1.
Abugida
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This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial, or optional. The terms also contrast them with a syllabary, in which the symbols cannot be split into separate consonants, abugidas include the extensive Brahmic family of scripts of South and Southeast Asia, Semitic Ethiopic scripts, and Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. As is the case for syllabaries, the units of the system may consist of the representations both of syllables and of consonants. For scripts of the Brahmic family, the term akshara is used for the units, abugida as a term in linguistics was proposed by Peter T. Daniels in his 1990 typology of writing systems. Abugidas were long considered to be syllabaries, or intermediate between syllabaries and alphabets, and the term syllabics is retained in the name of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, other terms that have been used include neosyllabary, pseudo-alphabet, semisyllabary and syllabic alphabet. The formal definitions given by Daniels and Bright for abugida and alphasyllabary differ, some writing systems are abugidas but not alphasyllabaries, an abugida is defined as a type of writing system whose basic characters denotes consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote other vowels. Bright did not require that an alphabet explicitly represent all vowels, Phagspa is an example of an abugida that is not an alphasyllabary, and modern Lao is an example of an alphasyllabary that is not an abugida, for its vowels are always explicit. This description is expressed in terms of an abugida and this may formally make the system ambiguous, but in practice this is not a problem, for then the interpretation with the never used inherent vowel sound will always be a wrong interpretation. The fundamental principles of an abugida apply to words made up of consonant-vowel syllables, the syllables are written as a linear sequences of the units of the script. If all modifications are by diacritics and all follow the direction of the writing of the letters. However, most languages have words that are more complicated than a sequence of CV syllables, the first complication is syllables that consist of just a vowel. Now, in languages, this issue does not arise. This is common in Semitic languages and in languages of mainland SE Asia, for some languages, a zero consonant letter is used as though every syllable began with a consonant. For other languages, each vowel has a letter that is used for each syllable consisting of just the vowel. These letters are known as independent vowels, and are found in most Indic scripts and these letters may be quite different to the corresponding diacritics, which by contrast are known as dependent vowels. As a result of the spread of writing systems, independent vowels may be used to represent syllables beginning with a glottal stop, the next two complications are sequences of consonants before a vowel and syllables ending in a consonant. The simplest solution, which is not always available, is to break with the principle of writing words as a sequence of syllables and use a unit representing just a consonant. In a true abugida, the lack of marking may result from the diachronic loss of the inherent vowel
2.
Malayalam
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Malayalam /mʌləˈjɑːləm/ is a language spoken in India, predominantly in the state of Kerala. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was designated as a Classical Language in India in 2013 and it was developed to the current form mainly by the influence of the poet Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan in the 16th century. Malayalam has official status in the state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is spoken by some 38 million people, according to one theory, Malayalam originated from Middle Tamil in the 7th century. However, the current understanding proposes the separation of Malayalam from Proto-Dravidian in the pre-historic era, Malayalam incorporated many elements from Sanskrit through the ages. Before Malayalam came into being, Old Tamil was used in literature and courts of a region called Tamilakam, including present day Kerala state, silappatikaramit was written by Chera prince Ilango Adigal from Chunkaparra, and is considered a classic in Sangam literature. Modern Malayalam still preserves many words from the ancient Tamil vocabulary of Sangam literature, the earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vatteluttu alphabet, and later the Kolezhuttu, which derived from it. As Malayalam began to borrow words as well as the rules of grammar from Sanskrit. This developed into the modern Malayalam script, many medieval liturgical texts were written in an admixture of Sanskrit and early Malayalam, called Manipravalam. The oldest literary work in Malayalam, distinct from the Tamil tradition, is dated from between the 9th and 11th centuries, the first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam, written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785. Due to its lineage deriving from both Tamil and Sanskrit, the Malayalam script has the largest number of letters among the Indian language orthographies, the Malayalam script includes letters capable of representing almost all the sounds of all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Malayalam serves as a language on the islands including the Mahl-dominated Minicoy Island. The word Malayalam originated from the Sanskrit resp, Malayalam words malai or mala, meaning hill, and elam, meaning region. Malayalam thus translates as hill region and used to refer to the land of the Chera dynasty, the language Malayalam is alternatively called Alealum, Malayalani, Malayali, Malean, Maliyad, and Mallealle. The word Malayalam originally meant only for the name of the region, Malayanma or Malayayma represented the language. With the emergence of modern Malayalam language, the name of the language started to be known by the name of the region, hence now, the word Malayanma is considered by some to represent the olden Malayalam language. The language got the name Malayalam during the mid 19th century, the origin of Malayalam, an independent offshoot of the proto-Dravidian language, has been and continues to be an engaging pursuit among comparative historical linguists. Together with Tamil, Toda, Kannada and Tulu, Malayalam belongs to the group of Dravidian languages
3.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
4.
Proto-Sinaitic script
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It is also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite, and Canaanite. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are dated to between the mid-19th and the mid-16th century BC. The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BC, and a date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, the so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie. The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC, the Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years, many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of Canaanites who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta. The date of the inscriptions is placed in the 17th or 16th century BC. Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx. They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script and they are all very short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, and may have been written by Canaanite caravaners or soldiers from Egypt. They sometimes go by the name Proto-Canaanite, although the term Proto-Canaanite is also applied to early Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions, the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions were carved on the stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in the heart of literate Egypt. They are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, 25°57′N 32°25′E, among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants rather than different consonants, some scholars think that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe, and that the אל ʾl at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ʾel god. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in some of the signs are treated as logograms or rebuses Excellent banquet of the celebration of ʿAnat. ʾEl will provide plenty of wine and victuals for the celebration and we will sacrifice to her an ox and a prime fatling. This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, according to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters would have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but most of the names of the letters would have remained the same. Below is a table showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the values, names, and descendants of the Phoenician letters. The Other section shows the corresponding Archaic Greek, Modern Greek, Etruscan, abjad Byblos syllabary Ugaritic script Albright, Wm. F
5.
Phoenician alphabet
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The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
6.
Aramaic alphabet
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The ancient Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BCE. It was used to write the Aramaic language and had displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the writing of Hebrew, the letters all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels. Rather, it is a different type, the earliest inscriptions in the Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet. Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below, Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform, as the predominant writing system. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised, its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, the Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system. A group of 30 Aramaic documents from Bactria has been recently discovered, an analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC in the Persian Achaemenid administration of Bactria, the widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew. Formerly, Hebrew had been using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, the Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the Roman era, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. A cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, the Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets, as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via Karosthi. Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmic family of scripts, today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the Syriac alphabet, Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet. The near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature. In Maloula, one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken and they started to use the Syriac alphabet instead. In Aramaic writing, Waw and Yodh serve a double function, originally, they represented only the consonants w and y, but they were later adopted to indicate the long vowels ū and ī respectively as well. In the latter role, they are known as matres lectionis or mothers of reading. Ālap, likewise, has some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis because in initial positions, it indicates a glottal stop, among Jews, the influence of Hebrew often led to the use of Hē instead, at the end of a word
7.
