From iad@xxxx.xxx.xxx Wed Sep 22 11:49:56 1999 X-Digest-Num: 240 Message-ID: <44114.240.1324.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 11:49:56 -0700 From: Ivan A Derzhanski [OBTW, take everything I [...] will say with the following proviso: > my exposure to Devanagari is (almost) strictly via Sanskrit [...].] Whereas mine is predominantly via Hindi (that being the only DN-written language wherewith I have any practical familiarity). > Thing is, the ligatures aren't so neat and tidy as we'd hope. There isn't > really every possible conjunct ligature; sometimes you fall back on virama > to make them. Especially when dealing with a foreign language (like > Lojban) which may construct clusters alien to Indic languages. Indeed. The ugly thing is that DN has several different strategies for handling consonant clusters (both letters written in full with a virama under C1, C1 written with a diacritic for C2=, C2 written with a diacritic for C1= or a homorganic nasal, a more or less transparent ligature, an unanalysable letter for the whole cluster), and while that may be linguistically motivated in Sanskrit, it would make no sense in Lojban. Btw, would there still be an unwritten vowel, and if so, which one? {a} (Sanskrit-like) or {y} (Hindi-like)? The latter makes more sense to me, since in Lojban {y} is a better candidate for special treatment, being structurally different from the other vowels, though it's rare. > In Sanskrit, you hardly ever have vowels abutting one another, > even with a visarga present, so I'm not even sure how you'[d] > *write* it in Sanskrit. Use the initial/isolated form of the > vowel after the hiatus? I think Hindi does something like that. Yes, exactly. Works quite well. > It'll look like really strange text no matter what, since you > pretty much HAVE to break after each word in Lojban, unless you mark > stress, and that looks *weird* in Devanagari, with all those tiny words. It doesn't look weird at all; it looks like Hindi, where words of one, two or three letters (plus diacritics) are very frequent. > The vowel-hiatus gets weird with diphthongs too... [...] > And the rising diphthongs even worse. Falling diphthongs, > SOME are written as vowels (ai, au), some are not (ei, oi). The falling diphthongs are not a problem; scores of Indic, Dravidian etc. languages have augmented the system with their own conventions for writing vowels that Sanskrit doesn't have. How about a combination of the diacritics for / and ? Not at all sure how one would handle the rising diphthongs, though. > Erk, we can't even use the existing semivowels for rising diphthongs, > since the [w] is also what you'd have to use for [v]. Not necessarily; you can recycle for {v} (that's only natural, since would probably become {f}) and then use for prevocalic asyllabic {u}. -- "mu' Dajatlhpa', reH DajatlhlaH, (Sheikh Muslihuddin Abu Muhammad Abdullah Saadi Shirazi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences