From: N. Ganesan (naa.ganesan@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2006 - 19:06:18 CST
This note is about the allocation of "markers" for
the Dravidian scripts such as Tamil, Telugu,
Kannada, Malayalam in Unicode code-charts. The "markers"
will be very useful for working with historic letters,
and esp. the cillakSaram consonants in Malayalam
since the special cillu-markers will free up ZWxJ
functionality, and no special properties in ZWJ/ZWNJ
just for the case of Malayalam in the family of
Indian scripts will be ineeded in TUS and implementation.
Here are 4 examples of marker codepoints
(1) Telugu alveolar marker
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There are two historic Telugu letters not used
in current print books, but found in grammar books.
Usually called TCA and TJA due to alveolar
modification upon Telugu letters, CA and Ja
respectively.
TCA and TJA can be generated by
"Telugu alveolar marker" sign with
an annotation something like
"This Telugu sign works only on CA and JA".
This combining sign, with properties like
anusvara, will have a dotted circle.
(2) Telugu abbreviation marker:
-----------------------------------------------
In Telugu script, words are abbreviated
and shown as the first letter (abugida or vowel) of the word
followed immediately by two closely spaced vertical
lines. This combining sign, with properties like
anusvara, with a dotted circle followed by
two vertical lines II will be "Telugu
contraction (or abbreviation) marker".
There are many example words with
Telugu contraction marker listed in books.
(3) Malayalam cillu marker
-----------------------------------------
The Indic list has gone through several inputs
on this problem for implementation.
did some reserach, and I do not recall a glyph for cillu m,
that is in line with cillu n, cillu nn, etc.,
Will give this shape from published evidence
tomorrow. Does UTC have the cillu m glyph?
In Unicode, cillu letters of Malayalam
can be called as "Malayalam prepausal consonant marker"
or "Malayalam cillu marker".
This combining sign, with properties like
anusvara, will have a dotted circle.
Cillus can come at the end of words
and word-medially. ka, na, nna, la, lla, llla, r, t and m
Please note that one Unicode cillu marker
will provide cillus for all these 9 consonants
(otherwise, 9 separate code-points! which
will remove them from their root genetic
consonants unaccepatble linguistically,)
And, cillu marker will do away with any special
rules for ZWJ/ZWNJ just for Malayalam
among Indian scripts also.
In usual transliteration, cillu_consonant = consonant (roman) followed by :
So, eg., cillu_nna (in Malayalam) = n:na in roman, otherwise nna only.
In the Rachana document on cillu letters, cillu_nma set
in pg. 2 of L2/05-210, can be transliterated as "n:ma"
with : representing the cillu-marker codepoint.
In word-final position, cillu_r = Malayalam letter RR.
(4) Malayalam short u marker
--------------------------------------------
Sometimes, especially in North Kerala,
words ending with u has a short u
indicated in orthography. The word-terminal
[consonant] + short u is shown visibly
using a virama. This is called saMvRttokaram
in Sanskrit/Malayalam, and is used in Malayalam.
It can be encoded as "Malayalam short u marker"
which works with words ending as [consonant] + u
This "Malayalam short u marker" is the last codepoint/sign
in a word. There is a separate document on the
importance of Samvruttokaram in Malayalam script
authored by Drs. Chtrajakumar and Gangadharan.
This combining "short u marker" in Malayalam Unicode,
with properties like anusvara, will have a dotted circle.
It has to work with [consonant]+ [u-vowel modifier].
These 4 examples are given to illustrate the use
of "marker" codepoints in Unicode among Dravidian scripts.
There are some more markers that can be added in Unicode
over time.
N. Ganesan
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