Kyoto-Harvard transliteration

[Peter Scharf]

Would some generous person undertake to update the Wikipedia entry,  
which still reads "Harvard-Kyoto"?

On 3 Aug. 2008, at 9:37 AM, Michael Witzel wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> it is Summer and the weekend now, so a lazy note of correction:
>
> Colleagues have been referring, since 1990, to our 7-bit  
> transliteration for Sanskrit as Harvard-Kyoto (a A, i,  I ...,  etc.).
>
> But the laws of language do not trump the (perceived) pre-eminence  
> of Harvard.
> In compounds, the shorter member precedes the longer one. This is  
> Behaghel's 19th century 'law of growing members' (Gesetz der  
> wachsenden Glieder).
>
> Here we have a problem as both Kyoto and Harvard have two syllables.  
> (Something like the erstwhile Baltimore-Washington or Washington- 
> Baltimore airport)
>
> However, as Kyoto  is metrically shorter (kyoo-to, 2+ 1) than  
> Harvard (har-vard, 2+ 2), and thus also has less letters, Kyoto  
> takes precedence. In addition, the system was devised at Kyoto in  
> 1990.
>
> In short, call it the "Kyoto-Harvard" system!
>
> To be honest, it was based, to a large degree, on that created by  
> Andrea van Arkel at Leiden in 1984, when our department was the  
> first there to use a PC (together with Mathematics) for the input of  
> the Paippalada Samhita of the Atharvaveda.
>
> Have a good Summer!
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
>
> Michael Witzel
> witzel at fas.harvard.edu
> www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm
>
> Dept. of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
> 1 Bow Street
> Cambridge MA 02138, USA
>
> phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496  
> 8571;
> my direct line (also for messages) :  617- 496 2990

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Peter M. Scharf                           (401) 863-2720 office
Department of Classics             (401) 863-2123 dept.
Brown University
PO Box 1856                               (401) 863-7484 fax
Providence, RI 02912                Scharf at brown.edu
http://www.research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=10044
http://sanskritlibrary.org/
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