Pinyin vs IAST

[ken p]

Pinyin is used in both education and communication. In China, Pinyin is used in elementary school as a first step toward learning how to read. Pinyin has an additional advantage for Chinese schools, because nearly a half of Chinese children do not speak Putonghua as their native dialect or language. Teaching with Pinyin allows them to acquire accurate pronunciation while learning to read.

Pinyin is also used to teach second language learners Putonghua both inside and outside China. It is also used to alphabetically order dictionary entries in Chinese-English, English-Chinese and Chinese-Chinese dictionaries. Beyond the classroom and around the world, Pinyin is used to spell Chinese proper nouns such as the booming city of Shanghai, the Rockets basketball superstar Yao Ming, or household appliance maker Haier. (The main exception you will notice is that foreign newspapers do not use tone markers when the spell using Pinyin conventions.) Finally, Pinyin is used as an input method for typing Chinese characters. The advantages of using this method of inputting Chinese characters for the Chinese language learner is that it is a relatively easy method to learn and using it helps you practice Pinyin spelling and character recognition.

https://talkbank.org/pinyin/Usage.php

Don't we need standard Roman Transliteration with improved transliteration scheme for Indian proper nouns?

Each consonant produces these 15 sounds when combined with vowels.

्,ा,ि.ी,ु,ू,ॅ,े,ै,ॉ,ो,ौ,ं,ं,ः

ə ɑ ɪ iː ʊ uː æ ɛ əɪ ɔ o əʊ əm ən əh .........IPA........ɑɪ ,ɑʊ,æʊ,

ạ ā i ī u ū ă e ại ŏ o ạu ạm ạn ạh.............Roman

a,aa,i,ii,u,uu,ae,e,ai,aw,o,au, am,an,ah...Type able

a,a:,i,i:,u,u:,ae,e,ai,o:,o,au,am,an,ah

a,a:,i,ee,u,oo,ae,e,ai,o:,o,au,am,an,ah

Sanskrit should be taught in Sanskrit alone, government panel says

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/delhi-elections-2015/party-stand/education/Sanskrit-should-be-taught-in-Sanskrit-alone-government-panel-says/articleshow/50871319.cms

If Hindi can be taught in Urdu script then why can't we teach Sanskrit in regional languages scripts along with Roman script?

[hemant kumar]

The article only mentions "Sanskrit be taught in Sanskrit only" with no mention of Devanagari script i.e. the language of instruction should be Sanskrit when teaching Sanskrit. It has no mention of script. I think all Indian scripts are sufficient to denote Sanskrit alphabets' sounds. Samskrit Bharati uses Kannada script in Karnataka region as far as I'm aware. 

[Taff Rivers]

Mr Ken,

"Don't we need standard Roman Transliteration with improved transliteration scheme for Indian proper nouns?"

There is no need for anyone to have to learn Chinese to transliterate Indian scripts into Roman.

Please be advised that such has been availble for a few years now.

ISO 15919 has prescribed vowels for Vedic accents and much, much more.

For those vowels see http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stone-catend/trinoun3.gif


Taff

[ken p]

I prefer this vowels scheme.

Each consonant produces these 15 sounds when combined with vowels. 

્,ા,િ,ી,ુ,ૂ,ૅ,ે,ૈ,ૉ,ો,ૌ,ં ,ં,ઃ

ə ɑ ɪ iː ʊ uː æ ɛ əɪ ɔ o əʊ əm ən əh .........IPA........ɑɪ ,ɑʊ,æʊ,
ạ ā i ī u ū ă e ại 

ŏ o ạu ạm ạn ạh.............Roman

[Sanju Nath]

Do other ancient languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, etc also have such a conversion scheme and if so, is it as widely used as we try with संस्कृत?

Sanju

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[Taff Rivers]

Ken,

    Communication is about communication.

Its purpose is the transfer of information.

Whatever the form it takes, in this case written, the information must be meaningful.

The root problem here, is the Devanagari script itself - it was never designed with the QWERTY keyboard in mind!
Have you not noticed that Roman/Latin/English employs capital letters to convey meaning?

