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

On 30 May 2004 Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:

> "http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/mwd_search.html"
> 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?
In my sources, the Tamil grapheme (phoneme?) set is the following:

Pure vowels: /a/ = [V], /a:/, /e/, /e:/, /i/ = [i, 1], /i:/ = [i:, 1:],
             /o/, /o:/ /u/ = [u, M], /u:/;
Diphtongues: /ai/ = [Vy], /au/ = [VU];
Endogenuous consonants: /4/, /j/, /J/, /k/ = [k, g, x, G, h], /l/,
     /l`/, /m/, /n/, /n`/, /n_d/, /N/, /p/ = [p, b, B],
     /r/ = /r, t, d/, /r\/, /t/ = [t_d, d_d, D], /t`/ = [t`, d`, r`],
     /tS/ = [tS, dZ, S, s], /v/ = [P];
Borrowed conconants: /dZ/, /h/, /s/, /s`/.

According to the above my _guess_ for the romanization is the
following:
- Capital vowels denote long vowels (usually transcribed by macron-
  above)
- R is [r] (usually transcribed by r-macron-below);
  RR is [rr] = [tt, tr], e.g. kuRRam 'error'
- r is [4] (usually transcribed by unaccented r);
- lR is [r\] (usu. l-macron-below, r-dot-below or z-dot-below);
  lRR the same geminated
- M is [n_d]
- H is [x]
- G is [G]
- c is [tS], ch is [tS_h]
- j is [dZ], jh is [dZ_h]
- J is [J]
- N is [n`]
- T is [t`], Th is [t`_h]
- D is [d`], Dh is [d`_h]
- S is [s`]
- y is [j]
I don't find the romanization for [l`]. And maybe I've made some
mistakes.

> Why are capital letters used even if the lowercase letters are still
> available?
  They stands for accented characters. It causes less difficulties in
reading and searching in headwords when original graphemes (or
phonemes) are represented by a single character not with digraphs or
trigraphs.
  I present a Hungarian example for the difficulties (I know better
this language as Tamil ;)): the phoneme /Z/ is represented by digraph
"zs". But in word "község" this digrpah reprezent two separate sounds
/zS/ (pronounced assimilated as [s:]) because there's a morpheme
boundary in the word "köz.ség" 'commun.ity (village, small town)'.