Draft transliteration scheme on the Web

[Bh.Krishnamurti]

An aditional reason in favour of z-subdot is how early Skt borrowings are
represented in Tamil, e.g. u.sa: u.zai, se:.sa- :ce:.zam. Phonetically a
voiced counterpart of IndoA .s is not far off the mark of PDr or Ta. .z. I
published a longish paper on the developments of PD *.z as early as 1958
(Indian Linguistics, Turner Jubilee Volume). PD *.z becomes .l, .d, .r, r,
in most lgs.Toda also has .s and s(wedge-supra)beside the above. Being a
frictionless continuant, it leads to y and 0 also. The amjor advantage is to
match it with other retrofexes and .z eminently suits this. l-macr-b is ill
suited and is not used by scholars like like zvelebil. Bh.K.


At 08:37 14/06/98 -0400, you wrote:
>> Among the many transliterations of this letter, scholars now seem to use
>> three in particular: l_macr-b, r_dia-b, z_dot-b.   As well as the fricative
>> aspect, the Malayalam and Tamil pronunciations sound something like 'r' and
>> 'l', respectively.    Hence z_dot-b has three advantages:   (1) dot-b
>> matching retroflexes, (2) z sugges) no problem about
>> the r/l aspect.
>
>For those who know Tamil/Malayalam, the actual symbol makes little
>difference; humans can get used to almost anything. I no longer
>blanch when I see z for "s.  But for others,
>z-underdot may be too confusing: There have been people who thought
>that the sound is a voiced retroflex >sibilant<, a sound that is rare,
>and not found in modern Dravidian languages, but is reconstructed for
>proto-IA. I have never heard it in any natural language, but it is not
>hard to voice .s, and the result does not sound anything like the sound
>in question.
>
>I doubt that there is any easy answer. Any choice will confuse those
>who have never heard it.
>
>
Bh.Krishnamurti
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