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Skrintha • November 11, 2000 


Hi, Madhuri,

The upper/lower case system is a method for transcribing Devanagari. It
differs considerably (sometime confusingly so!) from the commonly found
ASCII versions of the IPA (International Phonetic Assoc.) system, but is
in keeping with the way most Indian languages are transcribed on the net.

For vowels: case signals vowel length. Upper case vowel letters are long,
and lower case short.

_ai_ and _au_ are the diphthongs.

_R_ (_kRshNa_), _L_ (_kLpta-_) are the rhotic (r-like) and liquid (l-like)
vowels.

---

_h_ is the "usual h-sound", as found in English, except when it follows
consonantal stops, where it marks aspirated versions of those consonants,
and after _s_, where it is understood to be usual English /sh/ sound. _H_
is the Sanskrit visarga (and represents the voiceless version of the /h/
sound). It is written like a ":" (colon) mark in Devanagari.

t,d (_danta_) are dental equivalents of the cerebral (or retroflex) T, D
(_paNDita_, _paThAmi_).

_S_ is the palatal fricative in _SrI_, _Sankara_.

Among nasals, only the retroflex nasal _N_ (_paNDita_) is marked, the
others being conflated to _n_. There is no danger of mix-up because the
exact nasal value can be guessed from the following consonant (where such
exists; eg., the _n_ in _vAnchAmi_ is obviously palatal per Sanskrit or
Tamil phonotactics), and the only intervocalic nasal other than the
retroflex has to be dental in Sanskrit (or SanskRt) and alveolar in Tamil,
as far as I say offhand.

Usually, but not always, casual net-writing avoids making special
provisions for the other special Sanskrit features like anusvAra,
avagraha, halanta, etc.

Hope this helps,

namo nArAyaNa,

Best wishes,
Srikanth

--------------------------------------------------

 On Sat, 11 Nov 2000, TK Madhuri wrote:

[...]
> I have often seen that the signatures are as mentioned belowed
> 
> - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH -
> 
> My question any partiuclar reason of writing the [slogan] this way. I
> meant like some in caps and the other in small.
> 
> Could u pls clarfy me on that.
> 
> Madhuri
> _________________________________________________________________________
>            - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH -
> To Post a message, send it to:   bhakti-list@eGroups.com
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