Word splitting & hyphenation conventions in roman transliteration

[John Smith]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Rolf Koch wrote:

> the standard is in my opinion:  tat hi or taddhi or in roman tad-dhi but
> as fas as I have learned never tad dhi.  All publications just do not
> accept the writing tad dhi. Some prefer taddhi (sandhi), others tad-dhi
> (problem)  and others tat hi (without sandhi)  greetings

This is simply wrong.

The form "taddhi" has nothing to do with sandhi but is an attempt to
reproduce Nagari word-splitting conventions in a script where they are not
appropriate.

The form "tad-dhi" could only be taken as meaning that the two elements
have been joined into a compound, where in fact they are separate words.

The form "tat hi" is a pre-sandhi form, useful perhaps in a context of
elementary language instruction, but with no wider currency.

As I said earlier, cases of this sort have been written "tad dhi" by
professional Sanskritists (to whom the original question was directed)
for maybe a century and a half. This is also the only usage sanctioned by
the incoming ISO standard.

These are not my opinions; they are facts.

John Smith

--
Dr J. D. Smith                *  jds10 at cam.ac.uk
Faculty of Oriental Studies   *  Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106)
Sidgwick Avenue               *  Fax  01223 335110
Cambridge CB3 9DA             *  http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html