The International Standards Organisation on the other hand, certainly have, and much, much more, besides.
Including the cost of a few billion new school text books on IPA. Not to mention all the world's grown ups having to be persuaded to learn a new alphabet - the teaching of the teachers to teach us all...

 I am beginning to suspect that you short of a noodle or two in your packet of Patanjali's (:-)

Taff

    I declare no affiliation whatsoever, neither with the ISO, nor indeed with Patanjali's Noodles.

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

Dear List,

Vast millions of students and scholars, from the last 1200 years since the modern Devanagari evolved out of the ancient Brahmi, have been mainly using Devanagari for the reading and writing of Sanskrit and, barring, a few insignificant regional exceptions, they, across all ages and regional boundaries, are comfortable doing so.  It is true that some learners whose mother tongues are like Kannada, Telugu, Bengali do occasionally employ their regional scripts for writing Sanskrit.  The result of doing so is that their writings remain confined to their own regions.

There may be all over the world a few thousand Sanskrit students and scholars who might think that it would be a good idea for everyone else to unlearn Devanagari and take up a Romanized version of Devanagari to read and write Sanskrit.  So where does the balance of convenience lie?  Should the dog wag the tail or the tail wag the dog?

I learnt the Russian language several years ago.  It has its own Cyrillic script.  At the start the sript is somewhat confusing.  That is for two reasons.  Some of its letters are altogether unfamiliar and have to be learnt and internalized.  A few others resemble normal Roman letters but are pronounced differently, such as the Roman 'p'.  It is the 'r' of Russian.  All these initial problems got sorted out with a few days of practice.  Devanagari is somewhat more complex than Cyrillic but not beyond the scope of any common student..  

So, IMHO, anyone wanting to pursue study in Sanskrit would be well advised to master the Devanagari and all his difficulties will vanish after he does that

Arvind Kolhatkar.

[Sanju Nath]

The projection is that Chinese will be the most common language on the net in recent future (in terms of number of users).  Does English keyboard need to adapt to Chinese keyboard then, if the call today is to convert all other scripts to English because of them being inconsistent with QWERTY?

How can देवनागरी, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, etc. letters not made for QWERTY keyboard be the root problem with any script other than English?

There are millions of people creating content using the respective languages' original script on iphones/android/PCs - QWERTY is no longer a barrier, and there are overlays to QWERTY keyboards being used. 

The world's grown ups in India and China and elsewhere are already familiar with their respective script - no need to teach those teachers.   They should not be forced to learn new ITRANS or equivalent which requires significant upfront effort and never quite seems to catch the sound and feel of the original script. 

Do we want to learn Chinese, etc. without learning their alphabet?  Why so with Sanskrit?

Sanju.

[Taff Rivers]

Arvind,

The intrinsic value in Sanskrit as she is spoken, is that it enables the speaker to correctly address the eternal ones, thereby to undergo and endless series of, hopefully, better rebirths.

The consequences of Incorrect evocations do not bear thinking about.For those so afeared however, help has always been awailable from higher, worldly quarters.

Many people are not so much interested -in- Sanskrit as in the material content of Sanskrit - logic, reason wisdom and so on - medicine to name a few.
I was able to read Plato's Republic and get wised up to sophistry at age twelve, in English text, not a Greek letter in sight.

Not only was no Greek alphabet necessary, but neither was IPA.

The subect matter of the emails in this topic is scripts, diacritics and IPA pronunciation, not language, however revered.

Appropros, this being Valentines day, there is the expression Love is blind.
Not so much waggling of dog's tails, more perhaps a case of the herd instinct than about sheep and goats.

Did you get showered with the perfect IPA gliitter storm in your adventures with Cryllic?

Taff


 

indeed interested in what the ancients got up to in their spare time.

Whwn it comes to Sanskrit as she is writtenAs to this life It is Other than that,
, Indian or not

[Rajam Srinivasan]

Sir;

Thank you, thank you AND thank  YOU! :))

Finally, some down-to-earth, common sense statement! 

