Re: Sanskrit romanization (was: Yellowblue (was Re: Quest for colours: what's basic then?))

Trebor wrote:

> I wrote:
>
> "On that page, the following list is given for the romanization system: "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". What phonemes do these letters and
> digraphs represent? Why are capital letters used even if the lowercase
> letters are still available?"
(snip Javier's explanation)
>
> I find this system to be too much like X-Sampa, so I've invented my own
> romanization scheme:
>
> a aa i ii u uu r rr lr lrr e ai o au ~ ' k kh g gh ng c ch j jh ny t` th`
> d`
> dh` n` t th d dh n p ph b bh m y r l v z x x` s h
>
> (x` = retroflex sh)
This is probably OK as a quick and dirty system, but the original system
apparently meant to have one roman letter per Devanagari symbol;
specifically, the Vocalic r and l characters are not the same as consonantal
r/l.

As I already mentioned, there is no "z" in Devanagari (there may be a symbol
for it in derived systems, but I don't know...)-- since the original system
had "z S s" corresponding to the 3 s-sounds, I assumeed the z stood for
palatal, S for retro., s for dental.
>
> What does the j represent?
A voiced palatal stop, the voiced counterpart of "c", conventionally [dZ];
jh of course is the aspirated version.

>And isn't G an allophone of J, so it could be
> represented as just ny?
IIRC Skt. velar nasal is not contrastive, but occurs only before the velar
stops; but I'm not sure you'd want to call it an allophone of J, i.e. the
palatal nasal.  It's possible too, that confusion might arise between "ng"
[N] and {Ng], which you'd have to write "ngg" as Indonesian does.

>And is there r, or just R?
Not sure what you mean here.  But there is a "vocalic" r (usually
transcribed as r with subscript dot = R in the Indologie system above) (as
in pr.thivi, gr.ha, r.s.i or r.x`i in your terms.)
as well as a purely consonantal r, as it raja, ruc- ~rocati and many others)