Re: Virama

BP Jonsson wrote:
>>    /i/  -  above a glyph
>
>Usually /i/ goes *before* the syllable and /i:/ after, in fact.
Yes that's true for Devanagari, Gurmukhi, and other Indic scripts
that distinguish short and long /i/. But both /i/ markers also have
a mark above the glyph (or at least, it extends to the top of the
glyph). So prototypically speaking, /i/ is marked above the glyph.

>>    /u/  -  below a glyph
>
>The long and short signs for _i_ and _u_ are not infrequently mirror-images
>of each other (i.e. _ii_ is _i_ reversed, _uu_ is _u_ reversed.
To be more precise, they are reverse _horizontally_. That's true
for Indic scripts that distinguish length in high vowels. That's
actually a good generalization that I should have mentioned as well.
In Devanagari, for instance, _i_ is a prescripted mark extending over
a syllable glyph, while _ii_ is a postscripted mark extending over a
syllable glyph. Both _u_ and _uu_ are subscripted but differing in
what direction they curve: like a 9 turned clockwise for _u_, like
a 6 turned clockwise for _uu_. Anyways, the generalization still
holds: /i/ is marked above a glyph and /u/ is marked below.

>    /a:/ -  after a glyph
>    /e/  -  before a glyph (though variable, see NB below)
>    /o/  -  combining the diacritics for /e/ and /a:/
>    /ai/ -  two marks of /e/
>    /au/ -  a variant of the marking for /o/
>
>_au_ often combines _ai_ and _aa_ just as _o_ combines _e_ and _aa_.  Note
>that _e_ and _o_ are always long in Sanskrit!
Ah, that makes a lot of sense actually. _ai_ can be seen to be a lowered
_e_, while _au_ can be seen as a lowered _o_. In fact, if I'm not mistaken,
_ai_ and _au_ is often pronounced as [E] and [O] respectively in some
languages.

-kristian- 8)