On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Kingsley Jegan Joseph <[email protected]> wrote:
. Kannada also exhibits > this same tendency to a lesser extent - I've come across a few examples, > but nothing comes to mind immediately. Of all the Indian language scripts that I have come across (admittedly not many) the Kannada script seems the least ambiguous and the most phonetic. It even has the distinction between the short "eh" and long "ey" vowels, and the short "ohh" and the long "oh" vowels (see how difficult it is to write it in Roman script!), as well as the difference betwen the labial "la" sound and the more upper-palate "La" sound. I've always felt that if only "zha", that wonderful consonant that Tamizih and Malayalam have, were included, it would be pretty complete....oh, sorry, it needs to include the vowel that occurs in the words "wary" and "carry". I actually do use, when writing lyrics of songs, my own version of Devanagari, with the short "eh" and "oh" and the long "ey" and "Oh", and the "zha" and "a" (of "carry") added on. I find that I am able to read the words perfectly as they are pronounct ed. But since I don't read or write French or other European languages, I don't know whether any vowels in such languages would need more "coverage". This is not a scientific or learned analysis, only my observation Uday...it's getting more and more painful to go to the end of a thread on Gmail and tack on my additional comments. So...sorry...top-posting, even though I agree that one has to read from the bottom, upwards, to get the context of a thread!