 Although I have been in awe of the stupendous cerebral adventures involved in these various attempts to create alternate designs (should I say "scriptal" or "lipi" or epigraphical designs?) to facilitate "learning to read-write-communicate" Samskutam, I Wondered -- "Why not simply learn Devanaagari"?  It will not consume more time, effort and energy.  It may even be delightful or at least interesting!

Regards

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From: sams...@googlegroups.com <sams...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Arvind_Kolhatkar <kolhat...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2016 4:58 PM
To: samskrita
Cc: eddie...@live.co.uk
Subject: [Samskrita] Re: Pinyin vs IAST

 

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[ken p]

Sanju,

You may go through this link

New Keyboard Could Boost French

#French #tech languagepolicy Archives - Language Magazine

Do the English learners  write correctly our languages in Roman script?

Don't we need standard Roman keyboard for India?

English also needs improved keyboard to write English words pronunciations and to reform spellings.

introduction/ˌɪn trəˈdʌk ʃən/ 

[Sanju Nath]

Ken, 

Appreciate the link.  Good luck to the French in improving their keyboard, though not sure why without devoting time to understand the Ministry of Culture's approach to protecting French language or its purity.

I think artificial ways of communicating in any language is not required when the original script is so established, accurate and easy to pick up.

I did not know देवनागरी as a teenager.  Took some effort spanning a short month, but now on an iPhone I can type on a देवनागरी keyboard almost as fast as I'm typing this in English.

I don't think India needs her English keyboard.  India can use the American keyboard when needing to communicate in English.  Likewise, a person wishing to communicate in Chinese needs to learn and use the keyboard that the Chinese use, same with other Indian languages, such as Tamil, Telgu, Gujarati, Bengali, etc.  Same with हिन्दी and संस्कृत, given most written work of our saints and ऋषिs are in देवनागरी although much effort has been undertaken to convert a small fraction of that work to English alphabets.  

Here's the screen capture of the देवनागरी script used by nearly a billion people:

Why not go down the natural road?

I also have the other link sent which shows the ability to type in English Hindi words and it converts to देवनागरी.  Here's a screenshot of that on my iPhone again:

Makes it even easier to transition.  Such functionalities are available on all popular computers/phones, etc.

Personally, I think itrans scheme or similar was good when technology and choices were older, but hard to make a case for it now.

Apologize for the long email.  

Sincerely,

Sanju

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[ken p]

Sanju,

At present I use this Google keyboard to type any where in Simplified Sanskrit to Devanagari to Gujanagari script. I use Phonetic or in-script typing just for minor needed corrections.

http://www.google.com/inputtools/try/

I prefer this kind of Standard Roman keyboard with built in transliteration scheme for general as well as for I-phone typing

Just type in one easy script and let the converter do the job.

This converter is missing two ( ऍ/अॅ,ऑ /कॅ कॉ ) sounds needed badly and may need improvement.   

Input:

a aa i ii u uu a.e e ai a.w o au a.n a:

k kaa ki kii ku kuu k.e ke kai k.w ko kau k.n k:

Output:

अ आ इ ई उ ऊ अ.ए ए ऐ अ.व ओ औ अं अ:

क का कि की कु कू क.ए के कै क.व को कौ कं क:

a  ā   i   ī   u  ū   

ǎ

   e  ai  

ǒ   o

   au an/am ah.....Roman (Diacritics)  can be added along with other languages.

Transliteration:

અ આ ઇ ઈ ઉ ઊ અ.એ એ ઐ અ.વ ઓ ઔ અં અ:

ક કા કિ કી કુ કૂ ક.એ કે કૈ ક.વ કો કૌ કં ક:

അ ആ ഇ ഈ ഉ ഊ അ.ഏ ഏ ഐ അ.വ ഓ ഔ അം അ:

ക കാ കി കീ കു കൂ ക.ഏ കേ കൈ ക.വ കോ കൌ കം ക:

http://www.lyricsindia.net/xlate/convert

India needs two script formula instead of three languages formula. In internet age one can lean/read any basic language in his/her chosen script.  

http://readmylanguage.com/readmylanguage/install.php