Topic started by p~n (@ bgp385601bgs.jersyc01.nj.comcast.net) on Thu May 1 21:20:37 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

Tamil doesn't have signs for /kha/, /ga/, /gha/, /cha/, /jha/, /da/, /dha/, /tha/, /pha/, /ba/, /bha/ (I haven't included everything, there's more) that is found in most other Indian languages - Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali etc. The same letter takes diff sounds in various positions, which only a native speaker can be perfect. Don't you think this makes the language deficient and makes it difficult to learn? It also poses problems to Tamilians willing to learn other Indian languages, I have gone thru these phases and also come across many ppl with these complaints.

Thanks to borrowed 'Grantha' signs - we today are capable of writing most names e.g., Mahesh, Sriram, Rajan, Saraswathi, Christian names like Stanley, John, Muslim names like Hassan, Jaffar, etc...I dread to think otherwise..

Hindi also has some missing signs - short /e/, short /o/, but much less compared to Tamil. In the past, when Tamilians were strictly confined to TN, it was never a problem. That doesn't hold good anymore, in this internet age, where there is lot of cultural interchange.

Can't we add a few more new letters, derived from older ones, that wud make the language more effective, powerful and modern...Grantha letters have been added, few signs have been removed and new ones added to facilitate type-writing, Why can't we come up with some letters to enrich the language? (I'm neither a linguist nor a Scholar, just someone who has some thoughts to improve the lang to suit the present scenario)..Views please..

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Mani (@ cache-dp09.proxy.aol.com) on: Tue May 6 20:10:43 EDT 2003
  
  That is true, actually Malayalam kha and Malayalam vaa are similar, except Malayalam vaa doesn't have the little circle like kha(or the Tamil vaa). I don't know about dha, that letter resembles the Tamil maa. A lot of letters are definitely borrowed from Tamil, and even some letters are switched around with different pronunciations. You cannot borrow letters from other Dravidian languages, because they don't flow with Thamizh, only suggestion is Malayalam because it definitely resembles Thamizh, and that is about it, unless some letters are made up.
  Either way, something needs to be done.
  The most beautiful letter in Tamil and Malayalam in my opinion is "ja", I just love the way it is written.
  
  
• From: Skanthavelu Nadarajah (@ 198.161.203.25) on: Wed May 7 16:11:33 EDT 2003
  
  Mani,
  If Malayalam letters were added from Malayalam into Tamil script, the Tamil alphabet would look so different.
  
  For the Ri/Ruh sound as in Krishna, the Malayalam letter for that sound can be used. For the two letters kha and tha(aspirated) which I pointed out yesterday, the Grantha letters for those sounds can be used(Or Malayalam va can be used for kha in Tamil). For the other sounds, (ga, gha, chha, jha, Tha, Da, Dha, dha, dha(aspirated), pha, ba, bha and gya), the Malayalam letters for those sounds can be used. I agree the ja in Tamil and Malayalam is beautiful. It is so reminiscent in shape of a butterfly.
  
  
• From: Mani (@ cache-mtc-ah06.proxy.aol.com) on: Wed May 7 18:12:47 EDT 2003
  
  Skanthane,
  
  >>If Malayalam letters were added from Malayalam into Tamil script, the Tamil alphabet would look so different.<<
  
  I'm sure a few modifications can be done, as it was done in Malayalam! ;-)
  I was comparing to other scripts, Telugu and Kannada have the same flow style as far as writing the letters, the only difference with Malayalam and Tamil is that Tamil has more straight letters.
  
  
• From: Venki (@ 12-241-5-72.client.attbi.com) on: Fri May 9 00:46:01 EDT 2003
  
  This was my response on another thread, when a similar discussion came about.
  
  Srini,
  
  I don't have any strong opinion either way, on expanding the character set for the Tamizh script.
  
  'pirAnsu' for France shouldn't be a problem, since they call us 'Tamoules' and India as 'Inde'. After all each language has it's own rules on morphhology and the Tamil rules are such that we try to avoid consonantal clusters, unlike Samaskirutam, which could become Samskrtm in Sanskrit. And then of course we do not want to have 'fa', so substitute 'pa' to form 'pirAnsu'. So even if we had 'fa', we would still call it 'firAnsu'.
  
  Thanjavur was called 'Tanjore', Tiruvananthapuram as 'Trivandrum', Thuthukudi as 'Tuticorin', Tiruchirappalli as 'Trichinopoly' and so forth by the British and we Tamizhs and other Indians did not, and some still do not, have a problem in using the anglicised version of the names. Nobody ridicules the English or the French or anyone else for mangling proper nouns from other languages and I think we should not self-flagellate ourselves over these things.
  
  If the idea is to avoid the ignominy of being termed 'copy cats'....
  
  I don't think the resistance is due to 'not invented here syndrome'.
  
