Excellent discussion here Syamanta. Thanks for sharing your knowledge here with an effort towards solving a problem.
Saurav, Rajen, Jugal--all have brought up valid points/questions. I am a layman, and am not really interested in the technicalities. I am neither able to nor am I inclined to delve into the sources of the various sounds and thus rationalize what has been proposed or established for Devnagari etc. My ( and I would hazard to suggest most others' like myself) interest will be three-fold: 1: The transliteration should reflect how we, with our kharkhowa-tenga-khowa tongues pronounce the letters and words. 2: The system MUST be intuitive and SIMPLE. By that I mean how we use the Roman letters in English language and how they sound. 3: While the 'xo' sound of Oxomiya, may not be that important in the technical sense, it has a great political/social significance, and thus ought to be addressed as a uniquely important facet of whatever the solution might be. It MUST NOT be paassed off as 'kho' or 'so' or 'sho'. Item 2 above will be very tricky, because English is spoken very differently among the English speaking peoples. Americans have a very different way of pronouncing 'a'and 'o' than perhaps the British. Australians and New-zealnders are yet again different.Indian English too is a mixed bag, vastly different from all of the above. So WHAT ought to be the lowest commoin denominator? To attempt to answer that question we might have to look into WHY we are even attempting to find a widely accepted norm for transliteration. I can only speak for myself here, but for me it is a substitute for using Assamese fonts -- which I can't find for my Mac. And even if I had, it would be useless to communicate with those who do not know Assamese. Being a transplant, it will be of great benefit for me to be able to transliterate Assamese sounds, here in the USA for example. On the other hand, in Assam and elsewhere in India it would primarily for use by the English language media. Under those circumstances, the Devnagari standards--if they are widely uised and are intuitive, would work. But that is not to say it will serve my or others' in my shoes requirements. Here I would suggest, in spite of technical shortcomings, 'o' instead of 'a' is far more intuitive to transliterate sounds like 'oxom' for example. To me 'axom' does not cut it -- it would be interpreted as the 'a' sound in 'absent'. I also believe, we have no business following the Devnagari sounds into producing different sounds for the Assamese 'so' sound. To us 'prthom so and dwitiyo so are the same; as are dontyo no and murdhonyo no. Just some thoughts to muddy the waters a bit more. Again thanbks. Wish you and others the best. cm At 4:52 PM -0500 7/24/03, S Saikia wrote: >Hi, > >I guess these are some of the real problems that come up while we try to >think of transliteration. > >Now that you have pointed out even I think that "sha, shha" are better >representatives of our language than "cha, chha". I didnt think of that >maybe because I was tring to follow the Devnagari scheme as far as possible >or mayb becuase of my own stupidity.I think "sha and shha" work much >better.... > >As far as typing a lot of consonants together I think history has proven it >very impractical. For example the written ancient egyptian, demotic, modern >arabic and hebrew use no vowels. But when their texts are transliterated >into English an 'a' or 'e' is often used in appropiate places so that they >can be easily read and typed. But I guess there is precious little we can do >to solve the problem of typing in consecutive vowels/consonants. It is >because the english alphabet consists of 26 character while Assamese >consists of 51 character...almost double and on top that we have the >juktakshars. It is a numerical imbalance. > >I guess the juktakshars can be taken care of....A proram can be written >interprets two consecutive consonants without any vowels between them as a >juktakshar and replaces it with its corresponding font. But as far as the >regualar alphabet goes what we can do, maybe, is provide a floating (always >on the top) software, not very unlike the windows charmap.exe, which >displays the 51 characters with certain hotkeys. It can probably do 2 >things.. (1) on clicking on the letters it will print the character to the >active word processor (2) show the hot keys etc to the keyboard typist.... >Anyone who is really interested should be able to pick up the skill in a few >days.... > >What I guess the problem is people are too lazy to learn the little that is >required. But I guess once transliterated stuff makes it appearance on a >regular basis and the software is a little user friendly, people will start >using it at a larger scale because in the end, every Assamese wants to talk >in the language he grew up with.... > >yours >Syamanta Saikia > > > > > > >----------------------- > >>From: J Kalita <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>CC: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>Subject: Re: [Assam] Transliteration Of Assamese Sounds >>Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 15:02:46 -0600 (MDT) >> >>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 > >_________________________________________________________________ >Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. >http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail > >_______________________________________________ >Assam mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam _______________________________________________ Assam mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pikespeak.uccs.edu/mailman/listinfo/assam