Brahmi script
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Brahmi is the modern name given to one of the oldest writing systems used in South and Central Asia from the 1st millennium BCE. Brahmi is an abugida that thrived in the Indian subcontinent and uses a system of marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. It evolved into a host of other scripts that continue in use, Brahmi is related to the ancient Kharosthi script, which was used in what is now eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Kharosthi died out in ancient times, the best-known Brahmi inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dating to 250–232 BCE. The script was deciphered in 1837 by James Prinsep, an archaeologist, philologist, Brahmi was at one time referred to in English as the pin-man script, that is stick figure script. Thence the name was adopted in the work of Georg Bühler. The Gupta script of the 5th century is sometimes called Late Brahmi, the Brahmi script diversified into numerous local variants, classified together as the Brahmic scripts. Dozens of modern scripts used across South Asia have descended from Brahmi, one survey found 198 scripts that ultimately derive from it. The script was associated with its own Brahmi numerals, which provided the graphic forms for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system now used through most of the world. The Brahmi script is mentioned in the ancient Indian texts of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, for example, the Lipisala samdarshana parivarta lists 64 lipi, with the Brahmi script starting the list. The Lalitavistara Sūtra states that young Siddhartha, the future Buddha, mastered philology, Brahmi and other scripts from Brahmin Lipikara, a shorter list of eighteen ancient scripts is found in the texts of Jainism, such as the Pannavana Sutra and the Samavayanga Sutra. These Jaina script lists include Brahmi at number 1 and Kharoshthi at number 4 but also Javanaliya, while the contemporary Kharosthi script is widely accepted to be a derivation of the Aramaic alphabet, the genesis of the Brahmi script is less straightforward. Salomon reviewed existing theories in 1998, while Falk provided an overview in 1993, an origin in Semitic scripts has been proposed by some scholars since the publications by Albrecht Weber and Georg Bühlers On the origin of the Indian Brahma alphabet. The most disputed point about the origin of the Brahmi script has long been whether it was an indigenous development or was borrowed or derived from scripts that originated outside India. Most scholars believe that Brahmi was likely derived from or influenced by a Semitic script model, however, the issue is not settled due to the lack of direct evidence and unexplained differences between Aramaic, Kharosthi and Brahmi. Virtually all authors accept that regardless of the origins, the degree of Indian development of the Brahmi script in both the form and the structure has been extensive. It is also accepted that theories of Vedic grammar probably had a strong influence on this development. In contrast, some reject the idea of foreign influence
8.
Grantha alphabet
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It is a Brahmic script, having evolved from the Brahmi script in Tamil Nadu. The Malayalam script is a descendant of Grantha as are the Tigalari. Grantha script still lives in Tamil Nadu, albeit in reduced state, in Sanskrit, grantha is literally a knot. It is a word that was used for books, and the used to write them. This stems from the practice of binding inscribed palm leaves using a length of thread held by knots, although Sanskrit is now mostly written with Devanagari, Grantha was widely used to write Sanskrit in the Tamil-speaking parts of South Asia until the 19th century. Scholars believe that the Grantha script was used when the Vedas were first put into writing around the 5th century CE, in the early 20th century, it began to be replaced by Devanagari in religious and scholarly texts and the Tamil script in popular texts. The Grantha script was historically used for writing Manipravalam, a blend of Tamil. This evolved into a complex writing system which required that Tamil words be written in the Tamil script. In modern times, the Grantha script is used in religious contexts by orthodox Tamil-speaking Hindus. It is also used in many religious almanacs to print traditional formulaic summaries of the coming year, Grantha script may be classified as follows, An archaic and ornamental variety of Grantha is sometimes referred to as Pallava Grantha. They were used by the Pallava in some inscriptions, mamallapuram Tiruchirapalli Rock Cut Cave Inscriptions, Kailasantha Inscription come under this type. The Pallavas also produced a distinctive script separate from the Grantha family, the Tigalari-Malayalam script is called Western Grantha. Currently two varieties are used, Brahmanic, or square, and Jain, or round, the Tigalari-Malayalam script was a variety of Grantha dating from the 8th or 9th century CE. It later split into two distinct scripts – Tigalari and Malayalam and this type of Grantha was used by Cholas approximately from 650 CE to 950 CE. Inscription of later Pallavas and Pandiyan Nedunchezhiyan are also examples for this variety of Grantha Script, Inscriptions of the Imperial Thanjavur Cholas are an example for Medieval Grantha. This variety was in vogue from 950 CE to 1250 CE, Grantha in the present form descended from later Pandyas and the Vijayanagara rulers. The Modern form of Grantha is very similar to Malayalam alphabet, the font used in the following tables is e-Grantamil taken from INDOLIPI. The glyphs below denote the form of Grantha Script, which can be noticed by its similarity with the Modern Tamil Script
9.
Sinhalese alphabet
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The Sinhalese alphabet is an alphabet used by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to write the Sinhalese language and also the liturgical languages Pali and Sanskrit. The Sinhalese alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, Sinhalese is often considered two alphabets, or an alphabet within an alphabet, due to the presence of two sets of letters. The core set, known as the śuddha siṃhala or eḷu hōḍiya, in order to render Sanskrit and Pali words, an extended set, the miśra siṃhala, is available. The alphabet is written left to right. The Sinhalese script is an abugida, as each consonant has an inherent vowel, most of the Sinhalese letters are curlicues, straight lines are almost completely absent from the alphabet. This is because Sinhala used to be written on dried palm leaves and this was undesirable, and therefore, the round shapes were preferred. The core set of forms the śuddha siṃhala alphabet, which is a subset of the miśra siṃhala alphabet. This pure alphabet contains all the necessary to write Eḷu as described in the classical grammar Sidatsan̆garā. This is the reason why this set is also called Eḷu hōdiya, the definition of the two sets is thus a historic one. Out of pure coincidence, the inventory of present-day colloquial Sinhala is such that yet again the śuddha alphabet suffices as a good representation of the sounds. All native phonemes of the Sinhala spoken today can be represented in śuddha, while in order to render special Sanskrit and Pali sounds and this is most notably necessary for the graphemes for the Middle Indic phonemes that the Sinhalese language lost during its history, such as aspirates. Sinhalese had special symbols to represent numerals, which were in use until the beginning of the century and this system is now superseded by Arabic numerals. Neither the Sinhala numerals nor U+0DF4 ෴ Sinhalese punctuation kunddaliya is in use today. The kunddaliya was formerly used as a full stop, thereafter it underwent a largely separate process of development, than the mainland scripts. It was also influenced by South Indian scripts, at stages of its development. By the 9th century CE, literature written in Sinhalese script had emerged, for instance, the Buddhist literature of the Theravada-Buddhists of Sri Lanka, written in Pali, used the Sinhalese alphabet. Sinhala is the language written in this script, but rare instances of Sri Lanka Malay are recorded. Most phonemes of the Sinhalese language can be represented by a letter or by a miśra letter
10.
