> From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Apr 11 13:45:37 2002 > X-Originating-IP: [62.30.112.2] > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: Inherent "a" Sinnathurai Srivas wrote:
> May I assume u+0b85 as official? No. That is U+0B85 TAMIL LETTER A -- just the ordinary, standalone letter /a/. You are, of course, free to use that character (and any other) in any speculative or experimental reforms of Tamil orthography, as you please. Just as people are free to use U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A 'a' in any speculative or experimental reforms of English spelling, if they choose. > > Some explanations for the need for a visible "a". > In Tamil, > d/ > The use of visible "a" for educational purposes with consonants are a > necessity. For this, of course, you can use U+0B85, and then qualify it however may be needed to convey the concept of inherency in the syllabic pronunciation of the consonants. I presume that people have already been doing this for years in Tamil books about the Tamil writing system. > > e/ > A design plan need to be implemented, anticipating the possible use of > visible "a" instead of inherent "a" in the distance future. Let me quote from Sanford Steever's article on Tamil in Daniels and Bright, 1996: "Occasional proposals to change the individual [Tamil] symbols to purely alphabetic characters, by using vowel-initial allographs for all vowels, with consonant + pulli for all consonants, have not been taken seriously; and they probably never will be, since the existing system represents Tamil syllables very well." Of course, people can go on debating the issue, and it is even conceivable that a revised orthography may catch on some day. But the UTC has already gone on record as being disinterested in redesigning the Tamil writing system, and considers the current Unicode encoding of Tamil to be appropriate for the representation of Tamil as it is currently written. --Ken
