, in the initial position of a word). They pronounce invariably p in the word-initial position and invariably b immediately after m . So having the same symbol for p and b does not cause any difficulty to them. p and b are called (mutual) allophones. They together constitute a phoneme. One symbol for one phoneme (i.e. for both the allophones 'within' that phoneme ). Native speakers learn what to pronounce for which symbol naturally.   

"IPA/ Diacritics convention/ Harvard Kyoto  widely adapted in UNICODE" are needed only for the non-native readers of material in a certain language. 

Native script systems evolved through -handed down from- centuries of use are not Sanskritized nor Anglicized nor even English-dependent.

It is the "IPA/ Diacritics convention/ Harvard Kyoto  widely adapted in UNICODE" which is English/Roman script dependent. But to resist such an international standardization serves no purpose. Need of the hour is to make the younger generation aware of the right scientific understanding of the issue, remove the self-hate born out of notions such as bad /weak script, Sanskritized script etc.

(Modern script reformations in the next post.)

PS : typing the present post was begun before the arrival of Prof. Kannan's post. This post has no correspondence with that post.

 

.

On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 10:35 AM, nagarajpaturi <nagara...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

 

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

 

 

 

[K S Kannan]

Prof . Paturi's post makes some important points.

I would like to make an additional point.

Just as there has all along been an endeavour, for over a century perhaps, to enable the Roman script to competently represent all sounds in all important languages of the world, there must be similar efforts to enrich and enable ALL Indian scripts to encode the phones of ALL Indian languages at least : innovations must be welcomed.

The stupid attempts of sabotage by way of lopping off existent elements from scripts - ṛ, for example, from Kannada orthography, or fusing the representations of ś and ṣ into but one, as in Telugu in recent times - were egged on by the colonial-inspired hatred for Sanskrit, the intellectual language of India.

KSKannan

[Nagaraj Paturi]

>  What was the trigger and time line when ‘ learning model of orthography of  telugu regional language got changed  for ‘Telugu children’  ?

 

            Was it a quiet, unnoticed issue ? OR   Initiative from some scholar-administrators brilliant idea  to impose ‘ uniform simplified scripting for many (south) Indian languages’  OR  some printer who found a convenient mechanism to solve a composing problem ?  

---------- The 'script reformation movement'  in Telugu was not quiet. As with any other 'movement' born out of 'modern' jnaanodaya , to be more precise, jnaanodayapaaravas'ya born out of modern 'education', there was a huge drumming and hungaamaa about it, expressions of Indian white men's burden, lamentations/pity about lack of such an awareness among traditional scholars, public at large not being as excited as required about the emergency of the reformations etc. 

It was not on the lines of  "brilliant idea  to impose ‘ uniform simplified scripting for many (south) Indian languages" . I don't remember anyone arguing for reforms on these lines. It was on the lines of 'simplification' removing the vestigial elements in the script which are no longer required for a new changed modern 'colloquial' language that acquired the position of the  standard language. Removal of script symbols  ఋ (r̥) both independent and mātrā aspects , ఱ ( originally retroflex r, called śakaṭa rēpha) , longer ఋ (r̥), dantya ch and j etc., were all proposed on the basis of the argument that they were no longer pronounced the way they were supposed to be.

What is interesting is recently during a workshop organized by CIIL at Telugu Akademi , for preparing style manual for Telugu, (discussed in an older thread) a highly accomplished modern linguist of Telugu who was one of the script reformers responsible for the removal of all these symbols , regretted his young days activity and said all those symbols need to get reintroduced. What is more, he insisted that what was called as valapala gilaka ( which looked something like devanagari symbol for 9 and used to denote initial r of a cluster but placed after the symbol for the syllable with the next consonant to r and the vowel of the cluster syllable (e.g., r of the र्ति ) ) must be introduced. His argument in favour of the restoration was that the Telugu children of the present generation should be facilitated to read the old prints/publications of classical Telugu  literature and should be made to think of the history of  the sounds represented by those symbols. I asked him whether it was not too late as the damage is already done to an irreparable extent. He said no good work is too late. With a strong will and effort it should be possible even now. I was pleasantly astounded.