Tigalari alphabet
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Tigalari is a southern Brahmic script used in the Coastal and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, also prevalent in Kasaragod district of Kerala. It evolved from the Grantha script and it bears high similarity and relationship to its sister script Malayalam, which also evolved from the Grantha. It was mainly used by Tulu-speaking Brahmins like Shivalli Brahmins and Kannada speaking Havyaka Brahmins and Kota Brahmins to write Vedic mantras, Sanskrit is the main language of the script. But some Kannada and Tulu works are also available and it is currently not used to write the Kannada and Tulu languages as they use the Kannada script for documentation. Tigalari was proposed for inclusion in Unicode in 2011, thousands of manuscripts have been found in this script such as Vedas, Upanishads, Jyotisha, Dharmashastra, Purana and many more. However, some Kannada manuscripts are found such as Gokarna Mahatmyam etc. The popular 16th-century work Kaushika Ramayana written in Old Kannada language by Battaleshwara of Yana, mahabharato of 15th century written in this script in Tulu language is also found. But earlier to this several 12th-13th century Sanskrit manuscripts of Madhvacharya are also found, the Honnavar in Uttara Kannada District is known for its Samaveda manuscripts. Other manuscripts like Devi Mahatmyam, from the 15th century and two poems written in the 17th century, namely Sri Bhagavata and Kaveri have also been found in Tulu Language. The script is used all over Canara and Malenadu regions of Karnataka, many manuscripts are also found Uttara Kannada, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga and Kasaragod district of Kerala. There are innumerable manuscripts found in this region, the major language of manuscripts is Sanskrit, mainly the works of Veda, Jyotisha and other Sanskrit epics. Today the usage of the script has decreased and it is still used in parts of Kanara region and traditional maṭhas of undivided Dakshina Kannada and Uttara Kannada Districts. The National Mission for Manuscripts has conducted workshops on Tigalari script. Dharmasthala and the Ashta Mathas of Udupi have done significant work in preserving the script, several studies and research work has been done on Tigalari script. Keladi houses over 400 manuscripts in Tigalari script and they relate to literature, art, dharmaśāstra, history, astrology, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and veterinary science. There are several collections in the museum, including art objects, arms coins, stone sculptures and copper plate inscriptions belonging to the Vijayanagara, the Institution is affiliated to Gnana Sahyadri, Shankaraghatta, Kuvempu University of Shimoga. Oriental Research Institute Mysore The Oriental Research Institute Mysore houses over 33,000 palm leaf manuscripts and it is a research institute which collects, exhibits, edits and publishes rare manuscripts in both Sanskrit and Kannada. It contains many manuscripts, including Sharadatilaka, in Tigalari script, the Sharadatilaka is a treatise on theory and practice of Tantric worship
11.
Universal Character Set characters
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The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
12.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
13.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
14.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
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Latin script
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Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩
16.
Kasaragod
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Kasaragod, is a town and a municipality in the Kasaragod district, state of Kerala. Kasargod is located 585 km north of Thiruvananthapuram and 50 km south of Mangalore, the major political parties are Indian Union Muslim League, CPI, INC, INL Indian National League and BJP. North Kasaragod is dominated by Indian Union Muslim League and the part of Kasaragod is dominated by CPI. The central part and some of the rural and urban areas is dominated by INC. NA Nellikkunnu is the present Member of Legislative Assembly, Kasaragod assembly constituency is part of Kasaragod. CPI member P. Karunakaran is the present MP from Kasargod, Kasaragod is home to the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, originally established in 1916 as the Coconut Research Station. It is part of Indias National Agricultural Research System under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, according to the Institute, Kerala lies in the heart of the major coconut growing areas of the country. It is also home to the Indian Society for Plantation Crops, the primary and administrative language of the town is Malayalam. Tulu, Beary bhashe and Konkani are also used and Hindi. Havyaka speakers have a base in Kannada. The Malayalam spoken here has influences from Beary bhashe and also from the languages of Kannada, Urdu, Konkani, the Kannada and Tulu spoken here are also influenced by Malayalam. Kasaragod district is a worst HIV infected area in Kerala,970 HIV cases were registered in Kasaragod district. Ten HIV deaths were reported from Kasaragod district within a period of two months in 2016. There is no special facility or doctors for HIV patients in this area, HIV affected areas in Kasaragod include Dharmathadka, Nileshwaram, Manjeshwar, Bhandiyod, Vellarikundu, Kasaragod town and Padannakkad. Kasaragod experiences a Tropical monsoon climate under the Köppen climate classification. P. C. R. I CPCRI Official Website of the District Administration
17.
Brahmic scripts
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The Brahmic scripts are a family of abugida or alphabet writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia, and were used in Japan. They are used by languages of several families, Indo-European, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic, Austroasiatic, Austronesian. They were also the source of the order of Japanese kana. Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script, the most reliable of these were short Brahmi inscriptions dated to the 4th century BC and published by Coningham et al. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, the Siddhaṃ script was especially important in Buddhism, as many sutras were written in it. The art of Siddham calligraphy survives today in Japan, the syllabic nature and dictionary order of the modern kana system of Japanese writing is believed to be descended from the Indic scripts, most likely through the spread of Buddhism. Southern Brahmi evolved into Old-Kannada, Pallava and Vatteluttu scripts, which in turn diversified into other scripts of South India, Bhattiprolu was a great centre of Buddhism during 3rd century BCE and from where Buddhism spread to east Asia. The present Telugu script is derived from Bhattiprolu Script or Kannada-Telugu script or Kadamba script, also known as old Telugu script, owing to its similarity to the same. Initially, minor changes were made which is now called Tamil Brahmi which has far fewer letters than some of the other Indic scripts as it has no separate aspirated or voiced consonants. Some characteristics, which are present in most but not all the scripts, are, other vowels are written by adding to the character. A mark, known in Sanskrit as a virama/halant can be used to indicate the absence of an inherent vowel, Each vowel has two forms, an independent form when not part of a consonant, and a dependent form, when attached to a consonant. Depending on the script, the dependent forms can be placed to the left of, to the right of, above, below. Consonants can be combined in ligatures, special marks are added to denote the combination of r with another consonant. Nasalization and aspiration of a dependent vowel is also noted by separate signs. The alphabetical order is, vowels, velar consonants, palatal consonants, retroflex consonants, dental consonants, bilabial consonants, approximants, sibilants, Each consonant grouping had four stops, and a nasal consonant. Below are comparison charts of several of the major Indic scripts, accordingly, The charts are not comprehensive. Glyphs may be unrepresented if they dont derive from any Brahmi character, the pronunciations of glyphs in the same column may not be identical
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Kerala
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Kerala historically known as Keralam, is an Indian state in South India on the Malabar Coast. It was formed on 1 November 1956 following the States Reorganisation Act by combining Malayalam-speaking regions, spread over 38,863 km2, it is bordered by Karnataka to the north and northeast, Tamil Nadu to the east and south, and the Lakshadweep Sea to the west. With 33,387,677 inhabitants as per the 2011 Census, Malayalam is the most widely spoken language and is also the official language of the state. The region has been a prominent spice exporter since 3000 BCE, the Chera Dynasty was the first prominent kingdom based in Kerala, though it frequently struggled against attacks by the neighbouring Cholas and Pandyas. In the 15th century, the spice trade attracted Portuguese traders to Kerala, after independence, Travancore and Cochin joined the Republic of India and Travancore-Cochin was given the status of a state in 1949. In 1956, Kerala state was formed by merging Malabar district, Travancore-Cochin, Hinduism is practised by more than half of the population, followed by Islam and Christianity. The culture is a synthesis of Aryan and Dravidian cultures, developed over millennia, under influences from other parts of India, the production of pepper and natural rubber contributes significantly to the total national output. In the agricultural sector, coconut, tea, coffee, cashew, the states coastline extends for 595 kilometres, and around 1.1 million people in the state are dependent on the fishery industry which contributes 3% to the states income. The state has the highest media exposure in India with newspapers publishing in nine