RA + RI = ?

[Antoine Leca]

James E. Agenbroad wrote:
>
> I assume that Hester Lambert's Introduction to Devanagari (page 24) is
> correct that the RA consonant followed by the RI vowel sound is written as
> the stand-alone form of the vowel with a reph above it rather than as RA
> with the RI matra/vowel sign.  Are there any other similar cases where a
> matra is replaced by a stand-alone vowel?

I have read (but am presently unable to cite the source) that the same
hold for RA+RII, RA+LI and RA+LII, the latter two being of course theoric
(and I do not know if the first ever exists either).


> I am not an indologist, just a librarian/systems
> analyst who hopes to persuade the authors of the Unicode
> standard that their RA + halant + the stand-alone RI vowel is a less
> plausible way to encode what appears as "RI with reph".

I am surprised the authors of the Unicode standard have such an idea.
I expect RA + virama + RI to produce RA-halant followed by RI, and
quite not repha+RI. After all, nobody is thinking that RA + virama + I
should produce II, isn't it? :-)
On a similar point, CDAC produce stand alone LI as if it were LA+RI
(which does save two slots in the character map). There are much more
similar examples in other scripts (the lla/au mark in Tamil comes to
my mind).


> I know this
> combination is uncommon--it's not mentioned in ISCII, the Indian standard
> for assgining computer codes to Indian scripts--maybe because it's too
> obvious to Indians?

I do not think it is obvious. For example, CDAC products (like iLeap)
do not produce the repha-RI form but instead a "normal" RI matra below
"normal" RA (even in Sanskrit mode). OTOH, iTrans (and I believe
F.Verthuis' devnag) do produce the repha-RI (and even repha-LII)...

I believe it is rare enough for not being mentionned in ISCII.
In fact, ISCII does not mention any particular rendered syllable,
being Devanagari ru, Tamil or Malayalam ku or whatever.


Antoine