Tamil writing proposal in closing, and, as a bonus, a Theory of History

It is now time to close this series of posts. I have had this proposal for a new way of writing Tamil kicking around my (many) laptops for a while but posted it to this blog only following the Pizza and Panini column for Indiatimes.com. Panini, in a sense, lives on!

Below are the links to all the posts on the Tamil writing proposal:

• Overview
• A modest proposal towards modernizing the Tamil language
• Response to some comments
• Harvard-Kyoto - an explanation
• More comments, examples
• A note of thanks

And in closing, something pretty. Below the fold is the brAhmI alphabet/alphasyllabary. It is, of course, studied by Buddhists for them to be able to understand ancient Buddhist texts, some of which were written in Pali. Just in and of itself, the brAhmI alphabet bears witness to the extraordinary influence that Panini still has around the world. I have a Theory of History which I have never posted about before. Want to know more? Click below to go to the rest of the post.

Tamil writing system proposal - Overview

This series of posts is intended to have the same precision of language and exposition as an academic paper but is written in an informal style so as to appeal to a broad audience. Here is an overview of the proposal that is intended to serve the same purpose as an Abstract in an academic paper.

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In this series of posts, we introduce new diacritical marks for the Tamil language. The proposal has the following five elements: (a) allow all consonant clusters; (b) represent the aspirated consonants using the aaytam symbol (the 'therefore' symbol in English, Unicode U+0B83) prefixing the consonant to be 'aspirated', i.e., to go from 'ka' to 'kha'; (c) represent the soft consonants using a horizontal bar (Unicode U+0955) going over the consonant to be 'softened' (, i.e., to go from 'ka' to 'ga', simply draw a horizontal bar over the 'ka'; optionally, place a backslash-underscore after the character); (d) use a horizontal bar to represent the 'R' (Unicode U+090B) sound found in Sanskrit in Tamil (the syllabic alveolar trill) (or, optionally, place a backslash-underscore after the character); (e) represent the additional vowel sounds in Modern Hindi using the crescent symbol (Unicode U+0945) to produce the two additional sounds for U+090D and U+0911 (or, optionally, place a backslash-parenthesis after the character); (f) represent long vowels using the 'avagraha' symbol from Devanagari (U+093D); and (g) represent consonant-vowel conjuncts using the 'pull' symbol (the 'dot' symbol in English going above the character in question) for the consonant followed by the vowel in question.

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Tamil writing system proposal - more comments and examples

I am writing this post nearly a year after the first post and so in this post, I would like to summarize the proposal for the Tamil writing system and, furthermore, add a symbol for the 'R' sound (as in kRshNa) to Tamil and capture two more sounds from modern Hindi. The 'R' character would be represented as a horizontal bar on top of the Tamil 'r' according to this proposal. Here is the proposal thus far:

1. Soft and aspirated sounds: To get (ka), (kha), (ga), (gha) in Tamil, just use one of the following:

a. In Tamil script: k, .: k, k\_, .: k \_

(here, the ".:" denotes the 'therefore' symbol and the '\_' denotes the horizontal bar).

b. ASCII: To represent this in ASCII, one could use the convention above where a period followed by a colon is used to denote the 'therefore' symbol and the backslash followed by an underscore is used to denote the horizontal bar as used in Sanskrit.

Note that a different way to represent this in ASCII is, of course, Harvard-Kyoto.

2. Conjuncts/consonant clusters: We allow all consonant clusters. We simply use the dot character to allow for consonant clusters of arbitrary length (e.g. lakshmya would be written as 'la' + 'k' with a dot on top + 'sh' with a dot on top + 'm' with a dot on top + 'ya'.

3. 'R': We represented the 'R' character by a Tamil 'r' character with a horizontal bar on top. Optionally, this may also be represented by the 'backslash-underscore' combination following the 'r' character in Tamil.