languages, mainly English, Kerala is one of the prominent tourist destinations of India, with backwaters, beaches, Ayurvedic tourism and tropical greenery as its major attractions. The name Kerala has an uncertain etymology, One popular theory derives Kerala from Kera and alam is land, thus land of coconuts, this also happens to be a nickname for the state due to abundance of coconut trees and its use by the locals. The word Kerala is first recorded in a 3rd-century BCE rock inscription left by the Maurya emperor Ashoka, the inscription refers to the local ruler as Keralaputra, or son of Chera. This contradicts the theory that Kera is from coconut tree, at that time, one of three states in the region was called Cheralam in Classical Tamil, Chera and Kera are variants of the same word. The word Cheral refers to the oldest known dynasty of Kerala kings and is derived from the Proto-Tamil-Malayalam word for lake, the earliest Sanskrit text to mention Kerala is the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rigveda. It is also mentioned in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two Hindu epics, the Skanda Purana mentions the ecclesiastical office of the Thachudaya Kaimal who is referred to as Manikkam Keralar, synonymous with the deity of the Koodalmanikyam temple. Keralam may stem from the Classical Tamil cherive-alam or chera alam, the Greco-Roman trade map Periplus Maris Erythraei refers to Keralaputra as Celobotra. According to Hindu mythology, the lands of Kerala were recovered from the sea by the warrior sage Parasurama. Parasurama threw his axe across the sea, and the water receded as far as it reached, according to legend, this new area of land extended from Gokarna to Kanyakumari. The land which rose from sea was filled with salt and unsuitable for habitation, so Parasurama invoked the Snake King Vasuki, out of respect, Vasuki and all snakes were appointed as protectors and guardians of the land
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India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
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Vatteluttu alphabet
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The Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet, also spelled Vattezhutthu is an abugida writing system originating from the ancient Tamil people of South India. The syllabic alphabet is attested from the 6th century CE to the 14th century in present-day Tamil Nadu and it was later supplanted by modern Tamil script and Malayalam script. Vaṭṭeḻuttu replaced Tamil-Brahmi for writing Tamil after the 2nd century CE and this rounded form of writing was also used in Kerala to write in Tamil as well as in proto-Malayalam and Malayalam language. Currently, Malayalam uses the Malayalam script, inhabitants of Kuccaveli, located north of Trincomalee, used the Vaṭṭeḻuttu script between the 5th and 8th centuries, attested to on rock inscriptions found there. Inscriptional records in Tamil date from 300 BCE to 1800, grantha was an alphabet in which extra letters were created specifically for Sanskrit words. It was also a form of Tamil script to write Sanskrit granthas or books. In Tamil, many of the letters which are found in Sanskrit do not exist, the following image shows the divergent evolution of the Tamil script and the Vatteluttu script. The Vatteluttu script is shown on the left, while the Tamil script is shown on the right, the following image shows the characters used in Vatteluttu. Tamil copper-plate inscriptions Indian copper plate inscriptions Laguna Copperplate Inscription Pallava script Tamil script Sivaramamurti, C, Indian Epigraphy, bulletin of the Madras Government Museum
21.
Indo-Aryan languages
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The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family, Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers, and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi. Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan which is attested as Vedic. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a number of archaic features lost in Vedic. Vedic has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns, the canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. Mitanni-Aryan is of age to the language of the Rigveda. The language of the Vedas – commonly referred to as Vedic Sanskrit by modern scholars – is only marginally different from Proto-Indo-Aryan the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. From the Vedic, Sanskrit developed as the language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by scholars as Classical Sanskrit in contra-distinction to the so-called Vedic Sanskrit. Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve, the oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, Apabhramsa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production, the Sravakachar of Devasena is now considered to be the first Hindi book, the next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoptation of the language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani and this Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian, Arabic, and Turkic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects. The two largest languages that formed from Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani, others include Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum
22.
Vowel
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In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and this contrasts with consonants, such as the English sh, which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, a phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, the word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning vocal. In English, the vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them. The phonetic definition of vowel does not always match the phonological definition, the approximants and illustrate this, both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract, but they occur at the onset of syllables. A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms vocoid for a vowel and vowel for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button, daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height, tongue backness and roundedness. These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right, there are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position, type of vocal fold vibration, and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928, Peter Ladefoged has said that early phoneticians. Thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, and they were actually describing formant frequencies. The IPA Handbook concedes that the quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction. Vowel height is named for the position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. However, it refers to the first formant, abbreviated F1. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value, The higher the frequency of the first formant, however, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic. Although English contrasts six heights in its vowels, they are interdependent with differences in backness and it appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters
23.
Consonant
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In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. For example, the sound spelled th in this is a different consonant than the th sound in thin, the word consonant comes from Latin oblique stem cōnsonant-, from cōnsonāns sounding-together, a calque of Greek σύμφωνον sýmphōnon. Dionysius Thrax calls consonants sýmphōna pronounced with because they can only be pronounced with a vowel, the word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound. The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y. The letter Y stands for the consonant /j/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, and the diphthong /aɪ/ in my. W always represents a consonant except in combination with a letter, as in growth, raw, and how. In some other languages, such as Finnish, y represents a vowel sound. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and CVC and this can be argued to be the only pattern found in most of the worlds languages, and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut, there are consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the worlds languages. One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels, semiconsonants, on one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but form diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil. On the other, there are approximants that behave like consonants in forming onsets, some phonologists model these as both being the underlying vowel /i/, so that the English word bit would phonemically be /bit/, beet would be /bii̯t/, and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/. Likewise, foot would be /fut/, food would be /fuu̯d/, wood would be /u̯ud/, the other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, segments articulated as consonants but occupying the nucleus of a syllable. Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/, and spelled that way in Pinyin. Ladefoged and Maddieson call these fricative vowels and say that they can usually be thought of as syllabic fricatives that are allophones of vowels and that is, phonetically they are consonants, but phonemically they behave as vowels. Many Slavic languages allow the trill and the lateral as syllabic nuclei, in languages like Nuxalk, it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is, or if all syllables even have nuclei. If the concept of syllable applies in Nuxalk, there are consonants in words like /sx̩s/ seal fat. Miyako in Japan is similar, with /f̩ks̩/ to build and /ps̩ks̩/ to pull, each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features, The manner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract when the consonant or approximant sound is made. Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals, the place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved
24.
