Talk:Devanāgarī

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This article is part of the "Writing systems" set of articles nominated for Version 0.7. Discuss this nomination, or see the set nominations page for more details.
"Book" This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project’s quality scale.
Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the Project’s importance scale.
Other languages WikiProject Echo has identified Devanāgarī as a foreign language featured article. You may be able to improve this article with information from the French language Wikipedia.
This article is part of WikiProject Languages (daughter of WikiProject Linguistics), an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, and easy-to-use resource about languages. Suggestions for improving articles on languages should go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages.



If you can read this script, you may add yourself to Category:User Deva by using Template:User iso15924.

Contents

[edit] Initial talk

Article does not say if this script is writen left-to-right or right-to-left. I am assuming this is because of cultural bias on the part of the writer and it is left-to-right, only implied. But it would be nice if someone knowledgeable edited the entry and deleted this comment (or left a changelog in its stead).

I grew up speaking Hindi, but oftentimes a native speaker cannot explain the subtleties of a language and its pronunciation as well as a scholar can. To that end, can someone confirm whether the following explanation of the ण sound (as the "t" in "hunter") is accurate? ण (ṇ) / ɳə /; American Eng: hunter

As far as I know, there's nothing in English that can approximate the ण sound; the best way that I could transliterate it (since I don't know IPA) is "rdna." This is weak, at best, but I'm not quite sure how else to write it.

--vedantm

Added alternative spellings for keyword searches.

I removed "Devnagiri" because I've never seen it being used and it's wrong anyway. -- Soam Vasani

I moved the entry to the more common spelling which is more in accord with lossless transcription (disregarding vowel length) -- HJH

It would be nice to have some elaboration on the [ITRANS notation]? transliteration scheme. Some information is at [1] -- HJH

The official site is [2] and many examples can be found at [3]. -- Soam Vasani

Added Unicode representations of the letters, formatted everything into tables hopefully preserving the meaningful columns/rows for the consonants. I don't speak or read Hindi; for letters where I wasn't 100% certain, they are without Unicode representations. A native speaker should fix that. -- Nate Silva

What's the difference between halant and virama? -phma

According to Unicode, they are the same. - Nate Silva


Why was this renamed to Devanagari script from the simple title Devanagari? --Brion 01:25 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

It seemed like a good idea for consistency's sake. In most cases a script and a language share a name, e.g. Gujarati language and Gujarati script. Of course in this case there is no ambiguity, so move it back if you like - I don't have my heart set on it or anything. User:Mkweise 01:50 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." ;) Where there is no ambiguity, the clearest and simplest name is generally preferred. Just plain Devanagari will be perfectly consistent with katakana, hiragana, kanji, hangul etc. --Brion
Alright then, what is the preferred way of dealing with existing links pointing to e.g. Devangari_alphabet? #Redirect or find and change all the links? The article Alphabet blindly links to Xyz alphabet, which in many cases is not strictly correct. Sanskrit terms generally seem to require lots of #redirects, as there are so many possible ways to transliterate (e.g. Devanagari vs. Devangari.) Mkweise 04:08 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
I've fixed the 'Devangari alphabet' redirect to work. The only thing that presently uses it (other than the mention here and a mention in Wikipedia:Editing bug reports) is Alphabet, which as you say could use some general cleaning up. However, until that's done that link does get here, so there's no rush. (Some people like to get rid of all uses of redirects in links from other pages in the wiki; I don't think it's a very pressing issue, as long as one ensures they all work properly.) --Brion 05:01 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

I moved the external link for fonts to the "External Links" section, where such things belong, but User:Mkweise moved it back. I don't think this is correct, as the "External Links" section is there for a reason. I would like to move the link to its rightful place.- Kricxjo 09:30 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You had separated the link from the instructions requiring it; that's why I'd moved it back. But if it really bothers you *that* much there, I'll just move the instructions to a new article at How to get Wikipedia pages containing Devanagari characters to display correctly in your browser. Mkweise 19:54 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (ed. Florian Coulmas, 1996) says about Devanagari (p. 125) that it has 48 letters, 13 vowels and 35 consonants. Where does the difference to the WP article come from? --Hirzel 13:01 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

>> 'u' as in put / 'oo' as in soot << These vowels are identical in English.

