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

[myself]
> > http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/mwd_search.html"
[Trebor Jung]
> 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?
I have checked it and all the capital letters there have
lowercase counterparts with a different value.

Capital vowels are long. Capital R is syllabic and when doubled
it is long. The digraph lR and trigraph lRR stand for short
and long syllabic l respectively (this is based on how these
syllabic l sounds are spelled in devanagari: an l with the
diacritic for syllabic r and long syllabic r respectively;
but I think a transliteration with capital L and double capital
L would work better).

Capital M stands for the anusvara (nasalization), which is
commonly transcribed as m with dot below or above. Capital H
for visarga (aspiration after a vowel), commonly transcribed
as h with dot below. Capital G and J stand for the velar and
palatal nasals. Capital T, D, N stand for the retroflex plosives
and nasal. The digraphs with h stand for the corresponding
aspirated consonants. c and ch stand for the voiceless palatal
plosives/affricates, similar to English ch. There must be some
error or omission, because I only find one capital S, which is
supposed to stand for an sh sound, but Sanskrit has two such
sounds, a plain sh and a retroflex sh (commonly transcribed
as s with tilde and s with dot below).

Cheers,
Javier

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