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The Genius of the Tolkaapiyam's Scheme for Tamil letters The Genius of the Tolkaapiyam's Scheme for Tamil letters

Topic started by Chandra (@ netapps2.krdl.org.sg) on Wed Nov 22 21:47:45 .
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Posted by George Hart in the Project Madurai mailing list when the question of
the correct translitaeration scheme for Tamil came up and people tried to
complain that graphemes for ga/ja/da/dha/ba were missing in Tamil script and
need to reprsent them in a Roman tranliteration scheme:
----
From: George Hart  
Date: Wed Dec 1, 1999 5:28pm
Subject: Re: [agathiyar] transliteration standard


At the risk of sounding a bit sanctimonious, I'd like to put in
a
strong word for a proper transliteration of Tamil. That means
the
transliteration of the Tamil Lexicon or something close to it.
One
of the great miracles of linguistic insight is the way in which
the
Brahmi alphabet was adapted for Tamil about the third century
BC.
Whoever did it realized that, given the phonological rules of
Tamil,
the letters in kaa, akam, and anku, though all pronounced
differently, are actually the same phoneme. He or she
accordingly
used the same Brahmi character for "k" in all these positions
and
eliminated the kh, g, and gh that are in Prakrit/Sanskrit but
not in
Tamil. The genius of the Tamil language, and all its history,
depend
on this insight, which is a truly awesome one. Now we see
people who
want a "phonetic" transcription of Tamil. This is nonsense. If
we
start writing "kaa," "agam" and "angu," we have, purely and
simply,
murdered the language. If one is writing for people who know no

Tamil, then there may be some excuse for writing "kamban," but
if one
writes for Tamilians, then PLEASE, let's keep "kampan" --
otherwise,
the entire mor****ogy and structure of the language are lost.

It may be worth remarking that even Malayalam (which, like
modern
Tamil, comes from old Tamil) keeps this system. In fact,
Malayalam actually has two writing systems: one for native words and one
for
Sanskrit borrowings. The fact that Malayalis did not feel they
could
adopt "phonetic" renderings for native words should suggest to
all of
us that it is unwise, and indeed quite dangerous, to do for
Tamil.
G. Hart

PS It has long been a complaint of people who speak other
languages
(and, indeed, of some Tamilians) that Tamil is "inferior"
because it
does not have all the sounds of Sanskrit. This is nonsense. The

Tamil alphabet is perfectly suited for the Tamil language. Its only
lack is a way to produce the occasionally voiced initial in
borrowed
words (bayam, fear) -- but this can be managed by somehow
marking the
first letter (as is often done by italicization or other
means).
--
(posted on behalf)

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