Would "'oo' as in root" not be a better illustration of the second vowel? -- EiA

---

"devanagaarii" was written as "devanaagari" in the devanagari script title, I have corrected it. I have added also an external link to the unicode chart.

---

In the "etymology" section, deva was translated as "divine, deity". However, in classical Sanskrit (as opposed to Vedic) deva is in general use as a noun; the corresponding adjective would be daiva. Hence "divine" was deleted.

[edit] Reverting unexplained, AFAICS unnecessary move to Devanagari_alphabet

Devanagari is technically not an alphabet - so if you see a need to disambiguate Devanagari, the proper place to move this article would be Devanagari_script. If you do see such a need, please discuss it here before moving things about. Mkweise 00:59, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is too an alphabet:

The reason I felt it necessary to move it there was because that is where I expected it to be:

etc. And it's not really a question of disambiguation, it's a question of clarity. It's clear in an instant that this is or isn't the article in question if you use the full name "Devanagari alphabet" Nohat 02:07, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)

Scroll up a bit, and you'll see how I was educated by Brion when I made a very similar arguement 14 months ago.
Devanagari consonants have an inherent vowel, so it's technically an abugida rather than an alphabet (phonemic script). Some sources, such as omniglot, use the term alphasyllabary instead of abugida. Mkweise 03:54, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] fatter tables

I am trying to make a table which organised the devanagari phonetically, while still retaining the dictionary order. however, this is my first time making a table, and i don't think it looks so good. what do you think?


Devanagari constants


Unvoiced

Voiced

Nasal


Velar

Palatal

Retroflex

Dental

Labial

unaspirated

aspirated

क

KA

k

k

ख

KHA

kh

kh

च

ChA

c

tʃ

छ

CHhA

ch

tʃh

ट

TTA

ṭ

ʈ

ठ

TTHA

ṭh

ʈh

त

TA

t

t̪

थ

THA

th

t̪h

प

PA

p

p

फ

PHA

ph

ph

unaspirated

aspirated

ग

GA

g

g

घ

GHA

gh

gɦ

ज

JA

j

dʒ

झ

JHA

jh

dʒɦ

ड

DDA

ḍ

ɖ / ɽ

ढ

DDHA

ḍh

ɖɦ / ɽɦ

द

DA

d

d̪

ध

DHA

dh

d̪ɦ

ब

BA

b

b

भ

BHA

bh

bɦ


ङ

NGA

ṅ

ŋ

ञ

NYA

ñ

ɲ

ण

NNA

ṇ

ɳ

न

NA

n

n̪

म

MA

m

m

I'm having trouble getting the Velar/Palatal/Retroflex/Dental/Labial column to align with the other columns properly. grr...

[edit] fatter table, attempt two

so i read a bit about tables, and learned about COLSPAN. how about this table?


consonants

 

unvoiced

voiced

unaspirated

aspirated

unaspirated

aspirated

nasal

velar

क

KA

k

ख

KHA

kh

ग

GA

g

घ

GHA

gɦ

ङ

NGA

ŋ

palatal

च

CA

tʃ

छ

CHA

tʃh

ज

JA

dʒ

झ

JHA

dʒɦ

ञ

NYA

ɲ

retroflex

ट

TTA

ʈ

ठ

TTHA

ʈh

ड

DDA

ɖ / ɽ

ढ

DDHA

ɖɦ / ɽɦ

ण

NNA

ɳ

dental

त

TA

t̪

थ

THA

t̪h

द

DA

d̪

ध

DHA

d̪ɦ

न

NA

n̪

bilabial

प

PA

p

फ

PHA

ph

ब

BA

b

भ

BHA

bɦ

म

MA

m


[edit] Pictures needed

I wonder if it might be more useful to include pictures of the glyphs, rather than depending on the user having the proper Unicode fonts installed? Presumably the people most in need of the information would be the ones least likely to have the right fonts installed. -Mark

