Hi Arlo, It’s an interesting problem and Tibetan, Burmese, Thai and Cambodian all present analogous issues as well. There are no doubt other cases, perhaps Lao, Cham, etc. I would be interested to learn of serious comparative work on the question. Perhaps a topic for a workshop ?
best, Matthew Sent from Proton Mail for iOS On Mon, Sep 4, 2023 at 13:46, Arlo Griffiths via INDOLOGY <[[email protected]](mailto:On Mon, Sep 4, 2023 at 13:46, Arlo Griffiths via INDOLOGY <<a href=)> wrote: > Dear colleagues, > > Scholars of Sanskrit are lucky in being able to work with a writing system > that is tailor-made to express the sounds of the language and a pretty well > established set of scholarly conventions for Romanization. There is no great > difference between a graphemic and a phonological representation of Sanskrit. > This probably holds for several other South Asian languages too. And there > seems to a be a great stability in the relationship between sign and sound, > as least in the languages that I know. The Oriya କ, the Bengali ক, the Tamil > க are palaeographically related and all represent the same consonant phoneme > — although the accompanying vowel differs. There are some other regional > differences, but my entirely subjective impression is that stability of the > sign-sound nexus is more impressive than differentiation in the history of > script-use in India. > > I am pondering this matter and am wondering if it has given rise to scholarly > analysis and interesting publications that members of the list might be able > to refer me to. > > The background is formed by cases of significant change in the script/sound > nexus that I have encountered in Southeast Asian languages and my concern > about what they mean for Romanization strategies (in particular the > applicability if ISO 15919). Two examples: > > 1. https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak_(blok_Unicode) > > In the Batak writing system of North Sumatra, the word pustaha means ‘book’ > and we can all guess the origin of this word. The last syllable is > represented by ᯂ (Unicode U+1BC2 BATAK LETTER HA), which is palaeographically > related to the three akṣaras shown above and yet maps to a different phoneme. > (In fact, in some Batak dialects other than the culturally dominant Toba > dialect, which has been followed by Unicode, the same word spelt with the > same akṣara is pronounced as the Sanskrit word pustaka.) > > 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cham_(Unicode_block) > > In the modern Cham script of Vietnam and Cambodia, ꨗ (palaeographically > related to न, ந etc.) represents a consonant /n/ with a particular high vowel > (maybe something like [ɯ]) and is defined as CHAM LETTER NUE in Unicode, > while the ligature ꨘ that palaeographically matches with न्द is pronounced as > /na/ and hence called CHAM LETTER NA in Unicode, any notion of a voiced stop > /d/ being absent from the minds of native speakers when they think about this > akṣara. > > I will be grateful for pointers to help think about such phenomena in a > comparative way. > > Arlo Griffiths
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