Richard Wordingham wrote: >>> The effects of virama that spring to mind are: >>> >>> (a) Causing one or both letters on either side to change or combine >>> to indicate combination; >>> >>> (b) Appearing as a mark only if it does not affect one of the >>> letters on either side; >>> >>> (c) Causing a left matra to appear on the left of the sequence of >>> consonants joined by a sequence of non-visible viramas. >> >> Most of these don't apply to Tamil, of course. > > They all apply to க்ஷே <U+0B95, U+0BCD, U+0BB7, U+0BC7> TAMIL > SYLLABLE KSSEE. There are four other named syllables where they all > apply.
And several others where they do not. TUS explains that visible puḷḷi is the general rule in Tamil, and conjunct ligatures are the exception. I should have written "These mostly don't apply to Tamil, of course." In any case, Ken has answered the real underlying question: a process that checks whether each character in a sequence is "alphabetic" is inappropriate for determining whether the sequence constitutes a word. -- Doug Ewell | Thornton, CO, US | ewellic.org