Diacritic
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A diacritic – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, or diacritical sign – is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός, from διακρίνω, diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave, are often called accents, diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters. The main use of marks in the Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. In other Latin alphabets, they may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French là versus la that are both pronounced /la/, in Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question. In other alphabetic systems, diacritical marks may perform other functions, vowel pointing systems, namely the Arabic harakat and the Hebrew niqqud systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic virama and the Arabic sukūn mark the absence of a vowel, in the Hanyu Pinyin official romanization system for Chinese, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur. In orthography and collation, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new and this varies from language to language, and may vary from case to case within a language. ◌ː – triangular colon, used in the IPA to mark long vowels, not all diacritics occur adjacent to the letter they modify. In the Wali language of Ghana, for example, an apostrophe indicates a change of vowel quality, because of vowel harmony, all vowels in a word are affected, so the scope of the diacritic is the entire word. In abugida scripts, like those used to write Hindi and Thai, diacritics indicate vowels, the tittle on the letter i of the Latin alphabet originated as a diacritic to clearly distinguish i from the minims of adjacent letters. It first appeared in the 11th century in the sequence ii, then spread to i adjacent to m, n, u, the j, originally a variant of i, inherited the tittle. The shape of the diacritic developed from initially resembling todays acute accent to a flourish by the 15th century. With the advent of Roman type it was reduced to the round dot we have today, tanwīn symbols, Serve a grammatical role in Arabic. The sign ـً is most commonly written in combination with alif, waṣla, Comes most commonly at the beginning of a word. Indicates a type of hamza that is pronounced only when the letter is read at the beginning of the talk, ḥarakāt, fatḥa kasra ḍamma sukūn The ḥarakāt or vowel points serve two purposes, They serve as a phonetic guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels or their absence, at the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection case or conjugation mood. For nouns, The ḍamma is for the nominative, fatḥa for the accusative, for verbs, the ḍamma is for the imperfective, fatḥa for the perfective, and the sukūn is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods
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Phoneme
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A phoneme is one of the units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/, two words that differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme form a minimal pair. In linguistics, phonemes are written between slashes like this, /p/, whereas when it is desired to show the exact pronunciation of any sound, linguists use square brackets. Within linguistics there are differing views as to exactly what phonemes are, however, a phoneme is generally regarded as an abstraction of a set of speech sounds which are perceived as equivalent to each other in a given language. For example, in English, the k sounds in the kit and skill are not identical. Different speech sounds that are realizations of the same phoneme are known as allophones, phonemes are conventionally placed between slashes in transcription, whereas speech sounds are placed between square brackets. Thus /pʊʃ/ represents a sequence of three phonemes /p/, /ʊ/, /ʃ/, while represents the sequence of sounds. The symbols used for particular phonemes are often taken from the International Phonetic Alphabet, however, descriptions of particular languages may use different conventional symbols to represent the phonemes of those languages. A phoneme is a sound or a group of different sounds perceived to have the function by speakers of the language or dialect in question. An example is the English phoneme /k/, which occurs in such as cat, kit, scat. Although most native speakers do not notice this, in most English dialects the c/k sounds in words are not identical, in kit the sound is aspirated. The words therefore contain different speech sounds, or phones, transcribed for the aspirated form, the above shows that in English, and are allophones of a single phoneme /k/. For example, in Icelandic, is the first sound of kátur meaning cheerful, Icelandic therefore has two separate phonemes /kʰ/ and /k/. A pair of words like kátur and gátur that differ only in one phone is called a pair for the two alternative phones in question. The existence of pairs is a common test to decide whether two phones represent different phonemes or are allophones of the same phoneme. In other languages, though, including Korean, even though both sounds and occur, no minimal pair exists. The lack of minimal pairs distinguishing and in Korean provides evidence that in this language they are allophones of a single phoneme /t/, the word /tata/ is pronounced, for example. Signed languages, such as American Sign Language also have minimal pairs, Sign language minimal pairs refer to one of the signs parameters, handshape, movement, location, palm orientation, and non-manual signal/marker
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Roundedness
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In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel, when a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, in the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, U+0339 ̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW and U+031C ̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW, to greater and lesser degrees of rounding. The more and less rounded diacritics are also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization. There are two types of rounding, protrusion and compression. In protruded rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together, in compressed rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together, but the lips are also drawn together horizontally and do not protrude, with only their outer surface visible. That is, in protruded vowels the inner surfaces of the form the opening. Catford observes that back and central rounded vowels, such as German /o/ and /u/, are typically protruded, whereas front rounded vowels such as German /ø/ and /y/ are typically compressed. Back or central compressed vowels and front protruded vowels are uncommon, there are no dedicated IPA diacritics to represent the distinction, but the superscript IPA letter ⟨◌ᵝ⟩ can be used for compression and ⟨◌ʷ⟩, ⟨◌ᶣ⟩ or ⟨◌̫⟩ for protrusion. Compressed vowels may be pronounced either with the corners of the mouth drawn in, by some definitions rounded, or with the spread and, by the same definitions. The distinction may be transcribed ⟨ɨᵝ ɯᵝ⟩ and ⟨ʉᵝ uᵝ⟩, the distinction between protruded and compressed holds for the semivowels and as well as labialization. In Akan, for example, the is compressed, as are labio-palatalized consonants as in Twi Twi and adwuma work, whereas, in Japanese, the /w/ is compressed rather than protruded, paralleling the Japanese /u/. The distinction applies marginally to other consonants, some vowels transcribed with rounded IPA letters may not be rounded at all. An example is /ɒ/, which in English has very little if any rounding of the lips, the throaty sound of English /ɒ/ is instead accomplished with sulcalization, a furrowing of the back of the tongue also found in non-rhotic /ɜː/. It is possible to mimic the effect of rounded vowels by narrowing the cheeks, so-called cheek rounding. The technique is used by ventriloquists to mask the visible rounding of back vowels like and it is not clear if it is used by languages with rounded vowels that do not use visible rounding. Protruded rounding is the equivalent of consonantal labialization
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Near-open central unrounded vowel
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The near-open central vowel, or near-low central vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɐ⟩, in some languages it is the only open vowel, in place of the more common open central unrounded vowel. The IPA prefers terms close and open for vowels, and the name of the article follows this, however, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms high and low. The near-open central unrounded vowel is the most common type of the central vowel, and is thus typically transcribed simply as ⟨ɐ⟩. The last two symbols are equivalent to the complex symbols ⟨ä̝⟩ and ⟨ɑ̝̈⟩, respectively. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded. The near-open central rounded vowel is a rare sound, reported to occur as a phoneme only in the Sabiny language. The last two symbols are equivalent to the complex symbols ⟨ɶ̝̈⟩ and ⟨ɒ̝̈⟩, respectively. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded rather than spread or relaxed. Turned a Index of phonetics articles
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Mid central vowel
