Talk:Tāna

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[edit] Abugida?

Based on what? The characters do NOT represent syllables, nor do the consonant signs inherently include a vowel. Thaana behaves like a typical abjad (makes sense, since it was derived from one) and should be designated as such. I'm changing it to "abjad". Bulbul 23:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Changing it back. An abjad indicates consonants, an abugida indicates vowels with diacritics. Taana was not derived from an abjad, but from numerals. Also, the Arabic script is sometimes used as an abugida. When writing Kurdish, for example, the vowel diacritics are required, so functionally Kurdish and Taana are composed like Devanagari. kwami 17:31, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is thaana "Indic"?

Based on what I know, it seems Thaana is kind of a "variant" of Arabic. So, should that warning remain? Or is thaana kind of a "fusion" of Arabic and some Indic alphabet, despite being written right to left and "abjad" like Arabic is. The question is...does it have complex "composition" rules like Indic languages? ~Ra'akone 132.205.64.19 19:50, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Thaana does not have ligature mechanisms and is thus simpler than Arabic. All letters have fixed shape and never join. The only problematic part (in addition to the rtl directionality) is that every letter can take up a large number of vowel signs which are typographically non-spacing accents. Fonts I know of do not change the base letter shape due to the presence of vowel signs, so that's again rather simple.
Conclusion: No, it's not an Indic script, it does not need CTL mechanisms and it is unlikely to misbehave in browsers is there is at least one font in the system. 87.123.103.223 19:22, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] It is not Abugida, but Alphabet

see http://www.omniglot.com/writing/alphabets.htm ->Thaana.

Abugida means, each consonant letter has an inherent vowel, usually [a], but in Tana [a] must be wroten as އަ. each Tana consonant letter has no inherent vowel, so it is alphabet. [unsigned]

Yeah, this is a bit tricky. Diacritics as in Taana can be argued to be modifications of the letters that carry them. The prototypical abugida, Amharic, is a script where letters are modified to indicate vowels. In Amharic there is no inherent vowel, as vowel cannot be separated from consonant, so by your definition the prototype of the abugida, the script which gave us the word abugida, is an alphabet.
In the prototypical alphabet vowels and consonants have equal status. This certainly isn't the case for Taana. Also, in an alphabet a consonant by itself is just a consonant, whereas in Taana a 'killer' stroke must be used. So although it isn't prototypical, it's closer to an abugida than to an alphabet. kwami 10:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Amharic use Ge'ez alphabet. In Ge'ez alphabet each consonant letter has a inherent vowel ä.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ethiopic.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ge%27ez_alphabet#Syllable_signs
of course, Amharic is abugida, but Tana not. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.168.65.62 (talk) 12:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
we can see, in Tana alphabet the vowel letters are always above or below the consonant letters. this is unlike the latin alphabet. but in Hangul, the vowel letters are sometimes above or below the consonant letters, too. Since Hangul is alphabet, Tana is the same. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.168.65.62 (talk) 12:12, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
But in hangul the vowels and consonants have equal status, while they appear to be diacritics in taana. The problem is that none of these categories are absolute; even Japanese kana is to some extent alphabetic (when writing foreign names, at least). kwami 16:15, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sound values

Anonymous editors have twice given quite precise sound values, but the information is unsourced, so I can't verify if it's real or vandalism. If it's real, such information also belongs in the article on Maldivian. kwami 16:12, 7 October 2007 (UTC)