Alphabet

[Guest guest]

I am not sure if there has been a separate thread on the impact of Alphabet

on languages. The impact on a language with or without seems to be pretty

much mixed.

 

Maithili for example had a separate alphabet and now with Devanagari its

future is pretty much doomed. In this way it is now no different from other

Hindi dialects, some with vast history and active use, as the Khari Boli

standard takes over.

 

On the other hand Mizo, Konkani and Modern Turkish seem to have prospered

even though without a separate script. Manipur is now going back to the

former Meitei script but the experiment is too recent to comment.

 

Please see the link below presenting a strong case for Romanization of

Indian languages.

 

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/windref.htm

 

The downside of Romanization is mostly cultural but consider the further

benefits not mentioned in the above article. Translation engines like

Systran probably find it easier on Roman script, friendly to the QWERTY

keyboard, vast usage by the internet and expatriate community as the medium

of communication. SASIALIT might stop existing in English!

 

Indian alphabets are usually beleived to be more adaptable to Indian

languages and more phonetic than Latin. However the strongest demerit is the

very large number of strokes and the very large number of 'Yuktakshars'(

and therefore a nightmare for Palm and Handspring). The following link is

from a journal with a specific agenda, but does provide an interesting

perspective.

 

http://www.dalitstan.org/books/a_sans/a_sans4.html

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "Dr.Bharat Sanskrityayan" <bharatvarsha@g...>

wrote:

> I am not sure if there has been a separate thread on the impact of Alphabet

> on languages. The impact on a language with or without seems to be pretty

> much mixed.

>

> Maithili for example had a separate alphabet and now with Devanagari its

> future is pretty much doomed. In this way it is now no different from other

> Hindi dialects, some with vast history and active use, as the Khari Boli

> standard takes over.

>

> On the other hand Mizo, Konkani and Modern Turkish seem to have prospered

> even though without a separate script. Manipur is now going back to the

> former Meitei script but the experiment is too recent to comment.

>

> Please see the link below presenting a strong case for Romanization of

> Indian languages.

 

At least some Indian scripts are easily used in the Web.

The only 8-bit encoding possible among Indian languages is

for Tamil because its script is linear avoiding conjuncts.

An 8-bit bilingual TSCII (tamil) encoding exists for e-mail

groups for more than a decade. Just as easy to use tamil script as is roman

script.

8-bit encoding is not possible for Devanagari script with many conjuncts.

 

There is a review by prof. Sushil Srivastava, Allahabad university

on the interesting book by Christopher King, One language, Two

scripts: The Hindi movement in 19th century North India, OUP, 1994.

It gives an idea of the Hindi movement in 19th century in the

North India, and esp. the growth of Nagari script use, and

the associated Nationalism. It is at:

http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/10/28KingLanguage.pdf

 

Now with 16-bit encodings available in Windows 2000 or XP,

Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, .... scripts is not a

major problem. With one-to-one correspondence between the

Asokan Brahmi derived scripts of India given in Unicode,

it is quite easy to transcribe a Unicode devanagari page

in Tamil (Unicode, TSCII, TAB, ...). In the future, it will

be good to promote Sanskrit texts in all Indian scripts,

as is the practice to write sanskrit in regional scripts.

And, of course, in the simple and neutral Roman script.

 

Hope Indologists write a proposal to Unicode Consortium WG02

to get the southern Grantha script encoded in Unicode.

INDOLOGY/message/2803

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan