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Notes on Tamil Orthography – puLLi, kAl, ai, ja, etc. By Mani M. Manivannan, Senior Director of Engineering, Symantec Corporation, Chennai, India

And Chair, Working Group 2 on Tamil Unicode, INFITT.

Abstract:

Tamil orthography is of interest to Tamil computing. There have been suggestions to add new diacritics on top of the series

of Tamil consonants with inherent a (அகர ஏறிய உயி ெம வாிைச) to represent foreign sounds in loan words in Tamil.

In this article, we will show that the genius of Tamil artists has created all possible shapes on top of the consonants with

inherent a, to represent puLLi ( ளி, U+0BCD). This makes it very hard to consider any additional diacritics in that

position to represent foreign characters. Also, as Tamil typefaces evolved from inscriptions and palm leaves to print, they

became easier to read. Yet, there are still a few characters that present difficulties such as the discriminability of AI and JA

(ஐ, U+0B90 and ஜ, U+0B9C), vowel signAA or kAl (◌ா, U+0BBE) and pure consonant RA (, U+0BB0+U+0BCD, when

the descender is absent in the typeface) as well as the AU length mark ( ◌ௗ, U+0BD7) and LLA (ள, U+0BB3) confusion.

In this article, we review some of these challenges and make some proposals to address them. This is of interest to students as

well as internet users as disambiguation becomes important for Tamil domain names.

க ைர க :

சீ ைறயி தமி வாிவ வ ப றிய றி க - ளி, கா , ஐ, ஜ, தலானைவ ப றி சில க க .

அகரேமறிய தமி ெம ெய களி மீ பிைற றி ேபா ற மீ றிகைள இ வடெமாழி ம பிறெமாழி ஒ கைள றி பிடலா எ அ ைமயி சில பாி ைர வ கிறா க . ஆனா , அகரேமறிய

உயி ெம ெய தி மீ , அத உ எ ன றி கைள இ டா , அவ ைற தமிழ க

ளியாக தா பா கிறா க எ பைத இ த க ைர சா க ட நி கிற . எனேவ இ ப ப ட

மீ றிகைள எ தி ேமேலா, அத உ ேளேயா இ வ ழ ப ைத தா விைளவி . தமி

வாிவ வ க க ெவ க , வ களி அ மாறிய ேபா அைவ ெப பா சீரா க ப டன.

இ பி , ஒ சில எ க இ மாணவ க , இைணய பயன க ழ ப த பைவ.

இ த க ைரயி ஐ/ஜ ழ ப க , ைண கா , ரகர ஒ ழ ப க , ஔகார றி, ளகர ழ ப க

ப றி ஆ சில பாி ைரக த ேளா . தமிழி இைணய ெகா ற ெபய க பரவலா ன

இவ றி தீ கா ப ந ைம த .

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (Coulmas 1996:379–80) defines Orthography as follows: “Correct spelling

and that part of grammar that deals with the rules of correct spelling. An orthography is a normative selection of the

possibilities of a script for writing a particular language in a uniform and standardized way. All orthographies are language

specific.” Besides being concerned about spelling and grammar of a language, an orthography defines all aspects of writing

including placement and shapes of characters, diacritics as well as spelling of loan words all in accordance with the rules of

the language it codifies (Karan, 1996)

A script on the other hand represents the graphic form of the units of a writing system. (Coulmas (2003:35)). While

orthography refers to the standardized variety of a given language-specific writing system, a script can be used by multiple

languages.

Language communities may be expected to be in control of their orthographies with politics and socio-linguistics playing an

important role in the design or reform of an orthography. Governments often influence orthographies through their language

policies. With the advent of globally connected networks, non-state players such as multi-national corporations and non-

governmental standards bodies that serve the needs of such corporations can have a disproportionate influence on

orthographic designs. It is important for the language communities to engage all standards bodies early and work with them

closely to make sure that their needs are addressed satisfactorily.

We can see the Tamil encoding standards as an example of the divergence between the efforts of the language community

and those of the remote standards bodies. The initial design of ISCII (Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange) and

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the Tamil block of Unicode had little or no participation from the Tamil community or even the state government of Tamil

Nadu. The standards created by the latter eventually had to yield to the former and we are frequently forced to deal with the

idiosyncrasies of the standards designed by people who weren’t part of the Tamil language community. The best way to

avoid surprises is for a language community to be aware that non-state players far beyond their borders can have much more

influence on their language than their representative government and to engage these bodies primarily on technical terms in

addressing the needs of the language. The good news is that frequently such bodies are more willing to address their concerns

than their governments.

