Max, I had explained about nasal variants before too, to a similar question of yours.
there are PoAs "k s d th p R" and nasalised poAs of the above "ng nj N n m n" also classed as separate characters, because the additional nasalisation warrants it. There is another one" nth", I'll explain in detail once the above is cleared. for example Devanagari do not write Hinthu (hindu) and resorts to some mechanism to fix this problem. Vowels, by explaining bluntly are the souls for dead consonants. they also have places of articulations. they also have numerous phonemes applicable in each PoAs (such as half, full, inbetweens, etc.. in addition to non PoA related timing (mathrai) definitions (not sounds), So please do not strict to what you know as alphabet and phonemes. Tamil is the original scientific definitions created after intense debates by our ancestors, human ancestors to put it explicitly. I'not asking for others to change. All I ask is do not change this extremely valuable scientific heritage with random errants. 0bb6 is a duplicate of existing character. it will not stand in a court of law, for example if one decide to contest. Grammar would over rule, ill ad viced UC. I asked, is some one getting paid, as expectations are bit dogy. Sinnathurai --- On Sun, 28/11/10, Mike Maxwell <[email protected]> wrote: From: Mike Maxwell <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [indic] Re: Revisit Tamil sRi definition in Unicode. To: "Sinnathurai Srivas" <[email protected]> Cc: "Indic Discussion List" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, 28 November, 2010, 1:53 On 11/27/2010 4:49 PM, Sinnathurai Srivas wrote: > 1/ Tamil alphabet does not represent sounds, but places of > articulation. As I and others have pointed out before, this is not true. If the Tamil alphabet only distinguished points of articulation, it could not distinguish between 0BAA (a bilabial obstruent) and 0BAE (a bilabial nasal), because both have the same point of articulation: bilabial. And similarly for many other consonant letters. Nor could it represent vowels, which don't have points of articulation. But indeed, the Tamil alphabet *does* represent sounds--or to put it more correctly, it represents phonemes, each of which is a set of one or more phones (sounds used in speech). > 2/ By law of grammar Tamil character already have a character for the > duplicate 0bb6 defined again for Tamil by Unicode. It is a deadly > distributive act for UC to introduce a duplicate character for Tamil. > It is the dictatorial Way the paid officials work. Who's getting paid? Anyway, as has been said before, if you don't like 0BB6, no one is forcing you to use it. -- Mike Maxwell [email protected] "A library is the best possible imitation, by human beings, of a divine mind, where the whole universe is viewed and understood at the same time... we have invented libraries because we know that we do not have divine powers, but we try to do our best to imitate them." --Umberto Eco
