Hi,
These are some of the problems I see with your approach and others proposed,
including mine.
1) People don't like to type two of the same vowels one after the
other. For most people who are used to typing in English, typing "aa"
or "ii" seems unnatural. Also, typing a capital letter such as "A"
in the middle of a word seems unnatural. I am not sure what the solution
is except some compromise has to be made. Others have proposed typing
several consonants one after the other without intervening vowels.
If I have to choose, I like typing two vowels together than typing
several consonants together. Typing several consonants together makes the
language look harsh also when people read the Roman transliteration.
Assamese is not a harsh language and transliteration should show it.
2) You use "ca" and "cha" for prothom-sa and ditiya-sa. Why "c" and
not "s"? Most Assamese people never pronounce "cha" or "chha" like
Hindi or Bengali speakers do. We are happy saying "sa" for both
prothom and ditiya-sa not differentiating between the two.
I am willing to make the
compromise of having "sa" and "sha" because there are two different
characters in Assamese alphabet and it will help us keep the spelling right.
3) You use "x" for the three xa's. I like that. We have a special
sound in Assamese and the transliteration should show it. Because of
the fact that you use "x" based on phonetic reasons, you should
use "sa" and "sha" (in (2) above) instead of "ca" and "cha".
4) Most people who want to type in Assamese on the computer and find it
difficult, find it so because we have to keep on searching for
what key to type. So, although not ideal, the best current solution
I see now is to a) allow people to type in Roman transliteration,
b) then allow people to choose or highlight
the Assamese region, and
c) then allow a menu choice to "transliterate into Assamese"
or something like that.
If someone could do this with a program like Microsoft Word, I am
sure there will be many users. So, the scheme must be unambiguous
and a program must be able to transliterate back and forth between
Assamese and Roman fonts. Maybe, someone creative, artistic, efficient
and smart like Rabin Deka can help us in this effort!
5) I would like to see some of our discussions on this net and elsewhere
happen in Assamese. We can do that with a good Roman transliteration
scheme. (That is why I was a bit disappointed when during our
annual conferences such as Assam 2003, every bit of discussion
is done in English!) Otherwise, Assamese as a language doesn't have
a great future in the Internet and subsequent ages.
6) aami axamiyaate likhibar abhyaax karaa usit. nijar bhaxatut jadi
nijar kathabur prakaax kariba nuwaaru, tente i bar dukhar kathaa.
I would be perfectly happy to write in transliterated Assamese if
people were willing to read what I write. However, as I started typing
the previous paragraph, I started thinking I would prefer
using "o" instead of "a" in several places such as "koraa",
"nijor", "jodi", "kothaabur", "prokaax","koriba", "dukhor", etc.
The spellings with "o" seem more phonetic than those with "a".
So, what do we do? Saurav suggested using "o" and sometimes
it makes sense, but it messes up a good transliteration scheme.
ei bixoye aalusonaa kori kibaa etaa poddhoti thik kori lobo
paarile aamaar bhaaxaatur baabe mongol hobo. aamaaru mongol hobo.
Jugal Kalita
>
>
>
>
> hi all.....
>
> In order to overcome the obstacles in the transliteration of Assamese
> words I propose the following transliteration scheme mostly based on
> the standard devanagari ITRANS transliteration charts. This scheme is
> not meant for use in software program just becaue it is too complicated
> and scores of mor practical systems can be figured out to do the same
> ... The following is based on the sound of the letter in International
> Phonetic Alphabet and its equivalent expression in English and can be
> used to write Assamese words in English...
>
>
>
>
> VOWELS
> -------------
>
> Transliteration Suggested Sound/IPA Expression
> ------------------- -----------------------------------------------
>
> a ................ Near-Open Central Unrounded(Inverted a)
> aa ............... Open Front Unrounded (Lower case a)
> i .................. Close Front Unrounded (Lower case i)
> ii or I ........ Close Central Unrounded (Barred i)
> u .............. Close Back Rounded (Lower case u)
> uu or U ........ Close Back Un-Rounded (Turned m) (???)
> rri or R^i ..... Near- Close Front Un-Rounded (Small Capital I)
> e .............. Open- Mid Front Unrounded (Epsilon)
> ai ............. Close-Mid Central ROunded (Barred O )
> o ............. Close- Mid Back Rounded (Lower Case O )
> au ............. Close- Mid Back Unrounded (Baby Gamma )
>
> CONSONANTS
> --------------------
>
> Transliteration Suggested Sound/IPA Symbol
> -------------------- ------------------------------------------
>
> ka ............. Voiceless Velar Plosive (Lower Case K)
> kha ............ Aspirated Ka(???????)