News paper publishers were also responsible in the implementation of this 'progressive reform' born out of the feeling of Indian white man's burden.

You were right in guessing that these messiahs were in scholar-administrator roles at that time.  

 

On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 11:55 AM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagara...@gmail.com> wrote:

[K S Kannan]

In his last interview to a TV Channel, similarly, Prof Ha Ma Nayak is said to have regretted his earlier moves in his younger days - "intellectual protests" as he had styled them then - for the removal of Sanskrit from the syllabus of MA in Kannada. None remained now, alas, he remarked, among the "Kannada elite" who could read correctly half a dozen lines of Haḷagannaḍa!

[उज्ज्वल राजपूत]

Similarly, isn't writing Sanskrit and other Indian languages with space between "words". Note that a "word" doesn't always represent a पद or even a collection of पदs altered in संहिता, for example रामो गच्छति, here there is a space even between पदs altered by संहिता, so what is a word in modern Sanskrit writing? A very unnatural and complex concept, indeed.

People often fear reading old manuscripts just because they are accustomed to reading with spaces.

If we write Sanskrit with spaces because it helps new students to learn easily, then why not provide पदपाठ instead?

[Nagaraj Paturi]

That is what is funny (not so funny in fact), Prof. Kannan that exactly those who were actively engaged in disorienting people from the classical Indian literatures are now shouting from roof tops in apparent lamenting tone that there are no more students interested in classical Kannada literature, classical Telugu literature etc. One of the noted American scholars was saying similar things in the context of classical status to Kannada. They say that they searched for classical Kannada scholars and they could find none. Is this not an exaggeration? I can list a very big number for Telugu. I think it should be possible for Kannada too. I don't know why they paint such a dim picture.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Sharing the pdf of the article I mentioned about the dim picture of classical Kannada studies and other classical studies

[Amba Kulkarni]

Namaste.

With reference to the above discussion, I would like to mention that when C-DAC proposed ISCII - Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange to account for the Indian languages, an attempt was made to enhance Devanagari Script in order to accommodate sounds from other languages such as South Indian, Bengali, etc.  This allowed Devanagari to represent the texts from other Indian languages faithfully.

I have enclosed the document on ISCII, which was later adapted for Unicode.

With regards,

Amba Kulkarni

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[Madhav Deshpande]

It is interesting to note that the document provided by Professor Amba Kulkarni makes no reference to or provision for the dual pronunciation of Marathi च, छ, ज,झ.  The Marathi native speakers have not demanded distinct orthography for this in all the recent reforms in Maharashtra.  This is not the only case where the orthography fails to accurately represent the language as pronounced.  The loss of short "a" at the end of words or often in the middle of the words is not represented in writing:  Marathi अपमान pronounced as अप् मान्.  This is also the case with Hindi writing.  Marathi grammarians have discussed these issues going back to 1850s, but the orthography remains unchanged.  The Modi script that was used for Marathi is even more reductive in this respect, not representing the distinction between short and long vowels, leaving it to the intuition of the native speaker/reader/writer.

Madhav Deshpande

[उज्ज्वल राजपूत]

शनिवार, 26 नवंबर 2016 को 5:32:06 अपर UTC+5:30 को, Madhav Deshpande ने लिखा:

...The loss of short "a" at the end of words or often in the middle of the words is not represented in writing:  Marathi अपमान pronounced as अप् मान्.  This is also the case with Hindi writing....