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The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ə⟩, while the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association does not define the roundedness of, it is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the variant as follows, is a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity. To produce the variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Some languages, such as Danish and Luxembourgish, have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded, in some other languages, things are more complicated, as the change in rounding is accompanied with the change in height and/or backness. The symbol ⟨ə⟩ is often used for any unstressed obscure vowel, for instance, the English vowel transcribed ⟨ə⟩ is a central unrounded vowel that can be close-mid, mid or open-mid, depending on the environment. The mid central unrounded vowel is written with the symbol. If greater precision is desired, the symbol for the close-mid central unrounded vowel may be used with a lowering diacritic, another possibility is using the symbol for the open-mid central unrounded vowel with a raising diacritic. Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a vowel and an open vowel. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded. Languages may have a mid central rounded vowel, distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and the symbol for the close-mid central rounded vowel is generally used instead. If precision is desired, the diacritic can be used. Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a vowel and an open vowel. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded rather than spread or relaxed
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Allophone
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In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme /p/ in the English language, the specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, but sometimes allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme will usually not change the meaning of a word, the term allophone was coined by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s. In doing so, he placed a cornerstone in consolidating early phoneme theory, the term was popularized by G. L. Trager and Bernard Bloch in a 1941 paper on English phonology and went on to become part of standard usage within the American structuralist tradition. Every time a users speech is vocalized for a phoneme, it will be slightly different from other utterances. This has led to debate over how real, and how universal. Only some of the variation is significant to speakers, when a specific allophone must be selected in a given context, the allophones are said to be complementary. In the case of complementary allophones, each allophone is used in a specific phonetic context, in other cases, the speaker is able to select freely from free variant allophones, based on personal habit or preference. Another example of an allophone is assimilation, wherein a phoneme is to more like the other phoneme. A tonic allophone is sometimes called an allotone, for example in the tone of Mandarin. Aspiration – strong explosion of breath, in English a voiceless plosive is aspirated whenever it stands as the consonant at the beginning of the stressed syllable or of the first, stressed or unstressed, syllable in a word. For example, as in pin and as in spin are allophones for the phoneme /p/ because they cannot distinguish words, English speakers treat them as the same sound, but they are different, the first is aspirated and the second is unaspirated. Many languages treat these two phones differently, see Aspirated consonant, section Usage patterns, nasal plosion – In English a plosive has nasal plosion when it is followed by a nasal, inside a word or across word boundary. Partial devoicing of sonorants – In English sonorants are partially devoiced when they follow a voiceless sound within the same syllable, complete devoicing of sonorants – In English a sonorant is completely devoiced when it follows an aspirated plosive. Partial devoicing of obstruents – In English, an obstruent is partially devoiced next to a pause or next to a voiceless sound. Retraction – in English /t, d, n, l/ are retracted before /r/, because the choice of allophone is seldom under conscious control, people may not realize they exist. The difference can also be felt by holding the hand in front of the lips. For a Mandarin speaker, to whom /t/ and /tʰ/ are separate phonemes, Allophones of English /l/ may be noticed if the light of leaf is contrasted with the dark of feel
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Letter case
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Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger upper case and smaller lower case in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper and lower case have two sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. Basically, the two variants are alternative representations of the same letter, they have the same name and pronunciation. Letter case is generally applied in a fashion, with both upper- and lower-case letters appearing in a given piece of text. The choice of case is often prescribed by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline, in mathematics, letter case may indicate the relationship between objects, with upper-case letters often representing superior objects. In some contexts, it is conventional to use only one case, the terms upper case and lower case can be written as two consecutive words, connected with a hyphen, or as a single word. These terms originated from the layouts of the shallow drawers called type cases used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing. Traditionally, the letters were stored in a separate case that was located above the case that held the small letters. Majuscule, for palaeographers, is technically any script in which the letters have very few or very short ascenders and descenders, or none at all. By virtue of their impact, this made the term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase letters. The word is often spelled miniscule, by association with the word miniature. This has traditionally been regarded as a mistake, but is now so common that some dictionaries tend to accept it as a nonstandard or variant spelling. Miniscule is still less likely, however, to be used in reference to lower-case letters, the glyphs of lower-case letters can resemble smaller forms of the upper-case glyphs restricted to the base band or can look hardly related. There is more variation in the height of the minuscules, as some of them have higher or lower than the typical size. In Times New Roman, for instance, b, d, f, h, k, l, t are the letters with ascenders, and g, j, p, q, y are the ones with descenders. In addition, with old-style numerals still used by traditional or classical fonts,6 and 8 make up the ascender set. Writing systems using two separate cases are bicameral scripts, languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Adlam, Varang Kshiti, Cherokee, and Osage scripts use letter cases in their written form as an aid to clarity. Other bicameral scripts, which are not used for any modern languages, are Old Hungarian, Glagolitic, the Georgian alphabet has several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but the modern written Georgian language does not distinguish case
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Tamil language
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Tamil is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka, and also by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is a language of two countries, Singapore and Sri Lanka. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and it is also used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. Tamil is one of the classical languages in the world. Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur and 2 and it has been described as the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past. The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to it being described as one of the classical traditions. A recorded Tamil literature has been documented for over 2000 years, the earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca.300 BC – AD300. It has the oldest extant literature among other Dravidian languages, the earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and hero stones date from around the 3rd century BC. More than 55% of the inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India are in the Tamil language. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka, the two earliest manuscripts from India, acknowledged and registered by the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiraan Vanakkam, the Tamil Lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in the Indian languages. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family, the closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam, the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. According to linguists like Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Tamil, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India. The next phase in the reconstructed proto-history of Tamil is Proto-South Dravidian, the linguistic evidence suggests that Proto-South Dravidian was spoken around the middle of the second millennium BC, and that proto-Tamil emerged around the 3rd century BC. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamil are generally taken to have been shortly thereafter
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Tamil-Brahmi