> ga ............. Voiced Velar Plosive (Lower case g)
> gha ............ Aspirated ga (????????)
> nna or N^a ..... Voiced Uvular Nasal (Small Capital N)
> cha ............ Voiceless Aveolar Fricative (Lower Case s)
> chha ........... Voiceless Post-Aveolar Fricative (Esh)
> ja ............. Voiced Postaveolar Fricative (Yogh)
> jha ............ Palatalised ja ( ja^j)
> jjnna or JNa ... Voiced palatal Nasal(Left tail N at left)
> tta or Ta ...... Voiceless Aveolar Plosive (Lower case T)
> ttha or Tha .... Aspitated Ta (tta^h)
> dda or Da ...... Voiced Aveolar Plosive (Lower case D)
> ddha or Dha .... Aspirated Da (dda^h)
> nna or Na....... Voiced Aveolar Nasal(Lower Case N)
> ta ............. Voiceless Retroflex Plosive (T with Right Tail)
> tha ............ Aspirated ta (ta^h)
> da ............. Voiced Retroflex Plosive (Right Tail D)
> dha ............ Aspirated da(da^h)
> na ............. Voiced Retrofelx nasal (N with right tail)
> pa ............. Voiceless Bilabial Plosive (Lower Case p)
> pha ............ Voiceless Bilabial Fricative (Phi)
> ba ............. Voiced Bilabial Plosive (Lower Case b)
> bha ............ Voiced Bilabial Fricative (Beta)
> ma ............. Voiced Bilabial Nasal (Lower Case M)
> ya ............. Voiced palatal Fricative (Curly Tail J)
> ra ............. Voiced Aveolar Approximant (Turned R)
> la ............. Voiced Aveolar Lateral Approximant (Lower Case L) wa
> ............. Voiced Retroflex Lateral Approximant(l with tail)(?) xha
> ............ Voiceless Labiodental Fricative (Lower Case F)
> xhha ........... Voiceless Epiglottal Fricative (Small Capital H)
> xa ............. Voiceless Uvular Fricative (Chi)
> ha ............. Voiceless Glottal Fricative (Lower Case H)
> ksha or xa ..... Aveolo-palatal Fricative (Curly Tail C)
> jya ............ Voiced Palatal Approximant( Lower case J)
> ra(?)
> ra(?)
>
> In the above chart there has been quite a few deviations from the
> devanagari system. For Example the "sha, shha, sa" have been
> transliterated as "xha, xhha, xa" because unlike Hindi or Sanskrit,
> the "s" in those is often pronounced as "x" e.g. Axam in assamese
> instead of Asam in Hindi. Also the "va" has been transliterated as "wa"
> in Assamese.
>
> I stated before and I repeat now, that I am not a phonetician. What I am
> trying to do is to present enough starting material for a debate so
> that the long-standing dispute on how Assamese words should be
> transliterated into english might be put to rest once and for all. The
> sounds I have "suggested" for the corresponing Assamese Alphabet is by
> no means the final word nor do I claim that all of them are
> correct....It is simply a suggestion so that it can be discussed and
> the correct sounds be recorded. I have tried to model the above on the
> transliteration charts of ancient Egyptian.
>
> If a system like the one stated above can be agreed upon by one and all,
> then to transcribe Assamese words we just have to replace the assamese
> letters with their corresponding english group of alphabets..(omitting
> the the "a" in the consonants whne they appear at the end of the word).
> It will remove all ambiguity whatsoever on the question of how an
> assamese word should be written in English.
>
> The only way the system envisioned can be a success is if people debate
> over the transliteration and the sounds of the language until it
> reaches an acceptable level of accuracy.
>
> The reference to the devnagari script transliteration chart can be found
> at...
> http://www.angelfire.com/linux/tugg/devnagari.html
>
> The IPA help file which contains the IPA chart and all the sound files
> for individual sound for reference can be downloaded from
> http://www.sil.org/computing/speechtools/softdev2/Downloads2/SatDL2/Release2/setup-ih.exe
>
> or you can go to the link from
>
> http://www.angelfire.com/linux/tugg/devnagari.html
>
>
>
> yours,
>
> Syamanta Saikia
>
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