Madhav Deshpande

 

We have to consider that a language like standard Hindi or Marathi is used by people originally speaking very distinct dialects. In the case of a Hindi text, some might read "अपमान" as अपमान्, others as अप्मान्। But according to the standards, one has to write the word as अपमान। That is the norm. If there needs to a be a change in the spelling of अपमान, should it be changed to अपमान् or अप्मान्। That remains the question. And I don't think one can give a reasonable answer to this without disregarding a particular class of people. So we try to avoid getting into the issue and keep using the established norms.

[Bijoy Misra]

Friends,

I am an Oriya speaker.  What i have noticed is that there are two kinds of use.  In Puri, where I come from,

the common people would use each letter clearly irrespective of their "progress" in life.  But in Bhubaneswar

people would say भुव्-नेश्वर्, but there rural folks would maintain the vowels.  Then a name like प्रशान्त would

distort to प्रसान्त् .  I have thought that the latter is possibly due to the anglicized transliteration that is

carelessly applied, remnant of the colonial legacy. My own name विजयमोहन is shortened to विजय for

convenience and then distorted to विजोय्  because of transliteration triggered by Bengali officials.  In Oriya,

we don't have the व as a separate sound and we combine with  ब like in Punjabi, so finally the concept

becomes another label.

I also heard that there was a late movement by some pseudo linguists to do "orthography reform" in Oriya

by conforming to the current practice which changes every day through the influence of the urdu media.

Somebody somewhere discovered that the occupation of a people is easier if you throw away their

language.  Lately I am being exposed to earlier US history where atrocities were done to force the slaves

change their names to English-sounding names.  The technique perhaps has not abated.  There are

thousands of "Raj" or "Sam" are operating on these assumed names.

Let me say finally as a honor to my grandfather the name that was given:

बिजयमोहन

 

--

[Amba Kulkarni]

Dear Prof Deshpande,

The document does not account for the dual pronunciations of 'ca' varga, because, this document describes the coding scheme for the basic units of 'script', and does not deal with the pronunciation.

With regards,

Amba Kulkarni

[Hnbhat B.R.]

A sentence is spoken as संंहिता as a single utterence in noormal speech and there is no necessity to read also as a single utterence for facility and पदपाठ as split words for learing for beginners now a days who have no habit of reading a verse or sentence in a single utterence. This is the requirement of speech as in every day language in any other language.

In written language, स्ंहिता is optional and this option can be exercised with punctuations, like comma, semicolon, coon dash used so as to clear the विवक्षा of the speaker. Hence orthography cannot facilitate utterence of श्लोक or वाक्य as has been specied वाक्ये सा विवक्षामपेक्षते. In श्लोक, पाद is considered as a पद, and श्लोकार्ध is normally split according to the meteres used. 

This has been discrussed in bvp long ago and you can search and find the last discussion. I cannot exactly remember the thread. Some one may remember.

[Madhav Deshpande]

Thanks, Amba.  

Madhav Deshpande

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Recently a Marxist woman writer in Telugu published a book on the Vedas with her characteristic mocking at the 'Hindu' sources. On

the cover page of the book, she printed రుగ్వేదం (रुग्वेदं)  for ఋగ్వేదం (ऋग्वेदं). A senior Arya Samaj woman (ascetic) Veda-Sanskrit

scholar , looking at this, without knowing that that was orthographic reformation, innocently asked, " Doesn't she know that writing this

way it means the Veda of diseases ?"  

[Dr BVK Sastry]

Namaste

 

1)      Thanks to All who have poured information, details, concerns on the topic of ‘ Disconnect of  Phonology and Typology of Indian Language scripts’. Even though   one root of ‘Brahmi’ is recognized for Indic languages, the failure points are well articulated by Professor Deshpande and pinpointed by Amba ji.

 

                     a)    < orthography fails to accurately represent the language as pronounced.    Marathi grammarians have discussed these issues going back to 1850s, but the orthography remains unchanged.  The Modi  

                            script that was used for Marathi is even more reductive in this respect, not representing the distinction between short and long vowels, leaving it to the intuition of the native speaker/reader/writer> .