I reckon overall you're probably correct, even accounting for text-only browsers. I can't imagine anyone's particularly keen on the actual work of re-doing it in PNG/GIF, thought. Meanwhile I'll look into whether the Devangari font I'm using is IP-encumbered; providing a link to download a copylefted font would be the neatest solution of all, don't you think? Mkweise 02:09 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
It should be simple enough to take screen snapshots and upload them to replace the current tables. --Brion
I suggest we keep the tables as they are, but add a PNG image showing a sample of text at the top of the article, just to give an idea -- maybe part of a screenshot of http://hi.wikipedia.org/ -- Tarquin 12:10, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] conjuncts

does anyone think it's a good idea to make a comprehensive list of conjuncts in Devanagari? It would be pretty long, and a couple of them probably have more than one form. But it still might be useful, right? -lethe talk

Yes! It should be on its own page linked to here. If it's really long it could have a couple of pages if there's a neat way to divide them.
Due to the fact that many older OSes, fonts, and rendering systems (Uniscribe, Pango, Worldscript) have shoddy support for Devanagari, it would be very nice to provide a table with both Unicode and images - at least for the conjuncts themselves. — Hippietrail 23:56, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] speaking of conjuncts...

have you noticed that in the text in the screenshot, conjuncts don't work? And the short i is on the wrong side of its consonant? Whoseever computer it was that took that screenshot ain't displaying devanagari correctly. Maybe I make one myself and upload? -lethe talk 23:36, Aug 24, 2004

we could maybe get an image af a slightly more significant sample? a mantra? An image of a handwritten sample, even, maybe? dab 22:17, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Which conjuncts? The short i does seem to be displaying on the correct side of the consonant (the left side), so I'm wondering what it is that I'm missing. Ambarish | Talk 16:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Check out the screenshot that used to be there (removed). The reason it looks OK now, is because I replaced the old screenshot months ago, after I made the comment above. -lethe talk
Thanks, although I feel a little stupid! I assumed that since User:Dbachmann responded on 1 Nov, your post must have been recent. Ambarish | Talk 04:29, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Well, that's partly my fault, I didn't timestamp my signature. oops. I have retro-added a timestamp to my complaint. -lethe talk 07:48, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Devanagari/Tamil text support?

I've been looking around for a way to be able to view Devanagari and Tamil texts under UNICODE, but apparently Windows 98 doesn't support them. I found a modified version on Internet Explorer which supposedly works, but IE is a horrible browser, and I'd prefer a method of viewing them which would work across browsers (for what it's worth, I'm in Opera). Does anyone have any ideas for what I might do? Thanks. - Vague | Rant 06:39, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ligatures

Hi, I'm the Vijayl who created all those ligatures. Hindi/Devanagari is not my native language. The original article said: च् + छ = च्छ and suggested adding all ligatures.

I added all possible combinations.

I'm sure that the set of ligatures will be a subset of what is currently there. I hope I've helped more than done harm. விஜய் லக்ஷ்மிநாராயணன் 15:01, May 1, 2005 (UTC)


I do not think this list is very helpful -- the "ligatures" section should explain the concept, and draw attention to particular cases, such as the r- and -r ligatures, the j~n and ktv cases, etc. Maybe we can have a list article giving all ligatures, but they should be in a table or something. dab (ᛏ) 17:25, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I concur. For the most part they are no-brainers: drop the inherent -a stem. See what I did at Wikitravel's Hindi-Urdu phrasebook for examples of how I treated ligatures. And than there are those superfluous Sanskrit ligatures no longer used. Anyone who has seen Snell's chart in TYS: Hindi or the TYS Sanskrit book especially will realize such exhaustive charts are best left to pedantic reference. For our purposes, listing the general rules/concepts/peculiarities would be quite sufficient. Khiradtalk 09:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ligatures vs. Conjuncts

This is my first edit/discussion here on wikipedia so if I'm messing up, please let me know. Anyways...here goes...I am wondering why the term ligature is being used? I believe that ligatures combine two letters without changing their meaning. Whereas the conjunct is to symbolize that the vowel has been suppressed. I don't think they are the same thing. So unless somebody has a good reason I will be changing all the ligatures to conjunct.

