Draft transliteration scheme on the Web

[Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD]

A 13:59 16/06/98 +0500, vous ("Bh.Krishnamurti" <bhk at HD1.VSNL.NET.IN>)
 avez écrit :

>..... Let Tamil scholars
>continue to use whatever they want. I appeal to Dr. Stone to provide
>z-subdot for the benefit of those who decide  to use it.In my TVB I used
>only l-sub-macron, but changed it later. LVRAiyar and French Scholars
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>consistently used z-subdot.

As a matter of fact,

Jules Bloch uses l-double-subdot
(l with two dots below) in his "Structure Grammaticale
des Langues Dravidiennes", Paris 1946.

We find the same scheme inside the English translation:
"The grammatical Structure of Dravidian languages"
that was published after his death
(Deccan College Hand-book Series, Poona, 1954)


After him, Jean Filliozat used a special scheme
for Tamil, where capital letters where mixed with lower case.
In his books,
 N = n-sub-macron
 R = r-sub-macron
 L = l-sub-macron (= z-subdot)

After him (except in his translation of paripATal),
prof. François Gros has used the standard Tamil Lexicon Scheme
with l-sub-macron.

The majority of books I know (including my own) use the same scheme.

One recent (and outstanding) one that has come to my notice
thanks to a message of N.Ganesan on this list is
"The Study of Stolen Love",
 A translation of
kaLaviyal en2Ra iRaiyaz2Ar akapporuL
 with commentary by nakkIran2Ar
translated by David C. Buck and (the late) K. Paramasivam,
1997, Scholars Press, Atlanta, Georgia, ISBN O-7885-0331-6

For people who, like me, are more interested in the study
of (real?, attested?, not-too-much-reconstructed?)
Tamil literature (medieval, classical, modern)
than in general (or comparative) dravidian studies,
there seems to be no point in changing the transliteration
scheme, even though one can always adapt oneself.

So, from this angle, the answer seems:
1st choice: keep l-sub-macron
2nd choice: if the majority wants it, accept z-subdot
3rd choice: do your best to avoid the clumsy r-double-subdot
       (or l-double-subdot !!!)

-- Jean-Luc Chevillard(Paris)