 

                    b)   The   ( ISCII  Standards)  document does not account for the dual pronunciations of 'ca' varga, because, this document describes the coding scheme for the basic units of 'script', and does not deal with

                                the pronunciation.

 

2)    In effect, it has been a challenge to  ‘ Truly Read What was supposed to be a True (Brahmi design of )  Writing  True Voice’ . (  Just recollected the part of Subhahsita :  swayamapi likhitam pathitum na  jaanaati ).

       If English  seems to be suffering  from the ‘Spelling phobia’ to  extract  at the right pronunciation  and limps with IPA –Diacritic convention n, Indic Brahmi  scripting seems to be suffering from a plurality of associated

       pronunciations for a given script with no clue on what the true pronunciation is. 

 

3) It is in  such a  muddled scenario, ISCII added more symbols to the generally known repertoire of devanagari characters with the holy intention of ‘ inclusive accommodation of all sounds and scripts of all indian languages  under the Brahmi group ’.  But the introduction of these symbols in education system, schooling and other major places has remained a wishful to be done act.

 

   When I read Hindi  published news papers from North India, using occasionally the ISCII symbols, I get confused on how to pronounce / read the page. And it becomes worse when some screen readers / digital programs are run on the file. And same scenario applies to ‘ OCR’ related !   

 

4 ) Now, articulating the issue for the proposed Conference at Chinmaya International,  I propose  a ‘ Special Interest Group -  Panel –Workshop’ under the theme title: ‘ Digital Standards and Representation of   Phonology and Typology  of Indian Language scripts: with specific focus on Devanagari script’.

 

Here below is the abstract for the proposed panel .

 

Title: ‘ Digital Standards and Representation of   Phonology and Typology  of Indian Language scripts: with specific focus on Devanagari script’.  A review and Overview.

 

 

Abstract : The Typology of  Devanagari –Brahmi Scripting , adapts a norm of ‘True Voice Scripting’. This  demands  a bi-directional compliance : (i) Scribe as Spoken. (ii) Read as Scribed.  This standard is embedded in the words :   ‘ Ukta- Lekhana’ ( having a focus on scripting –reading process) ;  ‘ yathaa- likhita –Paathaka’ ( having  a focus on  reader –scribe persona)  .   This is the core essence of the traditional discipline called ‘ Lipi-Shaastra’- a listed discipline in  Artha  and Kama Shaastra. The roots of this convention goes back to pre-Christian era, certainly prior to 700 BCE.

 

The ‘ Lipi-Shaastra of Brahmi ( and Prakrut, Dramida) languages seems to have a broken tradition and is  not understood sufficiently . This has been one of the blocking points in making advances in understanding the native tradition of Brahmi languages Typology. Especially the way Samskruth Texts were scripted through the centuries in several Indian languages.  An understanding of this discipline is believed to help re-construct  the discipline of Swadesi Vernacular Typology and  link it to the language appropriate phonology. This will facilitate the proper reading of the resource texts and manuscripts.

 

This Special Interest Group deliberates on Digital Standards that cover the Phonology and Typology of Brahmi languages with specific focus on Devanagari script. The purpose is to  make a review of current standards and practices, identify and make a overview recommendation as needed  for bridging the  disconnect of typography and phonology for Devanagari script in digital standards.

 

Look forward for the team members and panelists.

 

Thanks to KSK, Paturi, and  all.

 

Regards

 

BVK Sastry

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

 

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

 

 

 

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[Sivasenani Nori]

Here mention of one particular aspect of the older Telugu script would provide a contrast to the modern destructive reform. For a long time in Telugu, there was a half-anusvaara, called అరసున్న (arasunna, half-anusvaara) in Telugu. This was used only in acca tenugu words (pure Telugu words, i.e. those not derived from Sanskrit) like vaa ఁ Du # (వాఁడు). This half-anusvaara is not pronounced, but recollects that many centuries earlier this used to be an anusvaara, like in the word vaaMDu (వాండు). The old full anusvaara seems to survive in some words and usages like boddiMka (<boddu - big, eeMga - fly = cockroach) (బొద్దింక) and ayinaaMka / ayinaaka (అయినాంక / అయినాక, afterwards). This older orthographic practice has retained historical information, whereas the modern "simplifications" are destructive.