I also agree with dab above, that just having a very lengthy list of conjuncts isn't probably that useful. I will get something together that perhaps illustrates it better. Okay I want to sign this, but when I click the button that I would guess puts in the signature it does nothing. So this is Rothrock at May 1, 2005, 1:07 EST

  • As explained in Wikipedia's article on ligatures, ligatures have nothing to do with pronounciation or meaning. They only deal with typography. So the use of this word in this context is accurate. BernardM 13:11, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Bernard – that is my point. Compare the entry about the Danish Æ – it is not a ligature because it is its own letter. It isn't just a combination of A and E. Or the part about the double vee " Hence VV developed into W, but the modern Latin letter W is not a true ligature, as it represents a different sound from VV/UU." The same is true of conjuncts. They are pronounced different and represent different sounds. So they require a different word to describe what they are. Additiionally in all my experience with different Hindi textbooks, learning guides, instructors, etc. I've never encountered anybody who called them "ligatures" – they have always been called "conjuncts." -rothrock
    • rothrock, you can sign by typing ~~~~ -- makes all of this much easier to read. Yes, this is a peculiarity of Devanagari being an abugida. However, as far as I know, "ligature" and "conjunct" are used synonymously, for the combined form of two or more aksharas, with no intervening vowel. The composition of aksharas with intervening vowels is straightforward, you just place them next to one another, and we don't need to discuss this in detail. Also, we should present the few unusual ligatures as images, since most browsers won't render them properly. Also, when discussing various variants of ligatures, we need images, since we don't know which variant will appear on the reader's screen if we just use unicode encoding. For these reasons, I am removing the lengthy list of ligatures for now. dab (ᛏ) 15:09, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] article content (too computer/Unicode oriented)

this article is too computer-oriented as it is. It should primarily be about the (handwritten) script and its 800 year history. Unicode and keyboard issues should be secondary. Or create specialized Devanagari keyboard layout, Devanagari digital encoding, Devanagari computer fonts or similar. dab (ᛏ) 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

It appears to me that the article has relatively little content on computer issues: just a couple of figures and a few links, neither of which encroaches on unusually disproportionate representation of a related subtopic in an article--nor is there enough material here for a separate article. Or are we referring to different edits of the article? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 14:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I was referring to the writeup on Windows XP that was reverted earlier, and the list of ligatures (left to the reader's browser to render) posted even earlier. It's quite ok in its present shape, but if people want to add significant portions of IT stuff, I suggest specialized articles. dab (ᛏ) 15:15, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
I think it has (as I can see now) computer-related information in inappropriate places. (But I don't think it's too much, I simply would move all computer-related things out of the first sections.) In my opinion, talking about the writing system as it has been used "on paper" shouldn't be intermixed with its Unicode implementation. Just tell about the writing system (without mentioning the Unicode names of characters, or even the word "Unicode"), and then tell about the computer-related issues, referring back to the sections with the main content. For example, now "Unicode" appears in the content of section Devanāgarī#Symbols of Devanagari, and it shouldn't. What do you think of this?--Imz 00:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bhujimol

What's the relationship between Bhujimol and Devanāgarī--is it derived from, or perhaps a "sister" of Devanāgarī? It's not clear at the Bhujimol article. Thanks --Dpr 05:35, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, its definately Brahmic, that's for sure. It resembles Sharda a little, and therefore could be called a sister to Devanāgarī; though I am not familiar with this writing system and am not able to ascertain its exact relation. Khiradtalk 09:20, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article title should use usual English spelling

I believe it is Wikipedia policy to use the usual spelling of the language of the wiki for article titles. AHD, Collins, Encarta, and M-W all list only "devanagari". "Devanāgarī" with diacritics is a transliteration of Sanskrit rather than the usual English word.

