Re: Virama

At 01:36 28.3.2000 +0200, Kristian Jensen wrote:

Hold your horses there Barry. AFAIK, a marker below a glyph to represent
/i/ does not occur in any Indic script. And believe me, I have seen a
lot of Indic scripts - enough to make the following generalizations about
a prototypical Indic vowel marking system (which even Tagalog follows):

    /a/  -  unmarked

Phonetically [@] in Sanskrit.

    /i/  -  above a glyph

Usually /i/ goes *before* the syllable and /i:/ after, in fact.

    /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.

    /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!
It is not uncommon that _e/ai_ and _o/au_ put stuff both before and after
the syllable.
/BP

"Doubt grows with knowledge" -Goethe