Any Tamil speaker who inspects the Tamil Unicode block would be surprised to see that the very first character listed at

(http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0B80.pdf) is the character Tamil Sign Anusvara (see Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Anusvara in Tamil Unicode Block The sample glyph shows a circle above a character that it is to combine with. The annotation says it is not used in Tamil and an additional annotation saying that the “anusvara should not be confused with the use of a circular glyph for the pulli” has been recently added. In orthographic terms, anusvara belongs to Sanskrit language to represent a Sanskrit based sound using a written form that is characteristic of Devanagari or other scripts designed to represent Sanskrit and related languages. Tamil language does not use anusvara nor does it have a written form for the anusvara. As we show in Figure 2, Tamil uses circular glyph for puLLi quite regularly.

Figure 2. Circular glyphs used as puLLi in modern Tamil (2012-2013)

The author collected hundreds of samples over a period of 18 months starting in January 2012 taking pictures of various glyphs that represent puLLi in Tamil. Figure 2 shows a sample of such collection ranging from print articles, wall posters, business signs, wall advertisements, political cartoons etc. It is quite obvious that the circular glyph is read as a puLLi in Tamil and any use of a circular glyph to represent a foreign character in the Tamil milieu is certain to cause confusion.

It is with this in mind that an attempt was made by Shriramana Sharma to request deprecation of this anusvara character. (Sharma L2/12-018, Request to deprecate 0B82 TAMIL SIGN ANUSVARA). It was opposed by Naga Ganesan who argued that the anusvara sign is in use in Tamil script to transliterate from neighboring Indian scripts (Ganesan L2/12-051, Proposal to change the glyph shape of Tamil Sign Anusvara (U+0B82)). Interestingly, Ganesan had earlier opposed Sharma’s extended Tamil proposal which was designed to transliterate Sanskrit and other Indian languages that have varga letters in addition to writing Saurashtri in Tamil script. At best, Ganesan’s proposal is inconsistent. While it is to be expected that orthography wars will break out whenever attempts are made to change established norms triggering political and socio-linguistic controversies, here the usual linguistic politics of Tamil Nadu gets really muddled. We have an orthodox Sanskrit scholar associated with the Sankara Mutt of Kanchi fighting to remove an obviously Sanskrit orthographic element from the Tamil block while a member of the Kongu landed gentry is arguing for the Sanskrit orthographic element in Tamil to make it easier for transliterating Sanskrit in Tamil script!

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One more example of Ganesan’s inconsistent stand is his reference to McAlpin’s use of a circular glyph as a diacritic to represent spoken Tamil (McAlpin, 1976:12, http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2012/04/circular-dot-diacritic-in-tamil.html). In the Unicode mailing list, Ganesan suggested correcting the notation on Anusvara sign with “used in Spoken Tamil representation for nasalization” even though there is no evidence that the McAlpin notation found any followers since 1976.

Figure 3. McAlpin’s diacritic proposals using circular glyphs

Usage of diacritics to render foreign sounds, loan words, academic notation, etc., is not a new idea. There have been other

proposals to use diacritics to render Sanskrit (Sharma, L2/10256), Hindi (Manikutti, 2012) or other foreign sounds

(Sevakumar, 2010) in Tamil using the Tamil character set. However, such usage in random proposals, printed texts or a few

other non-standard sources needs to be weighed against standard practices of language community. A rational system of

diacritics limited to specialist user groups has its merits as long as the orthographic principles of Tamil are not impacted.

It is notable that in more than 2000 years of close interaction with Sanskrit, prakrits and neighboring languages, Tamil

orthographic tradition has not integrated such orthographic practices as conjunct consonants, independent representation of

aspirate and voiced sounds etc. from these languages, into its native repertoire. The only concession that it has made is to

borrow an extremely limited number of grantha characters (ஸ, ஷ, ஜ, ஹ, , and ). Even under the influences of the

imperial Mauryas (300 BCE) and later the Pallavas (600 CE) who patronized the Pallava Grantha script that is a cousin of the

modern Tamil script, orthographic tradition of Tamil had retained its fierce independence. (Gift Siromoney, 1983:21). It is

this independence that has enabled Tamil script to retain its simplicity and the avoidance of conjunct consonants is an

important feature of this simplicity.

