Talk:Devanagari
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Article does not say if this script is writen left-to-right or right-to-left. I am assuming this is because of cultural bias on the part of the writer and it is left-to-right, only implied. But it would be nice if someone knowledgeable edited the entry and deleted this comment (or left a changelog in its stead).
Added alternative spellings for keyword searches.
- I removed "Devnagiri" because I've never seen it being used and it's wrong anyway. -- Soam Vasani
I moved the entry to the more common spelling which is more in accord with lossless transcription (disregarding vowel length) -- HJH
It would be nice to have some elaboration on the [ITRANS notation]? transliteration scheme. Some information is at [1] (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/advaitin/message/616) -- HJH
- The official site is [2] (http://www.aczone.com/itrans/) and many examples can be found at [3] (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/). -- Soam Vasani
Added Unicode representations of the letters, formatted everything into tables hopefully preserving the meaningful columns/rows for the consonants. I don't speak or read Hindi; for letters where I wasn't 100% certain, they are without Unicode representations. A native speaker should fix that. -- Nate Silva
What's the difference between halant and virama? -phma
- According to Unicode, they are the same. - Nate Silva
Why was this renamed to Devanagari script from the simple title Devanagari? --Brion 01:25 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
- It seemed like a good idea for consistency's sake. In most cases a script and a language share a name, e.g. Gujarati language and Gujarati script. Of course in this case there is no ambiguity, so move it back if you like - I don't have my heart set on it or anything. User:Mkweise 01:50 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
- Alright then, what is the preferred way of dealing with existing links pointing to e.g. Devangari_alphabet? #Redirect or find and change all the links? The article Alphabet blindly links to Xyz alphabet, which in many cases is not strictly correct. Sanskrit terms generally seem to require lots of #redirects, as there are so many possible ways to transliterate (e.g. Devanagari vs. Devangari.) Mkweise 04:08 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
- I've fixed the 'Devangari alphabet' redirect to work. The only thing that presently uses it (other than the mention here and a mention in Wikipedia:Editing bug reports) is Alphabet, which as you say could use some general cleaning up. However, until that's done that link does get here, so there's no rush. (Some people like to get rid of all uses of redirects in links from other pages in the wiki; I don't think it's a very pressing issue, as long as one ensures they all work properly.) --Brion 05:01 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
I moved the external link for fonts to the "External Links" section, where such things belong, but User:Mkweise moved it back. I don't think this is correct, as the "External Links" section is there for a reason. I would like to move the link to its rightful place.- Kricxjo 09:30 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- You had separated the link from the instructions requiring it; that's why I'd moved it back. But if it really bothers you *that* much there, I'll just move the instructions to a new article at How to get Wikipedia pages containing Devanagari characters to display correctly in your browser. Mkweise 19:54 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (ed. Florian Coulmas, 1996) says about Devanagari (p. 125) that it has 48 letters, 13 vowels and 35 consonants. Where does the difference to the WP article come from? --Hirzel 13:01 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)
>> 'u' as in put / 'oo' as in soot << These vowels are identical in English.
Would "'oo' as in root" not be a better illustration of the second vowel? -- EiA
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"devanagaarii" was written as "devanaagari" in the devanagari script title, I have corrected it. I have added also an external link to the unicode chart.
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Reverting unexplained, AFAICS unnecessary move to Devanagari_alphabet
Devanagari is technically not an alphabet - so if you see a need to disambiguate Devanagari, the proper place to move this article would be Devanagari_script. If you do see such a need, please discuss it here before moving things about. Mkweise 00:59, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
It is too an alphabet:
- http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=devanagari&x=15&y=15
- List of alphabets
- List of writing systems
- Alphabet
The reason I felt it necessary to move it there was because that is where I expected it to be:
- Latin alphabet
- Greek alphabet
- Cyrillic alphabet
- Arabic alphabet
- Hebrew alphabet
- Kannada alphabet
- Malayalam alphabet
- Tamil alphabet
- ...
- Devanagari alphabet
etc. And it's not really a question of disambiguation, it's a question of clarity. It's clear in an instant that this is or isn't the article in question if you use the full name "Devanagari alphabet" Nohat 02:07, 2004 Mar 10 (UTC)
- Scroll up a bit, and you'll see how I was educated by Brion when I made a very similar arguement 14 months ago.
- Devanagari consonants have an inherent vowel, so it's technically an abugida rather than an alphabet (phonemic script). Some sources, such as omniglot (http://omniglot.com/writing/syllabic.htm), use the term alphasyllabary instead of abugida. Mkweise 03:54, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
fatter tables
I am trying to make a table which organised the devanagari phonetically, while still retaining the dictionary order. however, this is my first time making a table, and i don't think it looks so good. what do you think?
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I'm having trouble getting the Velar/Palatal/Retroflex/Dental/Labial column to align with the other columns properly. grr...
fatter table, attempt two
so i read a bit about tables, and learned about COLSPAN. how about this table?
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unaspirated |
aspirated |
nasal |
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velar |
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palatal |
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retroflex |
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dental |
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bilabial |
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Pictures needed
I wonder if it might be more useful to include pictures of the glyphs, rather than depending on the user having the proper Unicode fonts installed? Presumably the people most in need of the information would be the ones least likely to have the right fonts installed. -Mark
- I reckon overall you're probably correct, even accounting for text-only browsers. I can't imagine anyone's particularly keen on the actual work of re-doing it in PNG/GIF, thought. Meanwhile I'll look into whether the Devangari font I'm using is IP-encumbered; providing a link to download a copylefted font would be the neatest solution of all, don't you think? Mkweise 02:09 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
- It should be simple enough to take screen snapshots and upload them to replace the current tables. --Brion
- I suggest we keep the tables as they are, but add a PNG image showing a sample of text at the top of the article, just to give an idea -- maybe part of a screenshot of http://hi.wikipedia.org/ -- Tarquin 12:10, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
conjuncts
does anyone think it's a good idea to make a comprehensive list of conjuncts in Devanagari? It would be pretty long, and a couple of them probably have more than one form. But it still might be useful, right? -Lethe | Talk
- Yes! It should be on its own page linked to here. If it's really long it could have a couple of pages if there's a neat way to divide them.