4. Chandra/Crescent symbol for a: We represent the 'a' sound (as in 'hat') using the arc symbol used in Modern Hindi. The arc symbol would go either on top of the preceding consonant OR if there was no preceding consonant, it would go on top of the character for 'a'. (this is the same as in Hindi). This can also be represented using a backslash followed by a parenthesis. e.g. 'hat' could be written as 'ha' with a horizontal bar on top + '\(' + 'T'.

5. Chandra/Crescent symbol for 'o': We represent the 'o' sound (as in 'got') using the arc symbol used in Modern Hindi. The arc symbol would go either on top of the preceding consonant OR if there was no preceding consonant, it would go on top of the character for 'A'. (this is the same as in Hindi). This can also be represented using a backslash followed by a parenthesis. e.g. 'got' could be written as 'kA' with a horizontal bar on top + '\(' + 'T'.

6. Consonant-vowel conjuncts: We allow for consonants with a dot to precede vowels to create consonant-vowel conjuncts. (e.g. 'Union' could be written as 'y' with a dot on top + 'U' + 'n' with a dot on top + 'i' + 'ya' + 'n' with a dot on top). This is an optional feature that reduces the learning curve. Now, in order to able to write conjuncts in Tamil, you only need to know how to write the corresponding character and how to write the vowel.

7. Avagraha/long vowels: We borrow the avagraha symbol, again from Devanagari, for prolonging vowel sounds. It is particularly useful for representing the 'schwa'. (e.g. University would be written as 'y' with a dot on top + 'n' with a dot on top + i' + 'va' + avagraha symbol + 'r' with a dot on top + 'si' + 'T' with a dot on top + 'i'.

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Below are some example words represented using the new diacritical marks.

Examples

1. rAma           = 'r' + the 'aa' symbol (the symbol that takes you from ra to raa) + 'm'

2. lakshmaNa  = 'l' (without the dot on top) + 'k' with the dot on top + 'z' (the first 'sh' character) with the dot on top + 'm' (without the dot on top) + 'N'
3. bharata          = '.:' + 'p' with a horizontal bar on top + 'r' (without the dot on top) + 't' (without a dot on top)
4. shatrughNa   = 'z' (the first 'sh' character) + 't' with a dot on top + 'ru' + .: + 'k' with a horizontal bar as well as a dot on top + 'N'
5. Tattoine         = 'T' + the arc symbol on top of the 'T' + 'T' with a dot on top + 'Too' + 'i' (small i) + 'n' with a dot on top.
6. Skywalker     = 's' with a dot on top + 'k' plus the prefix for the 'ai' (Harvard-Kyoto) sound + 'v' + the 'aa' symbol (the symbol that takes from ra to raa) with a crescent on top + 'k' with a dot on top + 'k' + 'r' with a dot on top.

Tamil writing system proposal - a note on the alphabet

A very short note on the Tamil alphabet. There are (around) 36 characters in the Tamil alphabet. Here is the Harvard-Kyoto table with the Tamil characters underlined and highlighted. Not all the characters in Tamil are part of this list and not all characters in the list, as can be seen, are part of the alphabet. Just so people can follow along.

 a A i I u U R RR lR lRR e ai o au M H
   k kh g gh G c ch j jh J
   T Th D Dh N t th d dh n
   p ph b bh m y r l v z S s h
                             

Shashi Tharoor on the English language - some errors in his analysis

This article by Shashi Tharoor in the New York Times came up on the BAQC Facebook group earlier today.

An English friend of mine says that he nearly had a heart attack on a flight in the United States when the American pilot announced that the plane would be airborne "momentarily.' 'In British English, the language my friend speaks, "momentarily" means "for a moment," and he thought the pilot was suggesting an imminent crash soon after takeoff. In American English, however, "momentarily" means "in a moment," and the pilot was merely appeasing the impatient passengers.

I had my suspicions that Shashi Tharoor was not, in fact, accurately representing the subject matter. I had my suspicions, that's all. This is not intended to be a commentary on Shashi Tharoor himself. Although I hate to miss out on any opportunity to call into question a politician's motives.