A similar change was recently made at Yoruba language. Agreement was also reached at Taíno though it has not yet been moved to the usual English spelling. — Hippietrail 15:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, the form without diacritics is the usual spelling (indeed this form is almost universal). I checked the history and the reason for given for the change was "title lacks diacritics", but it did not state why diacritics were thought necessary. The person who made the change, although well meaning, was also not a native speaker of English. I propose to change the title back ot "Devanagari". If no-one objects within the next few days, I'll do this. - Martin.Budden 13:05, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I object :D. Firstly, although Wikipedia does have a blanket policy for using the common English names this in my opinion is not suitable for Indic scripts. Pretty much all other academic sources (including encyclopedias) use transliterations where appropriate. "Devanagari" isn't a term widly used outside of Indic research and it isn't a word that the normal English speaker will know anything about.
I think Wikipedia needs to develop a policy on the transliterations used for Indic text. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 19:45, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
I think using transliterations sparingly within the article for words which have normal English spellings, and copiously for words which have no normal English spelling is fine. But I think the current Wikipedia policy for the names of articles is sound. — Hippietrail 02:21, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Sukh, could you explain why you think "Devanāgarī" is more suitable than "Devanagari" for the article title? "Devanagari" is the common English name. The use of diacritics is appropriate in a context where pronounciation is important (for example, a "Learning Hindi" book), but I don't think it is appropriate for the article title. Encyclopaedia Britanica uses "Devanagari". A web search returns returns almost exclusively "Devanagari" (including hits on university web pages). The Wikipedia article on transliteration says: "Transliterations in the narrow sense are used in situations where the original script is not available to write down a word in that script, while still high precision is required." and "Transliteration in the broader sense is a necessary process when using words or concepts expressed in a language with a script other than one's own." I just don't see a case for retaining the diacritics.Martin.Budden 19:58, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Wow, I, the champion of diacritics actually agree with dropping them in this particular case. However; I would limit this to the article title. You also see these arguments raging in the eastern asian pages where I am out of my depth. But I would agree, and have been saying the same thing as you ਸਰਦਾਰ ਸੁਖ ਜੀ, that there needs to be a policy on indic transliterations. If only to end the rampant use of "Bollyliteration" and decide whether, or how to use Itrans and IAST. Khiradtalk 11:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
"ਸਰਦਾਰ ਸੁਖ ਜੀ" :D
If the title of this article is to be changed, so should Gurmukhi. Now, in regards to Indic transliterations - we really should follow some sort of convention. We can use ISO 15919:2001 [4] but I'm concerned about the transliteration of Bindis/Tippis as m with a dot above/below - seems a bit strange to me. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:19, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Also, the Britannica 2005 DVD that I've got uses Devanāgarī and Nāgarī ONLY. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:22, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, there seems to be a WikiWar going on about the whole subject of diacritics, see: Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English). My personal view is that in general diacritics should be retained, but when transliterating from a non-latin alphabet there is little gain in "adding" them (especially since over time English tends to drop the diacritics ("general", "Mexico", "cooperate" etc). Anyway I'll refrain from moving this page until there is some kind of conclusion on the naming conventions page, but it doesn't look like there is going to be any consensus any time soon. Martin.Budden 19:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] another table

manner of articulation → unvoiced voiced nasal
place of articulation ↓ unaspirated aspirated unaspirated aspirated
velar क ख ग घ ङ
palatal च छ ज झ ञ
retroflex ट ठ ड ढ ण
dental त थ द ध न
labial प फ ब भ म

lethe talk 17:56, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pronunciation/transcription of the name (long final i? which language?)

Now, the final i in the transcription (in the first line of the article) is short:

Devanāgarī (देवनागरी —, pronounced [d̪e:vən̪ɑɡəɾi] ...)

I wonder whether it is correct; the sign is at least for the long i. And, actually, to speak about the correctness of the pronunciation transcription one should indicate the language! Should we explicitly refer to Sanskrit pronunciation? I'd suggest the following version of the first line, modified according to these remarks:

Devanāgarī (देवनागरी —, pronounced in Sanskrit [d̪eːvən̪ɑɡəɾiː] ...)

what does a specialist think about this?--Imz 02:32, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

it would seem you are right. dab (ᛏ) 08:17, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transcription

How would one write meśta (Hibiscus sabdariffa) in Hindi? — Gulliver ✉ 04:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

If that's an accurate IAST transliteration, then: मेश्त. If the final 'a' is long, then it's मेश्ता. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Transliteration

If we're going to use a transliteration in the title, should it not be 'Dēvanāgarī' with a long e? Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 14:53, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The transliteration scheme should be fixed to make a decision on this question. At least at the current moment, IAST conventions are used throughout the article, and they prescribe plain e.
But, as to my opinion, a transliteration scheme where ē is used for a long e suits better an encyclopedia, which is for everyone (and not for indology specialists; they have the convention because it is more convenient for them and spares extra signs). On the other hand, it would imply a mismatch in transliteration with a huge number of other places.--Imz 18:18, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree we should use a unified scheme. Other Indic scripts (and indeed Devanagari) has a short E 'ऎ' and short O 'ऒ' and so if we're using a loss-less transliteration, this distinction needs to be preserved. Sukh | ਸੁਖ | Talk 20:45, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
(Yes, I agree.) Also the point I had in mind writing the first comment that I didn't explicate: uniformly using the macron diacritic for marking every long vowel is much better for understandibility by novice readers ("novice" in Indic languages/scripts).
So, if there were a vote as to which transliteration scheme to adopt as the standard in Wikipedia, I would support the one with ē and ō.
And, the extra macrons on ēs and ōs is not a big deal for specialists who are used to read without them: simply ignore them when reading.
Actually, to be honest about your argument: one could adopt a transliteration scheme where the short counterparts of e and o are marked in a special way (by a breve, obviously: ĕ, ŏ). And, I would really always put the breves on these two, independently of the usage of macrons for long e and o— in order to avoid confusion. --Imz 02:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a bad idea. We should stick to the standard transliteration, and not 'arbitrarily' modify it as we see fit. Just as latin characters represent different sounds in e.g. English, French, Dutch, so it is only normal that the characters of transliterated Hindi may have a different soundvalue that one might expect at first. What standard sound value do Latin characters stand for anyway? There is no such (language independant) convention. (The IPA hasn't got anything to do with this.)

[edit] IPA is wrong

The IPA pronunciation information indicated that the "d" in Devanagari is the same as English "d", i.e. /d/. This is wrong - the "d" in Devanagari is closer to /ð/ than /d/. --Grammatical error 18:39, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, English d is alveolar whereas devanagari d is dental (at least for Hindi it is).

The article says that द is pronounced / d̪ə /, which is a dental d. This is correct. -lethe talk + 03:56, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I meant at the start of the article where the pronunciation of the word Devanagari was indicated. i've changed it now anyway. --Grammatical error 07:38, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] images

This article used to have an image of an example of Devanagari writing. First it was a screenshot, then later it was some old scroll or something. What happened to those? I think they're especially important as some people will come to this page without Indic script enabled computers -lethe talk + 04:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I see that it was removed on Feb 21 by anonymous user 216.130.100.210 (talk • contribs) with no edit summary. It was that user's only contribution. I guess I'll restore. -lethe talk + 04:09, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] give each letter an article

So the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Greek alphabet, all have devoted articles for each letter. Hiragana and Katakana do too, though they share the articles. I think Devanagari feels left out. -lethe talk + 05:57, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew and Arabic also share articles (together with Phoenician and Syriac). If you have enough information on each Devanagari letter by all means do it, but make sure you don't just create 40 empty stubs with no information beyond what is already here, and leave them lying around for the next year. dab (ᛏ) 11:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Devanagari transliteration merger tag

There is a tag on article Devanagari transliteration to be mergerd with main Devnagari article.

  • I donot support this merger suggestion.Devanagari transliteration needs rewriting. Devanagari represents multiple languages under its fold.Since the number of stake holders for the issue of transliteration of Devanagari also is more and still stake holders have not fully represented the issue from most of the quartes on Wikipedia merger of the article is not advisable.

विजय 10:58, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure what you are trying to say, but the point is that there is nothing of value in the Devanagari transliteration article at present. So we can either just redirect it here, or we can write an actual article on Devanagari transliteration. If you are into doing that now, that's fine, otherwise we can just redirect it until somebody does. dab (ᛏ) 11:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, Redirecting it presently is a good suggestion may be you can go ahead with redirection.Presently I am working on same subject in Marathi Language Wikipedia Once I finish there I will come for this on English wiki certainly.

-Vijay

[edit] Hindi-centric attitude on ळ?

The article says:

Another consonant is ळ is not used in Hindi.

This is the Devanagari article, not the Hindi article. Why is this consonant not in the consonant table? Why is its pronunciation not defined? --DavidConrad 05:24, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

because so far nobody bothered adding it? I think it is the intervocalic variant of ड in Vedic orthography. dab (ᛏ) 11:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Pronounciation Info

The pronounciation table is not accurate in some instances ("v" is a glottal approximant?) and it would be nice to link each sound to its appropriate page where there should be a recording of the sound, for example Voiced labiodental fricative. I would change it myself, but I don't know what sounds they are actually supposed to make, and the sounds given might not necessarily match up to the sounds they make (I'm not sure, but is the "kh" actually a plosive, like "cat" or is it more a velar fricative?). Could someone more familiar with the language try to fix it up?

---Then if the "v" is a labiodental approximant as indicated by the symbol choice, why not make a new column for it, I will do it myself if someone will confirm that it is, in fact a voiced labiodental approximant as opposed to a voiced labiodental fricative. Also, would anyone oppose moving the "nasal" column to the "sonorants" table from the "plosive" table? Would that switch more accurately reflect the actual consonant?

Nasals are not plosives. --Siva 22:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relevant Link

http://bhashaindia.com/Downloadsv2/Category.aspx?ID=1 this is relevant link for the subject given .Please do restore back the same at apropriate place. Mahitgar 16:42, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Superfluous Sentence

I removed this sentence: "Languages written with Devanāgarī require no case distinction" from the Principles section; it was the last sentence in the paragraph discussing breaks in the upper line and breath groups. It was out of place, bringing up a morphological point in the midst of a discussion of interaction between phonology and orthography, and in any case, it seems to be false. I'm an amateur linguist, and I do know that Hindi, among other New Indo-Aryan languages, has at least three case distinctions, and Sanskrit has eight. Doonhamer 15:11, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I haven't read that sentence in context, but perhaps it was about case as in uppercase (ABC) and lowercase (abc)? Wikipeditor 04:18, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I need help.

Does Hindi use ळ?There is lots of speculation going on at belgaum:Talk.Plz give ur suggestion at Belgaum talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Belgaum#.22.E0.A4.B3.22_in_Hindi.3F (Look for the subtopic "ळ in Hindi?" mahawiki 15:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

No, Hindi does not use ळ. It is, however, part of the Marathi phonetic repertoire. Sarayuparin 22:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Seeking help and contribution

Dear Wikipedians,

We apreciate your valuable contribution in article named Wikipedia:Indic transliteration scheme on english WIkipedia.

We at Marathi Language wikipedia do not have enough expertise to update IPA related info in our article, specialy we have been unable to import/update IPA templates and do not know how to use IPA symbols.Please click here-this link- to provide help to update "IPA transliteration for Indic Languages" article for Marathi wikipedia

We seek and request for help in updating above mentioned article and would like to know relevant resources and refferences in respect of Devanagari and IPA .

Thanks and Regards

Mahitgar 16:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Wiktionary logos

See meta:Image:Wiktprintable.svg for the new logo design. Note that the श's left half does not have a horizontal line. Is that ok? If not, please suggest a change at meta:Talk:Wiktionary/logo. Thank you! 04:14, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vowel table

The diacritic marks for इ and ई were wrong. I've changed them to िप and पी respectively.--Osprey39 08:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Please fix your web browser. The correct spelling is पि. See the box at the top of the article about Indic scripts rendering. BernardM 11:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To all the contributors involved in this Project

Thank you very much for your considerable effort and endeavour in this Wiki-entry. This is truly beautiful and inspiring work. :-D B9 hummingbird hovering 01:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/e/v/Talk%7EDevan%C4%81gar%C4%AB_c9ec.html"