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Tamil-Brahmi, or Tamili, is a variant of the Brahmi script used to write the Tamil language. These are the earliest documents of a Dravidian language, and the script was established in the Chera and Pandyan states, in what is now Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh. Inscriptions have been found on beds, pot sherds, Jar burials, coins, seals. The language is Archaic Tamil, and led to classical Sangam literature, Tamil Brahmi differs in several ways from Ashokan Brahmi. It adds several letters for sounds not found in Prakrit, ṉ ṟ ṛ ḷ and this is unique to Tamil Brahmi and Bhattiprolu among the early Indian scripts. This appears to be an adaptation to Dravidian phonotactics, where words commonly end in consonants, as opposed to Prakrit, where this never occurs. According to Mahadevan, in the earliest stages of the script the inherent vowel was either abandoned, as above, later stages of Tamil Brahmi returned to the inherent vowel that was the norm in India. The origins of the Brahmi in general and Tamil Brahmi specifically are unclear, there are number of inscriptions whose dates have not been settled yet. Nevertheless, a number of theories has been put forward with literary, epigraphic, the received consensus is a 3rd-century post-Ashokan dispersal, but that since the year 2000, there have been two serious candidates for a pre-Ashokan date. The earliest mention of a script for writing the Tamil language is found in the Jaina work Samavayanga Sutta, in the Buddhist work, Lalitavistara, a script called Dravidalipi is mentioned. According to Kamil Zvelebil, Damilli and Dravidalipi are synonymous for Tamil writing, references to writing are also available in early Tamil literature. Tolkappiyam in stanza 16 and 17 mentions dots added to consonants, the author of Tolkappiyam displays awareness of a writing system and the graphic system as he knew it corresponds with later writing systems. Other works such as Tirukkural mentions writing using the word ezhuttu, cilappatikaram mentions kannezhuttu that was used to mark merchandise imported at the port emporium of Kaveripattinam, it also mentions kannezhuttalar or scribes. A reference to palm leaf manuscript writing is found in Nalatiyar, based on the literature analysis, Kamil Zvelebil believes writing was known to Tamil people at least from the 3rd century BCE. The evidence for pre-Ashokan dispersal comes from Sri Lanka and more recently, the earliest well accepted Brahmi inscriptions in South Asia are found in the citadel of Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and are dated to the 4th century BCE. Brahmi developed before the spread of Ashokan missionary activities and spread across South Asia due to trade networks. However, these instances of Brahmi were not considered to be examples of Tamil-Brahmi. In 2013, Rajan and Yatheeskumar published excavations at Porunthal and Kodumanal in Tamil Nadu and their stratigraphic analysis combined with radiocarbon dates of paddy grains and charcoal samples indicated that inscription contexts date to as far back as the 5th and perhaps 6th centuries BCE
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Tamil Nadu
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Tamil Nadu is one of the 29 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai, Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the union territory of Puducherry and the South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. The state shares a border with the nation of Sri Lanka. Tamil Nadu is the eleventh-largest state in India by area and the sixth-most populous, the state was ranked sixth among states in India according to the Human Development Index in 2011, with the second-largest state economy after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu is the second largest state economy in India with ₹13,842 billion in gross domestic product after Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu was ranked as one of the top seven developed states in India based on a Multidimensional Development Index in a 2013 report published by the Reserve Bank of India and its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. Tamil Nadu is home to natural resources. In addition, its people have developed and continue classical arts, classical music, historic buildings and religious sites include Hindu temples of Tamil architecture, hill stations, beach resorts, multi-religious pilgrimage sites, and eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Archaeological evidence points to this area being one of the longest continuous habitations in the Indian peninsula, the ASI archaeologists have proposed that the script used at that site is very rudimentary Tamil Brahmi. Adichanallur has been announced as a site for further excavation. About 60 per cent of the epigraphical inscriptions found by the ASI in India are from Tamil Nadu. A Neolithic stone celt with the Indus script on it was discovered at Sembian-Kandiyur near Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, according to epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, this was the first datable artefact bearing the Indus script to be found in Tamil Nadu. Mahadevan claimed that the find was evidence of the use of the Harappan language, the date of the celt was estimated at between 1500 BCE and 2000 BCE. The early history of the people and rulers of Tamil Nadu is a topic in Tamil literary sources known as Sangam literature, numismatic, archaeological and literary sources corroborate that the Sangam period lasted for about six centuries, from 300 BC to AD300. Three dynasties, namely the Chera, Chola and Pandya, ruled the area of present-day Tamil Nadu, the Chera ruled the whole of present-day Kerala and parts of western Tamil Nadu comprising Coimbatore, Dharmapuri, Karur, Salem and Erode districts from the capital of Vanchi Muthur. The Chola dynasty ruled the northern and central parts of Tamil Nadu from their capital, Uraiyur, All three dynasties had extensive trade relationships with Rome, Greece, Egypt, Ceylon, Phoenicia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Persia. Trade flourished in commodities such as spices, ivory, pearls, beads, Chera traded extensively from Muziris on the west coast, Chola from Arikamedu and Puhar and Pandya through Korkai port. A Greco-Roman trade and travel document, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea gives a description of the Tamil country, besides these three dynasties, the Sangam era Tamilakam was also divided into various provinces named nadu, meaning country
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Vazhappally
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Vazhappally is a suburb of Changanasserry. It is one of the earliest settlements in the state of Kerala, malayalam, the language of Kerala, writing first appeared about 830 AD. Vazhappally is one of the cradles of Kerala civilization, the famous Vazhappally Maha Siva Temple is situated here in the center of the Vazhappally. St. Marys cathedral church situated in Vazhapally west village
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Tamil script
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Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, Irula, and Paniya language are also written in the Tamil script. The Tamil script has 12 vowels,18 consonants and one special character, however, it is listed at the end of the vowel set. The script is syllabic, not alphabetic and these combinant letters are formed by adding a vowel marker to the consonant. Some vowels require the basic shape of the consonant to be altered in a way that is specific to that vowel. Others are written by adding a suffix to the consonant, yet others a prefix. In every case the vowel marker is different from the character for the vowel. The Tamil script is written left to right. The Tamil script, like the other Brahmic scripts, is thought to have evolved from the original Brahmi script, the earliest inscriptions which are accepted examples of Tamil writing date to a time just after the Ashokan period. The script used by these inscriptions is known as the Tamil-Brahmi or Tamili script. For example, early Tamil-Brahmi, unlike Ashokan Brahmi, had a system to distinguish pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel. Inscriptions from the second century use a form of Tamil-Brahmi, which is substantially similar to the writing system described in the Tolkāppiyam. Most notably, they use the puḷḷi to suppress the inherent vowel, the Tamil letters thereafter evolved towards a more rounded form, and by the fifth or sixth century had reached a form called the early vaṭṭeḻuttu. The modern Tamil script does not, however, descend from this script, parallel to Pallava script a new script again emerged in Chola territory resembling the same glyph development like Pallava script, although it didnt evolve from that. By the 8th century, the new scripts supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the Chola resp, Pallava kingdoms which lay in the north portion of the Tamil-speaking region. With the fall of Pallava kingdom, the Chola dynasty pushed the Chola-Pallava script as the de facto script, over the next few centuries, the Chola-Pallava script evolved into the modern Tamil script. The Grantha and its parent script influenced the Tamil script notably, the use of palm leaves as the primary medium for writing led to changes in the script. The scribe had to be not to pierce the leaves with the stylus while writing, because a leaf with a hole was more likely to tear. As a result, the use of the puḷḷi to distinguish pure consonants became rare, the forms of some of the letters were simplified in the nineteenth century to make the script easier to typeset