Regards

N. Siva Senani

# This half-anusvaara is still available in Iscript, so I used the same. It is basically a semi-circle, like the Roman letter "c", with the arc describing less than 180 degrees maybe.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks for excellent example of what the so called reform does. It does not hurt to make the children aware that the ardhaanusvaara is used only in writing classical Telugu and not in the contemporary standard Telugu. But not to make them aware of the existence of such a symbol, its purpose, meaning and utility in the classical Telugu and to remove the symbol from the computer keyboards and IMEs is not justified.  As you noted about Iscript, in the Telugu Indic Input 2 IME that I use also ardhaanusvaara is included. I am grateful to the creators of this IME. ( I think some software professionals with liking for our heritage are contributing such great tools.)

This software tool has a facility to type s'akaTarEpha (retroflex r ఱ) too. But there is no facility for typing its germination. The longer version of ఋ ( ऋ ) ' s maatraa as in  పితృ (पितृ).    can not be typed.

The same persons who in their aadhunikajnaanodayapaaravas'ya opposed teaching these symbols to children are now shedding crocodile tears for the inability of the present generation youngsters in understanding such nuances of classical Telugu.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Correction:

But there is no facility for typing its gemination (dvitva), not germination. Autocorrect did the mischief.

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Granthalipi is a great example for the native ingenuity in modifying our scripts to suit the needs of writing a language different from the one for which the script was meant.

(For the benefit of those who are unaware of Granthalipi, it is the version of Tamil script with modifications to suit writing Sanskrit in Tamil script)

[Dr BVK Sastry]

Namaste

 

Responding to  the  observation  <  Sivasenani Nori:    the modern destructive reform  >   and < Nagaraj Paturi:  'script reformation movement'  …. 'movement' born out of 'modern' jnaanodaya , to be more precise, jnaanodayapaaravas'ya born out of modern 'education',    > 

 

1. Awareness of what ‘ has happened to the Indian Language Scripts in the last few centuries  is something that is surfacing  now, unraveling as a part of triggered discussions in these posts.  This study, for the purpose of a proposed panel, may deserve a time framing describable as  :

 -  1a. < Post Independence Indian School Education systems in Regional Languages related scripting >  OR

-   1b. <  Shift in  Regional language learning-scripting models  from Native mode to Anglicized Montessori Education paradigm >  OR

-   1c. < Post Hand scripting by pen/pencil /chalk mode  to  write the visual of language character  by hand movement - to - the keying in mode  to display the visual of language character on screen, by key press/touch >

 

2.  The follow up questions on these consequence of this would be an important  point in reshaping the Indian Language studies: In Class room or Computational Programming models for Standard and dialectics of languages.  Unless there is a  ‘ language speaking – using –auditing community out there, such deliberations become a matter of ‘ academic interest, which is precisely what ‘ classical status of a language means’.

 

What is classical language status ?   For definition and debate on criterion of classical language status ( for Tamil), refer article of V. C. Kulandaiswamy : http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/criteria-for-classical-language-status/article482123.ece?css=print   and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_language .  

In short,   Keeping in mind the universally accepted characteristics of classical literature which qualify a language for classical status,  one may notice that  all the attributes  to define the ‘Classical  Status of a language’  is derived mainly from Greek and Latin literary traditions, both of which fail to  pass the Brahmi language Standard of < Typology- Phonology –Equivalence in Scripting.>  i.e.  Any language scripting convention that stands by the ‘ spelling feature’ fails to be a class of ‘Brahmi’ language family.

