Re: OT: Help reading Indic transliteration?

Mark J. Reed wrote:

>On Wed, Jan 14, 2004 at 02:50:29PM -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
>
>>The specific symbols I'm most curious about are as follows.
>>
>>
>
>Okay, a couple more.  Apparently there is, in addition to N WITH DOT
>ABOVE, an N WITH DOT BELOW.
>
>Also, T WITH DOT BELOW.
>
>The sheer number of diacritics is mind-boggling.  It reminds me of
>reading badly-formed "alien" names in cheesy space opera. :)
>
>
>
[n`] and [t`]. respectively.  I always thought having both was stupid.
All underdots, apart from l, r, m, and h. l and r-underdot are syllabic,
m-underdot is nasalised.  h-underdot is breathy voice, I think.(Not
quite sure of the terminology there, someone can correct me.)  n-tilde
is as in spanish ([J], I think).  Incidentally, e-macron and o-macron
don't exist, but are replaced by |ai| and |au| respectively.  As far as
I recall, this is because of an earlier sound change, which was ai[@i]>e
au[@u]>o.  The long version,  lengthened the |a| sound, creating [a:i]
and [a:u].

That's not very useful, but interesting.

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