Figure 4. Conjunct consonant decomposed in modern Tamil Even when Tamil borrows a conjunct consonant such as the grantha (KSHA), it breaks it up into constituent parts in the course of time. (See Figure 4). The only other conjunct consonant in Tamil grantha ( , <0BB6, 0BCD, 0BB0, 0BC0>) is

treated like a symbol similar to Tamil OM (U+0BD0, ௐ) rather than as a conjunct consonant because most Tamils do not

know about the consonant ஶ (U+0BB6) and are not aware that is a conjunct consonant (ஶ◌் + ாீ). As for using diacritics to render foreign sounds and loan characters, one needs to consider the Tamil practice of treating ANY diacritic or symbol on top of or inside a Tamil consonant as just another glyphic variant of puLLi. The author has an interesting collection of photographic samples numbering into several hundreds that show this practice. In Figure 5, we show a very tiny sample of this practice.

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An interesting aspect of this is, in addition to symbols, double dots, tildes, commas, single, double and triple accents, that a puLLi can overlap or even go inside a consonant. To the designer and the readers, any diacritic on top of or inside the consonant seems to be just another variant of the puLLi. This leaves the choice of any new diacritic to be positioned on the sides or below a consonant, at best.

Figure 5. Various ‘diacritics’ used as puLLi in modern Tamil

However, since the developer communities outside of Tamil milieu is unfamiliar with such nuances of the script, they build

implementations that may end up confusing the Tamil user community. For example, Nokia has implemented Tamil in their

mobile offerings and have included “Tamil” anusvara with a circle above a consonant. At first I thought these to be a glyphic

variant of puLLi. But I suspect that this is a serious implementation of anusvara. See Figure 6. (Maag, 2012) While

implementers may read the Unicode annotation on anusvara cautioning them not to confuse “the circular glyph for puLLi”,

users won’t and this will certainly create confusion.

Figure 6. Nokia implementation of “Tamil” anusvara

ORTHOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES

Besides the software developers, orthography and typefaces are of interest to researchers interested in studying learning

disabilities as well. Characters that have similar strokes and shapes make it difficult for readers to distinguish them from

each other and impede reading. Similarly mirror characters such as b and d, p and q often cause difficulties with those who

have dyslexia. Tamil does not have mirror characters. Its simplicity led Baker to comment that “Tamil script is particularly

easy to read, in part because of its lack of ligatures. It might also be argued that its particular mix of angular and rounded

characters makes them more easily distinguishable than is the case with most other scripts of the Indian subcontinent.”

(Baker 1997:129).

While modern Tamil typefaces are easy on our eyes, ancient inscriptions and palm manuscripts are harder to read without a

lot of training. While lack of spaces between words, punctuation, etc., are part of the reason for this difficulty, one can see

that even with the advent of printing Tamil was somewhat difficult to read in the early days. The evolution of typefaces in

Tamil starting with mid 19th century has made Tamil script quite modern and easy on the eyes. And yet there are some

characters that remain difficult to read both on the printed page and on the computer screens. A study (Narayanan, 2011)

reports that poor readers had difficulty in reading Tamil words that contained irregular orthography. They had difficulty in

discriminating between ஐ and ஜ. They read ஔ as ஒ ள. The Tamil Nadu government standard on Tamil Unicode

implementation refers to homographic confusion between the Tamil vowel sign AA or kAl (◌ா, U+0BBE) and pure

consonant RA (, U0BB0+ U+0BCD). Similar homographic confusion exists between AU length mark ( ◌ௗ, U+0BD7) and

LLA (U+0BB3).

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Fortunately, the resolution for solving the latter two problems is straightforward and besides the recommendation from the

Tamil Nadu standard on Unicode, the Tamil Nadu state government text books for primary school children have

implemented them. The Tamil Development department of the Tamil Nadu state government had clarified to the Tamil Nadu

text book society what standard forms for pure consonant RA, RI and RII (, ாி, ாீ) they should use (Figure. 7). Nearly all the

Tamil Nadu text books follow this recommendation though the author did find a few inconsistencies.

Figure 7. Tamil Nadu government’s clarification on the orthography of , ாி, ாீ Most of the Tamil fonts follow this convention though not all. Almost none of the magazines and newspapers in Tamil Nadu do. It is hoped that this research paper would alert the type foundries of supporting these changes and implement this consistently.

Figure 8. Rakara mey series, Tamil Nadu state text book for Standard 1, Vol III, Page 44

The simple addition of the descender makes the series consistent and avoids confusion. Figure 8 shows a page from the Tamil Nadu government text book (2013) for primary school children implementing this.

Similarly the government text books have implemented a way to disambiguate between the AU length mark and the Tamil Letter LLA. They have made the AU length mark smaller and identical to the glyph in the Tamil letter UU. The following figures show the pages from Tamil Nadu government text book.

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Figure 9. The Au series, Tamil Nadu state text book, Standard 1, Vol III, pp 26-27

The Unicode reference glyph in the letters UU and AU is even better (Figure 10). That glyph cannot possibly be mistaken

for Tamil letter LLA (ள).

Figure 10. The Au marker glyph from the Unicode Standard in comparison with the letter LLA

The discriminability between AI and JA (ஐ, U+0B90 and ஜ, U+0B9C) is much harder as can be seen from figure 11. It becomes even harder when designers use standard character sizes rather than the “uppercase” character sizes of AI and JA since the space required to disambiguate the lower glyphs is more restricted. The standard size AI and JA are esthetically more pleasing and are preferred by a larger number of designers. The best way to increase the discriminability is through elegant typeface design.

Figure 11. Various versions of JA series and AI in modern Tamil

What is difficult for the street sign designer need not be the same for computer typeface designer. The lower half of both the

characters AI, JA, ஐ, ஜ can be designed with lesser weight and the bottom curves in JA need not be symmetric. An example of the weight variation that can be used to address this is similarto the character g in Franklin Gothic and Garamand typefaces as in: g (Franklin Gothic) and g (Garamand). Typeface designers have variety of other choices.

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Figure 12. Tamil script alignment (Vargas, 2007)

Evolution of Tamil typefaces is a fascinating subject. Fernando de Mello Vargas has collected rare details about the Tamil typeface evolution. Anyone interested in Tamil typeface design will benefit by reading his Masters thesis (Vargas, 2007). In

figure 12 given above Vargas describes the Tamil script alignment. While the letter இ sits below the baseline in his diagram above (and in some modern designs), it was common until a few decades ago to make it sit on the baseline with the ascender extending to the topline. Other alignment details in the figure are consistent with the current practice.

In general, as observed from the lettering in modern Tamil Nadu, the designers appear to have several basic characters which

sit on the baseline. These are mostly short vowels (அ, ஈ, உ, ஊ, எ, ஃ) with ஐ, ஒ, ஓ as optional members of the set and the

following consonants (க, ங, ச, ட, ண, ப, ம, ய, ல, வ, ள, ன, ஸ, ஜ). These characters don’t have ascenders or descenders.

The puLLis and vowel modifiers of these characters go into the ascender or descender spaces. The long vowels (ஆ, ஏ) and

(ஞ, த, ந, ர, ழ, ற, ஷ, ஹ) all have glyphs that rest on the base line with descenders that may not extend to the bottom line.

Sometimes letters like ஞ, ந are shortened with no descenders at all. The letter இ used to sit on the baseline with only an

ascender glyph completing it until the 70’s. The ascender stroke for இ is nowadays seen as a separate stroke with no

continuity with the rest of the glyph. The letters ஐ, ஒ, ஓ, and ஜ used to sit on the baseline and their body was completely within the middle space in some old designs. Several modern designers treat these as characters with their bottom half as descenders. I have given below pictures with both designs for comparison.

Figure 13. Characters with and without descenders and shorter au marker

Figure 14. Vowels and AI character with and without descenders and shorter au marker

Figure 15. JA characters with and without descenders

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Figure 16. Characters with and without descenders for comparison

Recommendations:

1. Continue to request Unicode Technical Committee to deprecate 0B82 Anusvara Sign and annotate it such that the circular glyphs above the character are not used for that at all.

2. Encourage more technical participation in INFITT WG02 and UTC meetings and lists. 3. Implement your typefaces to follow the Tamil Nadu state text book model for representing AU length mark and RA

pure consonant, RI and RII (, ாி, ாீ) 4. Use your best typeface designs to disambiguate AI and JA (ஐ, ஜ)

5. Consider making the characters ஐ and ஜ sit on the base line instead of the bottom line and the body of the character fit within the middle.

6. Review all your typefaces to see if readers unfamiliar with the script or those with learning disability may find your characters difficult to disambiguate

7. Consider making the character இ sit on the base line instead of the bottom line. 8. Continue to monitor Tamil Orthography and Typography discussions also 9. Discuss the need to represent loan words in Tamil or render foreign sounds in dictionaries with a rational set of

diacritics with Tamil characters. 10. Pay attention to smartphones where the characters are tiny.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks to ‘Thendral’ Jeevamani Balan for the discussions on the characters and his comparison diagrams in figures 13 through 16 above. Thanks to Tamil Virtual University (Prof. Nakkeeran and Mr. Mahesh) for the copy of the Tamil Development Department memo. Thanks to Cartoonist Bala for excerpts from his cartoon. Thanks to Prof. C. R. Selvakumar for a nice discussion on the diacritics. Thanks to Dr. S. Palaniappan for a long discussion on the subject matter and for his valuable input. Thanks to my wife Asha for putting up with me while I was taking pictures of posters, wall signs, name boards for the last couple of years. She is really relieved that this paper is complete and hopes that I will stop being crazy!

References:

The Au series, Tamil Nadu state text book, Standard 1, Vol III, pp 26-27

http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/Books/Std01/Std01-III-TamEng.pdf

Baker, Philip. 1997. Developing Ways of Writing Vernaculars: Problems and Solutions in a Historical Perspective. In: Andrée Tabouret-Keller, Robert B. Le Page, Penelope Gardner-Chloros, and Gabrielle Varro (eds.), Vernacular Literacy: A Re-Evaluation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 93–141. Coulmas, Florian. 1996. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems. Oxford: Blackwell. 2003. Writing Systems: An Introduction to their Linguistic Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ganesan, Naga., L2/12-051, Proposal to change the glyph shape of Tamil Sign Anusvara (U+0B82)).

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12051-tamil-anusvara.pdf

Karan, Elke., 1996. WRITING SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND REFORM: A PROCESS, B.A. thesis, University of North Dakota. Maag, Dalton., 2012. “Type Design meets Tamil”, 14 June 2012,

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[Nokia implementation of “Tamil” anusvara] http://nokiapureblog.daltonmaag.com/2012/06/type-design-meets-tamil.html

Manikutty, Anand, A Modest Proposal towards Modernizing the Tamil Writing System (July 7, 2012). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2184552 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2184552 McAlpin, David W., 1976. Core Vocabulary for Tamil, Institute of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19174, USA. page 12 as quoted at http://nganesan.blogspot.com/2012/04/circular-dot-diacritic-in-tamil.html Narayanan, B. (2011). Role of knowledge of orthography and automaticity in differentiating good and poor readers in Tamil. Poster presented at the Language Literacy and Cognitive Development (LLCd) Symposium, 16th – 17th December held at Bangalore. Rakara mey series, Tamil Nadu state text book for Standard 1, Vol III, Page 44

http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/Books/Std01/Std01-III-TamEng.pdf

Sevakumar, C. R., 2010. தமி எ ைறயி தனி த ைம தமிெழ சீ தி த , ெச. இரா.

ெச வ மா , தமி ெச ெமாழி மாநா , ேகாைவ.

Sharma, Shriramana., L2/12-018, Request to deprecate 0B82 TAMIL SIGN ANUSVARA

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2012/12018-tamil-anusvara-depr.pdf

L2/10256, Proposal to encode characters for Extended Tamil

http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2010/10256-extended-tamil.pdf

Siromoney, Gift., 1983. Origin of the Tamil-Brahmi script, Seminar on "ORIGIN EVOLUTION AND REFORM OF THE TAMIL SCRIPT", pp.21-29, The Institute of Traditional Cultures, University Buildings, Madras-600005. http://www.cmi.ac.in/gift/Epigraphy/epig_origin.htm Tamil Nadu government’s clarification on the orthography of , ாி, ாீ (Private communication with Tamil Virtual University)

T.N.G.O. on Unicode, 2010. G.O. (Ms) No.29 Dt: June 23, 2010 Information Technology – Committee constituted for declaring Unicode as current standard of Tamil Coding – Report submitted - Standards Prescribed for 16-bit coding of Tamil Script – Orders – http://www.tn.gov.in/go_view/dept/17?page=1 Unicode Tamil block (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0B80.pdf)

Vargas, Fernando de Mello., 2007. Dissertation for M.A. in Typeface Design, Dept. of Typography and Graphic Communication, The University of Reading, United Kingdom