 

Why is this a critical issue ?  The roots of ‘Classical language’  is dovetailed and   fitted in to the  study of ‘Historical Linguistics’ , Understanding  Indian Languages history  in the light of theology from Old Testament related Tower of Babel Story .  

 

 For details on how this  ‘Language family debate is closely linked to the Tower of Babel  and Sanskrit studies, please refer to Introduction pages in M.W Sanskrit Dictionary and other resources like:  http://aboutworldlanguages.com/language-families  ; https://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ikos/EXFAC03-AAS/h05/larestoff/linguistics/Chapter%205.(H05).pdf

 

Follow up questions  

 

2a.  Is any one aware of comparable phenomenon to what has happened in Telugu/ Marathi / Kannada -     for rest of the  languages of India ?  (Bijoy ji had pointed something on Odisha language. I am aware of how Neapalese language – Newari has been shrinking and loosing the ‘ natural language accent’ related meaning association.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newar_language  ) Ceylonese languages have a similar disconnect in usage and scripting.

 

2b.  Given the   ‘rigidity of the Devanagari’, how study of Samskruth itself has been influenced by such changes in post colonial period ?   [ -  And this, surely,  will surely kick open a demand to  review / defend    the claim  ‘we have a millennia continuation of unchanged language of ‘Gods’   in  the kurukshetra  of  ‘Battle: Sanskrit’ ].

 

Helpful suggestions and inputs appreciated, to facilitate the proposed  panel discussion.

 

Regards

BVK Sastry

 

 

 

 

From: bvpar...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bvpar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Sivasenani Nori
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2016 9:24 PM
To: भारतीयविद्वत्परिषत्
Subject: Re: {भारतीयविद्वत्परिषत्} Modern Orthographic Reformations in Indian Scripts

 

Here mention of one particular aspect of the older Telugu script would provide a contrast to the modern destructive reform. For a long time in Telugu, there was a half-anusvaara, called అరసున్న (arasunna, half-anusvaara) in Telugu. This was used only in acca tenugu words (pure Telugu words, i.e. those not derived from Sanskrit) like vaa ఁ Du # (వాఁడు). This half-anusvaara is not pronounced, but recollects that many centuries earlier this used to be an anusvaara, like in the word vaaMDu (వాండు). The old full anusvaara seems to survive in some words and usages like boddiMka (<boddu - big, eeMga - fly = cockroach) (బొద్దింక) and ayinaaMka / ayinaaka (అయినాంక / అయినాక, afterwards). This older orthographic practice has retained historical information, whereas the modern "simplifications" are destructive.

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Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

 

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

 

 

 

--

Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

 

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

 

 

 

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[Sri Raghava Kiran Mukku]

Vidvan Nagaraj garu,

Just wanted to clarify that we could type the dīrgha ṛtva in Telugu using the Indic Script keyboard (available on Windows distributions): పితౄణము. You need to use the Gr-Alt key for the same.

Dhanyo'smi,

Raghava

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks for the info.

My words : " I am grateful to the creators of this IME. ( I think some software professionals with liking for our heritage are contributing such great tools.) " apply to this too.

BTW, can you guide me to the download link for Indic Script keyboard ? How do I use Gr-Alt key? Sorry for not being aware of this.

Thanks for the help.

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[Nagaraj Paturi]

My keyboard does not have an Alt-Gr key. I tried Cr+Alt combination. It did not work.

[Sri Raghava Kiran Mukku]

Dear Sir,

Alt-Gr is generally the Alt key on the right hand side (of the two Alt keys on the keyboard). For typing ౄ, press the Alt-Gr and = keys simultaneously.

Dhanyo'smi

Raghava

[Nagaraj Paturi]

Thanks Prof. Mukku, yes, I was able to see that it works that way. But due to some reason , after using the key combination the system behaved in strange ways. Since that's a rear need, it might suffice to be aware of the facility. Thanks again,

Nagaraj

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