> I think the TDIL chart is wrong.
It seems reasonable that one should need extra persuasion to take the word of an American living in Ireland over Indians. (Sorry.)
Peter, I would take those TDIL publications with a very large grain of salt. Textual evidence is not given and there's all sorts of of stuff which really doesn't fit in well with the way we do things in Unicode. Like their *U+0B3A ORIYA INVISIBLE LETTER.
Just because it comes from India doesn't mean it's not revisionist.
> Traditionally (as in Learn Oriya in 30 Days) subjoined BA is used in > this context although the reading rules say to pronounce it [w].
So, you're saying that all of these should be encoded as C + virama + BA?
Yes, I am. KA + BA = KBA pronounced [kwa]. That's what Learn Oriya in 30 days shows explicitly.
> Now an original ligature of O and BA has been pressed into service
I've seen elsewhere that you've described this as a ligature involving O, but are you sure it's that?
Yes, I am.
Note that the same shape is used for NYA and NNA (e.g. conjuncts for NN.NNA and SS.NNA).
Be thou not deceived by the glyph shapes. The etymology is O + BA => WA, not NYA + BA.
>The traditional BA should be used for that unless we have better >evidence than the TDIL newsletter that such should be the practice.
I could be convinced of that; but if people in India aren't convinced of that, the boat may not float.
WA is an innovation, unattested in earlier Oriya. You won't find it in Learn Oriya in 30 Days, for instance. Yet syllables in -[wa] have been written in Oriya for a long time, with BA.
Note that a historical VA exists and predates the WA, and the TDIL does not take this into account. We did encode it however.
I have just ordered two large Oriya dictionaries which should arrive in a fortnight.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
