Written Tamil and Srivas' Theory

(Apologies to others for revisiting this, but...)

Sinnathurai Srivas said on Thu, Feb 09, 2012 at 02:01:03AM -0800,:

> Anusvara and Visarga are not required for Tamil.
> Tamil Grammar (first chapter) deals with writing system.
> Tamil writing system is different to mostly other Indic system.
> primarily, Tamil alphabet does not represent sounds, but represents
> Places of articulation.

The limited (written) Tamil I know does not have a character / glyph
for the sound /zha/. (U+0D34 in Malayalam). Tamil instead uses the
(what I believe is the) equivalent of, U+0D33.

The limited (spoken) Tamil does use the /zha/ sound, as in
"eezhu" (as in seven) and "vaazhum".

Since the "Point of Articulation" for both /zha/ and /LLA/ are
different, I feel your theory that Tamil writing represents "places of
articulation" is wrong.

Mind correcting me?

I have not studied Tamil at any level. And I may be entirely wrong.

(note - while the charts describe U+0D34 as "Malayalam letter LLLA",
/zha/ is a more appropriate representation of that sound - it is
pronounced without the tounge touching anywhere, and tip of the tounge
bent back like the glyph itself. The 0D33, OTOH is pronounced with the
tounge touching the upper part of the <palate?>)

-- 
Mahesh T. Pai   ||