Some of it was pretty clearly false.

A British linguist once told a New York audience that whereas a double negative could make a positive, there was no language in the world in which a double positive made a negative. A heckler put paid to his thesis in forthright American: "Yeah, right."

So, yeah, this is an old joke. "Yeah, yeah" and "Yeah, right" are two instances of usage in the English language where two positives seem to make a negative. But it occurred to me that, besides that problem, Shashi Tharoor was mistaken in ascribing this to the differences between British usage of the English language versus American. It is, in fact, a matter of context. (This would be studied as part of what is known as pragmatics in linguistics.) Even a British speaker of the English could say 'yeah, right' (and also 'yeah, yeah') to imply disagreement. The tone of voice is what would give away the context in this case. Unless, of course, the speaker is a teenager. Those fellows give nothing away.

As for Shashi Tharoor's point on the usage of the word "momentarily", it turns out that Mark Liberman has written up an entire post on this topic.

Cavett wrote: 

When the flight attendant would say, “We will be landing in Chicago momentarily,” I used to enjoy replying, “Will there be time to get off?” But I see the forces of darkness have prevailed, and this and many wrong uses are now deemed acceptable by the alleged guardians of our language, the too-quickly supine dictionary makers. Are they afraid of being judged “not with it”? What ever happened to, “Everybody does it don’t make it right”? 

I chose the quotation because it's an especially clear example of the sentiment that usage, no matter how widespread and how authoritative, doesn't outweigh the peever's sense that a certain usage is somehow morally wrong. But having chosen the passage, I felt in duty bound to check the implication that the evil sense of momentarily is a recent development, limited to ill-educated flight attendants and similar corporate drudges.

It was my understanding too that the word 'momentarily' should be used in the sense of 'for a moment'. People who use the word 'momentarily' in the 'soon' sense may strike some as ill-educated or under-educated but that usage, in fact, has some history to it. It is merely a deprecated usage of the word. It has little do with the differences between British and American English. So, anyway, Shashi Tharoor is quite mistaken on many points in this article. I don't believe much of the other stuff he has written as well. Poor Mr. Tharoor. The trouble with being a politician is nobody believes you even when you are being sincere. Because it is just so hard for anybody to tell.

Drop down menus and radio buttons, two new linguistic constructs for the English language

For those of our readers who survived the End of the World : a big Welcome Back to you.

So I was on email with David Peterson, the President of ConLang, an organization that I came to know about just a few days ago, and had invited him here to the Bay Area. I was emailing him after I read about John Quijada in the New Yorker. Here is my email reply to him.

==

Hi David,

Thanks so much for letting us know.

I was just checking with you to see if you wanted to give a talk. Please feel free to refer others such John Quijada via email ids if you think they might {[find our location more convenient|be equally suitable choices|have interested in giving a talk]}.

Best wishes,

Anand

==

I have a typo there ('interested' should be 'interest) but you can something different in my email reply to him. I have used the "{[ ... ]}" construct. This is a new construct for natural languages such as English. Think of it as a radio button choice menu for the English language.

The problem for me was that I was emailing a person I had come to know about only recently. I wanted to tell him to refer other people if they would find the Bay Area more convenient to drive to and/or if other people would be equally suitable choices and/or have interest in giving a talk, but these three choices are a sort of a radio button menu where you can pick one or more of the given choices. Using and/or is unwieldy but more importantly, in mathematical terms, is not isomorphous to the choice set with the radio button menu option. Addressing someone an email like this is totally okay because people receive emails all the time with HTML having embedded links and other GUI artifacts. This sort of a construct is, in my opinion, more elegant.

Another thing I would like to introduce is the drop down menu construct for English. The idea here is to offer greater ability to specify choices. Of course, you can always say - please pick one of the above. But there are advantages to having a drop-down menu such as construct reuse. You could say something along the lines of 'Are you coming for the party?  I just want to know whether it is a{{[ Yes | No | Maybe | Will Decide later ]}}"'.

You could have predefined constructs such as #RE_YNMW which stands for the construct given above. So that email would be abbreviated to:

'Are you coming for the party? I just want to know whether it is a #RE_YNMW'

These two options together form a conlang, a constructed language "built" on English. It would be perfectly understandable to speakers of English, of course, when you use them. That is all for today.

And so finally, before I sign off, people, give yourselves a pat on the back. You guys just survived the Apocalypse.

Update: Fixed some typos. Added penultimate paragraph.

Now in Punjabi

Another song video, and this time, a song in the Punjabi language.

 

Another Gangnam Style video

Continuing the theme of serendhomophony, here is another misheard lyrics version of the song "Gangnam Style".

 

Serendipity in languages

The three posts ( one , two , three ) below form a set of posts on the topic of serendipity in languages. Please do send me a note if you have thoughts or comments on this.

I really do prefer to use the terms 'pseudoreduplication'/'pseudoreduplicates' although I am proposing the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendreduplication'/'serendreduplicates'. Also, I would prefer to use the terms 'pseudohomophones'/'psuedohomophony' where I am using the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendhomophones'/'serendhomophony'. I will be using these terms interchangeably. The use of 'serend-' terminology is there to disambiguate matters if any confusion should arise.

Update: Thanks to my friend Krishna Kunchithapadam for his suggestions, including and particularly the point on retaining the use of the terms 'pseudoreduplication' and 'pseudohomophony'.

Second Update: Note that 'pseudohomophony/'serendhomophony' is a statistical concept. If a significant fraction of speakers of language B think that word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A, then XB and XA are 'pseudohomophones'/'serendhomophones'.

Third Update (Nov 30, 4:34 pm): Note that my definition of 'serendhomophony' is general enough to cover the case where word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A for a particular performance, for instance, for a single Youtube video of a song. A different Youtube video of the same song could lead to a different word XB-1A in language B to being a homophone of the word XA in language A.

You could think of the performance of a song performance you listen to on Youtube as a process. It is a process (cf. stochastic process) producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. Simultaneously, it is also a process producing the words XB1, XB2, ..., XBn in language B for speakers of language B serendhomophonous with XA1, XA2, ..., XAn. And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC1, XC2, ..., XCn in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on. (You could cover every language and dialect on earth).

A different performance of the same song on Youtube will be a process  producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. But simultaneously, it will also be a process producing the words XB-1A, XB-2A, ..., XB-nA in language B for speakers of language B (serendhomophonously). And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC-1A, XC-2A, ..., XC-nA in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on.

Note that there are two levels of homophonousness here : per performance and per language.

Gangnam Style

The latest news from the exciting world of technology is that "Gangnam Style" has now become Youtube's most viewed video. It has received more than 800 million views. That is right. 800 mil. Anyway, here is the video. Enjoy!

A modest proposal towards modernizing the Tamil writing system

It is June, but May and the theme of language and Talk were not so long ago. Given that, I will post on this here blog a modest proposal that goes towards modernizing the Tamil writing system. This post was occasioned by a comment on a Quizzing forum from earlier today. I have been meaning to talk about this for a while, but never got the chance to do so on my blog or my List.

The point came up on the forum that there is a rule in Tamil against using consonant clusters (like 'Tm'). This was brought up in the context of a controversy around the naming of a road in Tamil Nadu (the 'Mahatma Gandhi Road'). The controversy was around - get this - the use of the word 'mahATma' for a road in Tamil Nadu. The problem apparently is that 'mahATma' is a word that is of Sanskrit origin. Now, Tamil Nadu happens to be a state that is very proud of its language, but at the same time, there is a great deal of politicking on linguistic identity going on out there, especially during election time. All that posturing and politicking over linguistic identity seems utterly pointless, and it is really little more than a cynical ploy on the part of the politicians. However, the threat to Tamil from Hindi seems to be an always popular theme among voters in Tamil Nadu, and this bit of linguistic populism still has popular support. So what is to be done?

