At 02:27 +0000 2003-02-12, Andy White wrote:
These are A-VIRAMA-YA-AA and E-VIRAMA-Y-AA, which are sequences of an independent vowel plus a subjoined consonant plus a dependent vowel. Those sequences are used to represent foreign sounds in Bengali. Since the ya-phalaa is a common glyph that can also follow consonants it makes sense not to treat the use of it with independent vowels differently.I said: ? (I am talking about the letters mentioned in the Unicode Indic FAQ, > http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html#13)Just to be clear, I mean the letters called 'Vowel_A_zophola_AA' & 'Vowel_E_zophola_AA' as mentioned in the above mentioned FAQ.
Yes, Oriya O-VIRAMA-BA could be considered structurally similar, and it could even be said that Devanagari K-VIRAMA-SSA which is thought of as a letter in Marathi could considered similar. In the case of Oriya, however, there were two issues. (Did you read my paper, N2525?)
The original consonant [va] was lost in Oriya, merging with [ba]. Later, a need to represent the foreign sound [va] and the foreign sound [wa] was perceived. Taylor 1883 showed a shape for this [va] which is rather unusual, but in any case what came to be used was a BA with a dot in or above its head. To represent [wa] the consonant BA was, unusually subscripted to the initial vowel O.
Two new, rare, foreign consonants were born. We chose to encode them.
Why are the YA-PHALAA characters different? The use of VIRAMA + YA + VOWEL SIGN is productive in Bengali. Initial consonant plus -ya is pronounced as the consonant which when followed by -aa is pronounced [�]. This -yaa can be added to consonants and to initial vowels. It is also a spacing stand-alone glyph which doesn't interact with the letters it follows. Its application to initial vowels is reported to be common.
In Oriya, however, [ba] is a stop, and when subscripted interacts with its consonant glyphically. Application of subscript consonants to initial vowels is not otherwise practiced in Oriya. OBA = WA is not really a normal conjunct and there is a pretty wide range of glyph variations. Plus because the use of the letter WA is rare, it seemed best to treat it as a single letter representing a single sound.
Prove it, please. Bagchi suggests as much in Daniels & Bright but the description is ambiguous.I must add here that Bengali also has a combination used to transcribe Wa. It is LETTER O + YYA_PHALAA.
An example is the Devanagri Letter Vocalic R with Superscript Letter Ra (aka Vowel Ru with Reph). Despite many discussions, no one has been able to come to any agreement as to how to encode it. Is this a candidate? If not; how to encode it?
Repha-ri: RA + VIRAMA + LETTER VOCALIC R
Another is 'Bengali Letter Central A' used to transcribe English 'a' as in ball. (Comparable to Devanagri Chandra A). It is visibly a Bengali letter A with posfixed letter Ya (Bengali Letter A with Ya-phalaa). I think that this letter, among with a few others not mentioned, should be included for compatibility with the Devanagri code block. But what do you think?
I don't see how Bengali is incompatible with Devanagari. -- Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
