Re: Tamil Aytham

From: Sinnathurai Srivas (sisrivas@blueyonder.co.uk)
Date: Sun Apr 03 2005 - 03:28:41 CST

  • Next message: Michael Everson: "Re: Tamil Aytham"

    (resend: Corrected Graphemic to PHONEMIC below)

    My technical answers will be sent in reply to original subject tag.
    This is to discuss the historicity of Aytham. Your openion on this matter
    sounds speculative.

    Tamil and Sinthu (Sindu) writing system had very close relationship in
    ancient Indian history. No such things as Grantha nor Sanskrit existed at
    that time.

    Sindu has it's histric evidence to show that Phonemic and Graphemic hybrids
    were the system of that time. You can trace the traces of charactershapes of
    Indic languages to Sindu/Harapa times.

    There came a system Alphabet based PHONEMIC. That was Tamil. The new arrival
    Grantha insisted on moving from Alphabet based Phonemic to Phonemic only
    system. This is the results of present day descrepencies. This happened to
    Aytham too. Tamil kept the simple and sophisticated Aytham. Grantha moved on
    with complicated and possibly sophisticated "all of them". As for consonants
    and vowels, Grantha misses many phonemes in everyday use, but gives great
    emphasis for the selected phonemes while Tamil has vast pool of Phonemes in
    everyday use with minimal alphabet based on phonemes. (See an example
    http://www.geocities.com/avarangal/ch-isai.pdf ).

    Sinnathurai
    >
    >>It is chicken or egg.
    > It is phonemis only or phonemic based.
    >>>
    > Tamil Grantha had a visarga with two circles. Visarga represents a
    > kind of aspiration. Tamil innovated a three circled Aytham from this,
    > as is obvious from both its shape and its usage. That it is not used
    > identically to original visarga is due to the fact that the character
    > was being used in new ways. Yes, this is part of the genius of the
    > people who developed the early Tamil script from its Tamil Grantha
    > predecessor.
    >
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
    > To: "Unicode Discussion" <unicode@unicode.org>
    > Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 12:23 AM
    > Subject: Re: Tamil 0B83: Tamil Aytham and Devanagari VisargaL
    >
    >
    >> At 23:31 +0100 2005-04-01, Sinnathurai Srivas wrote:
    >>
    >>>>No, it is not. It is a unique string of characters that identifies that
    >>>>code position.
    >>>
    >>>Yes it is technically wrong and misleads developers.
    >>
    >> Saying so does not make an argument about either technical error or
    >> development problems.
    >>
    >>>>No, it isn't. Though it is probably derived from the Tamil Grantha
    >>>>visarga.
    >>>
    >>>It is chicken or egg.
    >>>It is phonemis only or phonemic based.
    >>
    >> Tamil Grantha had a visarga with two circles. Visarga represents a kind
    >> of aspiration. Tamil innovated a three circled Aytham from this, as is
    >> obvious from both its shape and its usage. That it is not used
    >> identically to original visarga is due to the fact that the character was
    >> being used in new ways. Yes, this is part of the genius of the people who
    >> developed the early Tamil script from its Tamil Grantha predecessor.
    >>
    >> This also makes clear why the "false identification" of Aytham with
    >> Visarga was made, years ago. As has been pointed out to you, the
    >> appropriate data files have been changed so that the behaviour of the
    >> character is as you expect it.
    >>
    >> The name cannot be changed.
    >>
    >> No matter what you say, the name cannot be changed.
    >>
    >> No matter how right you may be, the name cannot be changed.
    >>
    >>>I think you understand minorty as something else. I mean, people without
    >>>power to rule themself with dignity. ruled by others is minority to me.
    >>>Constantly under legitrative threats and actions to impose others will
    >>>onto minorities as minority.
    >>
    >> The Universal Character Set allows Tamil people to process and
    >> interchange data in their language. Nothing could be more respectful and
    >> supportive of Tamil culture.
    >>
    >> You are "insulted" and "wounded" by something which has no significance,
    >> and which cannot be changed. Please get over your difficulty. If you
    >> don't, you will just suffer needlessly.
    >> --
    >> Michael Everson * * Everson Typography * * http://www.evertype.com
    >>
    >>
    >>
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >



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