I would like to suggest the following : let us modernize the Tamil language to the greatest extent possible. Many of the rules currently governing Tamil come from premodern rules of language. This includes rules from Middle Tamil, et cetera. The solution is simple : copy Hindi. Do whatever Hindi does in terms of the writing system in Tamil as well. This would allow adopting words from Hindi and other Indian languages without change in Tamil. My proposal below includes allowing for aspirated consonants, for consonant clusters, and for better distinguishing of what I like to call the 'soft' consonants (as distinguished from the 'hard' ones.) My proposal would involve the following three simple changes to the Tamil writing system :

1. Consonant clusters: The proposal here is simple : allow for all consonant clusters. Mix and match as you please. Basically, allow the 'sTrI's, the 'zrIs' and the 'sprees'.

2. The soft consonants ('ga' versus 'ka', 'ja' versus 'cha', et cetera): there is a total of 20 consonants (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial) in the primary table in DevanAgari (see table linked here). Tamil could simply use the same set of sounds in its writing system. It does so in any case in practice. It would be relatively simple to introduce a new mark to distinguish the first consonant from the third consonant in each category (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial) (noting that the second and the fourth consonants are aspirated sounds). One could add the horizontal bar on top of the symbol for the third consonant in each category to distinguish that one from the first. This would be a way of acknowledging the role of Sanskrit (and Panini) in the development of this writing system.

3. Aspirated consonants: The proposal here is pretty simple again : allow for aspirated consonants. Aspirated consonants are ones for which you expel a extra bit of puff of air as you pronounce them. (Anyone who knows Hindi can tell you what the aspirated consonants in Hindi are.) I am talking, of course, about the 'kha' consonant (as opposed to the 'ka' consonant), the 'gha' consonant (as opposed to the 'ga' consonant), et cetera. The writing system could easily accomodate this using some symbol to distinguish the aspirated consonants. I would suggest for us to use the 'therefore' symbol (already used in Tamil to distinguish 'fa' from 'pa') following the letter to distinguish aspirated consonants from non-aspirated ones.

Using (2) and (3), you would end up with the same set of consonants as Hindi/Sanskrit. This would make communication using Tamil much, much easier. As regards (1), this requires no changes to the language at all. Even simply allowing all consonant clusters would greatly simplify matters and enable in modernizing the Tamil language. Wikipedia indicates that this process is underway in any case : "Contact with European languages also affected both written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil" but it would be good to take it to a logical/rationalistic conclusion. As I mentioned at the forum, I went through Harold Schiffman's book on Tamil grammar at one point of time. It was an interesting book to read. At the same time, it is not very understandable for the naive user of the Tamil language. This grammar stuff does not have to be complicated. I only wish they modernize the Tamil writing system sooner rather than later.

Note that I have followed the Harvard-Kyoto convention throughout in this post for all italicized words (not that you need to know this to see where I am going with this proposal). Indeed, you could simply use the Harvard-Kyoto system for writing in Tamil and avoid all the problems I mentioned above. Many people use this in any case.

I have ensured that the suggestions in this proposal are as simple as possible to keep things constructive. If you had any comments on this, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to email me at the same email address as before. Enjoy!

Update (July 7th): In order to make things easier for Unicode users, I would like to add that the proposal includes using the Unicode symbol 0955 (which is unmistakably different from any other symbol yet similar to the horizontal bar in Hindi/Sanskrit) as an alternate way to add the horizontal bar for Tamil characters. Furthermore, preferably, the Unicode symbol 0955 ought to be placed on top of the 'therefore' symbol to indicate that this symbol is being used to indicate aspirated consonants. Please see the attached Unicode charts to see what symbols it is that I am referring to in this post. The symbols in question are Unicode characters 0955 and 0B83.