  
  Is our perception of our own mother tongue so weak that adoption of extra characters would tantamount to proclaiming our inadequacy ?
  
  Is it really that blasphemous to think of including newer characters into our Script?
  
  
  On the contrary, it is not a perception of inadequacy, but an attempt to retain the uniqueness of the language and to keep it pristine and close to it's original form, the template to original harking back at least to the Eluttatikaram of TolkAppiyam.
  
  Nothing blasphemous about including new characters and as history shows, it was done with the Grantham script. In present day society, when there is a wholesale mental buyin (especially by the elite) to the concept of learning English for advancement and aangila kalappu in everyday speech to boot, the defenses are up to preserve the purity of the language, since the culture is bound up with the language. We all know that most Indian languages including Tamizh are given to diglossia, where you have a pure, literary sentamizh as opposed to the koduntamizh of everyday speech and writing. Adding characters to the script entails pitfalls and dangers of taking down the walls of literary Tamizh, so to speak, and allowing the marauders to conquer the fort. The fear is that the Tamizh culture of antiquity will be subsumed into a pan-Indian culture and it's uniqueness appropriated by a northern elite or their sympathizers within Tamil Nadu into an all encompassing 'Samaskruta, Vedic culture', which has come to be narrowly identified with certain groups. So in order to maintain cultural cohesiveness, the regulation of the literary (H-level as linguists call it) language is strict and adding characters to the script is considered a major change. The gains from adding the extra characters are not very clear as the evolution of English into a major language despite its flawed character set (Roman alphabet) shows.
  
  As Tamizh society evolves people may revisit the need to add more characters, depending on the needs of the future. But I don't see that happening in our lifetimes from my present vantage point and I don't consider that a negative either.
  
  If people want to advance and if they think English or any other language is the ticket, they will put in the efforts to learn the language and the right pronunciations and sounds too! So I don't subscribe to your statement that It is this straightjacket interpretation of Tamil which causes palpable damage to a Tamil professional when he wants to communicate with a non-Tamil audience. Why should a true professional concern oneself with the language and accent of delivery rather than the content of what is said? In this, we Tamizhs and Indians have a long way to go, to free our minds.
  
  For more, check this thread: http://forumhub.com/tnhistory/22693.21.33.27.html
  
  If you are further interested, you may look at:
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamil_araichchi/
  
  
• From: thamizhmARan (@ cache-mtc-ah06.proxy.aol.com) on: Fri May 9 01:39:43 EDT 2003
  
  Well done Venki, I agree with your post 100%!!!
  
  
• From: SV (@ 202.88.150.227) on: Fri May 9 05:50:30 EDT 2003
  
  Great Venki! You said it!
  
  
  
• From: madhu (@ 199.67.140.75) on: Fri May 9 10:22:28 EDT 2003
  
  venki,
  
  "..The gains from adding the extra characters are not very clear as the evolution of English into a major language despite its flawed character set (Roman alphabet) shows."
  
  No one said English is an adequate language. You missed the point. England emerged as a world power two hundred years ago becuase of its Industrial development. English language has only five vowels and it is not phonetic. You have to memorise the spelling of each word and it is hard to pronounce like a native speaker. Dr. Henry Kissenger came to US as a 14 year old, and 65 years later he still have problem pronouncing the words even though he taught at Harvard. How many times yoiu hear educated people on TV saying they don't know how to spell. Chinese children take 10 years before they feel confident to spell thier characters. Telugu, Tamil and other Indian languages are phonetic base and we don't memorise the spelling. We pronounce and write the words the same way. Tamil is missing two or three base consonants like 'ga'. Telugu added two many hard consonants to accomodate Sanskrit sounds which I would like to eliminate. Earlier I said, language and script are two different things. You said Tamil script borrowed letters from Grantham earlier. Adding few more base consonants make Tamil easy to spell, and easy to accomodate into future technology such as speech-to-text. There will be scholors who will tell how some spelling changed and how to read TolkAppiyam.
  
  
• From: Venki (@ 12-241-5-72.client.attbi.com) on: Sat May 10 18:21:15 EDT 2003
  
  Madhu,
  
  That is the point. English is inadequate and yet it has not stopped it from being the most sought after language in the whole world.
  
  Tamil has chosen to not have those consonants 'explicitly', but those sounds exist in Tamil and there are grammatical rules on when they are pronounced. The problem is not that Tamil does not have those consonants, but that we don't privilege it and other Indian languages sufficiently over English in India. And hence you see some students schooled in Tamil Nadu for 12 years being more comfortable in English than in Tamil! That is where the real problem in the growth of Tamil and other Indian languages lie. Script changes are minor issues better left to linguists and specialists to debate. Society and government should focus on real issues like how to make it worthwhile for a Tamil to feel the need to learn Tamil, and not make it a casuality or feel it unnecessary, in the process of learinng English.
  
  

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