- Due to the fact that many older OSes, fonts, and rendering systems (Uniscribe, Pango, Worldscript) have shoddy support for Devanagari, it would be very nice to provide a table with both Unicode and images - at least for the conjuncts themselves. — Hippietrail 23:56, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
speaking of conjuncts...
have you noticed that in the text in the screenshot, conjuncts don't work? And the short i is on the wrong side of its consonant? Whoseever computer it was that took that screenshot ain't displaying devanagari correctly. Maybe I make one myself and upload? -Lethe | Talk 23:36, Aug 24, 2004
- we could maybe get an image af a slightly more significant sample? a mantra? An image of a handwritten sample, even, maybe? dab 22:17, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Which conjuncts? The short i does seem to be displaying on the correct side of the consonant (the left side), so I'm wondering what it is that I'm missing. Ambarish | Talk 16:01, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks, although I feel a little stupid! I assumed that since User:Dbachmann responded on 1 Nov, your post must have been recent. Ambarish | Talk 04:29, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Devanagari/Tamil text support?
I've been looking around for a way to be able to view Devanagari and Tamil texts under UNICODE, but apparently Windows 98 doesn't support them. I found a modified version on Internet Explorer which supposedly works, but IE is a horrible browser, and I'd prefer a method of viewing them which would work across browsers (for what it's worth, I'm in Opera). Does anyone have any ideas for what I might do? Thanks. - Vague | Rant 06:39, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
Ligatures
Hi, I'm the Vijayl who created all those ligatures. Hindi/Devanagari is not my native language. The original article said: च् + छ = च्छ and suggested adding all ligatures.
I added all possible combinations.
I'm sure that the set of ligatures will be a subset of what is currently there. I hope I've helped more than done harm. விஜய் லக்ஷ்மிநாராயணன் 15:01, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
- I do not think this list is very helpful -- the "ligatures" section should explain the concept, and draw attention to particular cases, such as the r- and -r ligatures, the j~n and ktv cases, etc. Maybe we can have a list article giving all ligatures, but they should be in a table or something. dab (ᛏ) 17:25, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Ligatures vs. Conjuncts
This is my first edit/discussion here on wikipedia so if I'm messing up, please let me know. Anyways...here goes...I am wondering why the term ligature is being used? I believe that ligatures combine two letters without changing their meaning. Whereas the conjunct is to symbolize that the vowel has been suppressed. I don't think they are the same thing. So unless somebody has a good reason I will be changing all the ligatures to conjunct.
I also agree with dab above, that just having a very lengthy list of conjuncts isn't probably that useful. I will get something together that perhaps illustrates it better. Okay I want to sign this, but when I click the button that I would guess puts in the signature it does nothing. So this is Rothrock at May 1, 2005, 1:07 EST
- As explained in Wikipedia's article on ligatures, ligatures have nothing to do with pronounciation or meaning. They only deal with typography. So the use of this word in this context is accurate. BernardM 13:11, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
- Bernard – that is my point. Compare the entry about the Danish Æ – it is not a ligature because it is its own letter. It isn't just a combination of A and E. Or the part about the double vee " Hence VV developed into W, but the modern Latin letter W is not a true ligature, as it represents a different sound from VV/UU." The same is true of conjuncts. They are pronounced different and represent different sounds. So they require a different word to describe what they are. Additiionally in all my experience with different Hindi textbooks, learning guides, instructors, etc. I've never encountered anybody who called them "ligatures" – they have always been called "conjuncts." -rothrock
- rothrock, you can sign by typing ~~~~ -- makes all of this much easier to read. Yes, this is a peculiarity of Devanagari being an abugida. However, as far as I know, "ligature" and "conjunct" are used synonymously, for the combined form of two or more aksharas, with no intervening vowel. The composition of aksharas with intervening vowels is straightforward, you just place them next to one another, and we don't need to discuss this in detail. Also, we should present the few unusual ligatures as images, since most browsers won't render them properly. Also, when discussing various variants of ligatures, we need images, since we don't know which variant will appear on the reader's screen if we just use unicode encoding. For these reasons, I am removing the lengthy list of ligatures for now. dab (ᛏ) 15:09, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
article content
this article is too computer-oriented as it is. It should primarily be about the (handwritten) script and its 800 year history. Unicode and keyboard issues should be secondary. Or create specialized Devanagari keyboard layout, Devanagari digital encoding, Devanagari computer fonts or similar. dab (ᛏ) 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- It appears to me that the article has relatively little content on computer issues: just a couple of figures and a few links, neither of which encroaches on unusually disproportionate representation of a related subtopic in an article--nor is there enough material here for a separate article. Or are we referring to different edits of the article? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 14:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
- I was referring to the writeup on Windows XP that was reverted earlier, and the list of ligatures (left to the reader's browser to render) posted even earlier. It's quite ok in its present shape, but if people want to add significant portions of IT stuff, I suggest specialized articles. dab (ᛏ) 15:15, 15 May 2005 (UTC)