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Malabar Coast
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The Malabar Coast is a long and narrow coastline on the south-western shore line of the mainland Indian subcontinent. Geographically, it comprises the wettest regions of southern India, as the Western Ghats intercept the moisture-laden monsoon rains, the term Malabar Coast is also sometimes used to refer to the entire Indian coast from the western coast of Konkan to the tip of the subcontinent at Kanyakumari. The coast runs south of Goa to Kanyakumari on Indias southern tip. Indias southeastern coast is called the Coromandel Coast, the Malabar Coast is also sometimes used as an all-encompassing term for the entire Indian coast from Konkan to the tip of the subcontinent at Kanyakumari. It is flanked by the Arabian Sea on the west and the Western Ghats on the east, the southern part of this narrow coast is referred to as the South Western Ghats moist deciduous forests. The Malabar Coast, throughout recorded history from about 3000 BC, had been a trading center in commerce with Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Jerusalem. Its most famous ports were Naura, Balita, Kochi, Calicut, and Mangalore, the Oddeway Torre settlement, which have served as centers of the Indian Ocean trade, for centuries. During Ming Chinas treasure voyages in the early 15th century, Admiral Zheng Hes fleet often landed at the Malabar Coast, Malabar Portuguese Empire Portuguese India Dutch Malabar Coromandel Coast
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Kochi Metropolitan Area
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The Kochi Urban Agglomeration is an urban agglomeration centred around the city of Kochi. Kochi Urban Agglomeration is part of the Greater Cochin region and the largest urban agglomeration in Kerala, the area constituted on the basis of census data 2011, consists of Corporation of Kochi,9 municipalities,14 Panchayaths and parts of 4 Panchayaths. The 9 municipalities are Thrippunithura, Maradu, Thrikkakara, Kalamassery, Eloor, North Paravur, Perumbavoor, Aluva, apart from these local body areas, the Census Towns of Kureekad, Chowwara, Cheriyakadavu and Kedamangalam are also part of the Kochi Urban Agglomeration. Urban ugglomerations in India are determined on the basis of Census Towns which may or may not coincide with local bodies like Corporations, Thrikkakara Municipality is enumerated as Census Towns of Kakkanad and Vazhakkala. Kochi urban agglomeration itself is not a contiguous entity. The newly formed metropolis would be put under the charge of a new authority called Kochi Metropolitan Regional Development Authority, as per Census 2011, it has a population of 2,117,990 making it the largest urban agglomeration in Kerala. Kochi was the state under the Kingdom of Kochi which came into existence in 1102. The princely state was having the Kochi mainland as the capital, the state was ruled by Cochin Royal Family. However, the kingdom was under foreign rule since the 18th century, on the earlier days, the kingdom of Kochi was always under the shadow of the attacks from Samoothirippadu, the ruler of Malabar the northern neighbour. From 1503 to 1663, Kochi was ruled by Portugal, Kochi hosted the grave of Vasco da Gama, the first European explorer to set sail for India, who was buried at St. Francis Church until his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539. The Portuguese rule was followed by that of the Dutch, who had allied with the Zamorins in order to conquer Kochi, in the battle of Ambalapuzha, the Dutch allied Kochi was defeated by Marthanda Varma of Travancore after he ousted the Dutch in the Battle of Colachel-1741. In 1757 AD, a treaty was concluded between Travancore and Cochin, ensuring peace and stability on the Southern border, by 1773, the Mysore King Hyder Ali extended his conquest in the Malabar region to Kochi, forcing it to become a tributary of Mysore. The hereditary Prime Ministership of Kochi held by the Paliath Achans came to an end during this period, soon, Kochi was ceded to the United Kingdom by the Dutch, who feared an outbreak of war on the Dutch Republic signed a treaty with the United Kingdom. This was in exchange for the island of Bangka as per the treaty, Kochi was thus under the British rule, till India gained independence in 1947. In 1949, Travancore-Cochin state came into being with the merger of Cochin, the King of Travancore was the Rajpramukh of the Travancore-Cochin Union from 1949 to 1956. Travancore-Cochin, was in turn merged with the Malabar district of the Madras State, finally, the Government of Indias States Reorganisation Act inaugurated a new state Kerala, incorporating Travancore-Cochin, Malabar District, and the taluk of Kasargod, South Kanara. Kochi Urban Agglomeration was defined in 1998, with the corporation of Cochin, municipalities of North Paravur Aluva, Angamaly, Kochi UA is referred to as the economic capital of Kerala. Since 2000, the sector has energized the economy
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Thiruvananthapuram
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Thiruvananthapuram, formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Kerala. It is located on the west coast of India near the south of the mainland. Referred to by Mahatma Gandhi as the Evergreen city of India, Thiruvananthapuram was a trading post for spices, sandalwood and ivory. The city was ruled by the Ays and was captured by the rulers of Venad in tenth century A. D, in 1729, Marthanda Varma founded the princely state of Thiruvithamkoor and made Thiruvananthapuram the capital in 1745. It remained as a state ruled by Travancore under the loose governance of the British before joining the Indian Union in 1948. With nearly 80% of the software exports, Thiruvananthapuram is a major IT hub with the Technopark. Indias first and only magic academy, Magic Academy Research Centre run by Merlin award-winning magician Gopinath Muthukad is situated in Thiruvananthapuram, the city is home to animation companies like Toonz India Ltd and Tata Elxsi Ltd. The Kinfra Film and Video Park is one of the most advanced film and it is consistently ranked among the best cities to live in Kerala as well as India. The city was referred to as Trivandrum until 1991, when the government decided to reinstate the citys original name Thiruvananthapuram. Thiruvananthapuram is an ancient region with trading traditions dating back to 1000 BCE, the city was a trading post for spices, sandalwood and ivory. The early rulers of the city were the Ays and after their fall in the 10th century, in 1729, Marthanda Varma founded the princely state of Thiruvithamkoor and Thiruvananthapuram was made the capital in 1745 after shifting the capital from Padmanabhapuram in Tamil Nadu. In the mid-19th century, the city was under the reign of Swathi Thirunal, an observatory was established in 1837 with the Oriental Research Institute & Manuscripts Library and the University College established in 1873. Several colleges were established by Moolam Thirunal, sree Moolam Assembly, established in 1904, was the first democratically elected legislative council in any Indian state. After Indian Independence in 1947, Travancore chose to join the Indian union, in 1949, Thiruvananthapuram became the capital of Travancore-Cochin, the state formed by the integration of Travancore with the Kingdom of Cochin. The king of Travancore, Chitra Thirunal Bala Rama Varma, became the Rajpramukh of the Travancore-Cochin Union from 1 July 1949 until 31 October 1956, when the state of Kerala was formed on 1 November 1956, Thiruvananthapuram became its capital. The city has a population of 752,490 according to the 2011 census, the sex ratio is 1,032 females for every 1,000 males. In October 2010, the number of wards was increased from 86 to 100 post expansion of city limits by adding Sreekaryam, Vattiyoorkavu, Kudappanakunnu, hindus comprise 68. 5% of the population, Christians about 16. 7% and Muslims form 13. 7%. The major languages spoken are Malayalam and English, in Palayam in the city centre, there is a mosque, a temple and a Christian church next to each other as neighbours, establishing the communal harmony of Keralites
listen) / Malayalam: മലയാളലിപി) is a Brahmic script used commonly to write the Malayalam language, which is the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 35 million people in the world.[3] Malayalam script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Kerala. Like many other Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary (abugida), a writing system that is partially “alphabetic” and partially syllable-based, the modern Malayalam alphabet has 13 vowel letters, 36 consonant letters, and a few other symbols. The Malayalam script is a Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the Grantha alphabet to represent Indo-Aryan loanwords,[4] the script is also used to write several minority languages such as Paniya, Betta Kurumba, and Ravula.[5] The Malayalam language itself was historically written in several different scripts.
→ കു
→ നു
→ ശു
→ ഗ്ദ
→ ല്ത
) is placed after the full form of ka ക, just like ki കി is written ka ക followed by the vowel sign i ി. In other words, the variant form of ya (
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)
)
(Reformed: ർഗ)
(Reformed: ർജ)
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