इतिहासः

  • ‘तद् यथा शङ्कुना सर्वाणि पर्णानि सन्तृण्णान्य्+++(=संविद्धानि)+++ एवम् ओङ्कारेण सर्वा वाक् सन्तृण्णा। ओङ्कार एवेदं सर्वम्।’ (छा.उ. २। २३। ३) पर्ण-ग्रन्थस्योल्लेखो ऽयम् इति केचित्।

Early inadequacy

  • “All indications are that the spoken language for which the early scripts (brahmi & kharosthi) were invented did not follow a fully scientific (or standardized) mapping of sounds to script, so the early scripts did not allow for phonetically accurate representation of the spoken language.”
  • “In fact the kharosthi script in its early centuries did not even show vowel length distinctions but this is no evidence to show that the underlying spoken Indo-Aryan language in the 4th century BCE had shed its all its long vowels. It is only an evidence that the script did not allow such vowel length distinctions to be orthographically represented (until that script evolved enough over the centuries to allow fully phonetic representation of the spoken language – and voila, you have phonetically accurate sanskrit appearing after centuries of apparent written “prakrit” – when really all that had happened is only that the script had evolved, not so much the spoken language).” रामकृष्णः
  • Even in later scripts, there is problem writing तल्ँ लाति (writ as तँल्लाति), अ॒मुष्मि॑ल्ँ लो॒के (writ as अ॒मुष्मि॑ल्लोँ॒के) or समा॒नय्ँ योनि॒म् (writ as समा॒नँय्योनि॒म्).

Later script degeneracy

In many medieval and modern scripts, vargIya-panchama-s stopped being used - substituted by anusvAra-s. In Hindi, anusvAra also came to be used in place of anunAsika - as in हैँ. Also in Hindi, is written as हैं though pronounced as हॆँ (similar with मैं).

Further, there is the schwa-deletion phenomenon.

There is also the lazy visarga syndrome - the regular visarga (or even colon) being substituted for jihvAmUlIya and upadhmAnIya.

Late holdovers

shabdakalpadruma saw some strange use -

  • अकुर्व्वन् अकुर्वं
  • अकार्य्यन् अकार्य्यं

एतादृशम् अनुस्वारप्रयोगं वाक्यान्ते ऽपि प्रायेण तालपत्रेष्व् एव पुराऽपश्यम्!

Alveolars in maLayALam

Meanings change in Malayalam as the sound changes from retroflex to alveolar and to dental:
Kuṭṭi (retroflex ṭ) = child, Kuṯṯi (alveolar ṯ) = a stake, a bolt etc., Kutti (dental t) = past tense of kuttŭ meaning stabbed, pricked, etc, Paṇi (retroflex ṇ) = work, Paṉi (alveolar ṉ) = fever, dew.

How do you write alveolar ṯ and alveolar ṉ in maLayaLam script? The last and first of this - https://i.imgur.com/bcYUI4j.png . “Alveolar ṉ existed as a character distinct from dental n till about the second half of the 1800s, but was discarded under the logic that a Malayali can easily tell when to pronounce n as dental or as alveolar. Not a wise move, like the discarding of the samvrta ukaara in the 1970 - 1980 period.” Unvoiced alveolar ṯ occurs only in the geminate (double) form and is represented as double hard ṟṟ (റ്റ).

Saṃvṛta u in maLayALam

The saṃvṛta ukāram is a short vowel, that can be described in English as a schwa at the end of words. Dravidian languages do not like to end words in consonants, i.e., as halanta, unless the final consonants are any of the nasal consonants or r, l, or ḷ. The vowel ‘u’ is a very common word final vowel. When foreign words are adopted into the language, a final u is added to the words if there is a word final consonant. So, Sanskrit vāk becomes vākku. In Malayalam and Tamil, this ancient word final hrasva ukāra evolved into the saṃvṛta ukāram. Vākku became vākkŭ. Bonafide Dravidian words also underwent this evolution. Examples nāḍŭ (country), kāḍŭ forest).

Before the 1980’s this saṃvṛta ukāram was shown in writing by placing the halant symbol (“chandrakkala” in Malayalam) over the consonant+u character. It looks like this:

  • വാക്ക് वाक्क् Vākk - halanta
  • വാക്കു वाक्कु Vākku – hrasva ukāra
  • വാക്കു് वाक्कॅ Vākkŭ - saṃvṛta ukāra

As a result of the script reform of the 1970=80, the saṃvṛta ukāram was dropped. It was decided to write വാക്കു് (Vākkŭ) as വാക്ക് (Vākk) under the assumption that Malayali would anyway read it as വാക്കു് (Vākkŭ).

Telugu and Kannada “reform” attempts

“It was on the lines of ‘simplification’ removing the vestigial elements in the script which are no longer required for a new changed modern ‘colloquial’ language that acquired the position of the standard language. Removal of script symbols ఋ (r̥) both independent and mātrā aspects , ఱ ( originally retroflex r, called śakaṭa rēpha) , longer ఋ (r̥), dantya ch and j etc., were all proposed on the basis of the argument that they were no longer pronounced the way they were supposed to be.”

Failed attempt to retard Grantha

  • “See Tamil Tribune archive and its 5 references at the bottom. I think first their concern was with the proposal to add Grantha letters to the Tamil block. Fine, so it was created as a separate block, as “not Tamil”. Then there was also a serious protest when it was proposed to add letters like short-e to the Grantha block! The fear seems to have been that if Grantha becomes a strict superset of Tamil, then people may actually use it instead. So even though Grantha is not “their script”, they still want to keep it crippled so that one cannot write Tamil using the script.”