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Tamil Studies


Reform of the Tamil Script
Department of Statistics
Madras Christian College
Gift Siromoney

There is tremendous enthusiasm among some scholars for proposing a number of new schemes for changing the Tamil script according to their individual tastes. Many of them are neither aware of the history of the evolution of the Tamil script nor about the relative frequencies of the individual signs in the modern Tamil prose. These enthusiasts must first of all arm themselves with the information about the distribution of the Tamil signs1, 2 and about the historical changes that have taken place with reference to the shapes of different letters.3

Changes are bound to take place whenever there is a change in the technology of communication. With the advent of the printing press and the typewriter certain changes became necessary. We were adapting typewriters and teleprinters that were manufactured for the use of English language with the Roman script. Further work is going on among computer scientists to find the best possible way of adapting the Tamil script to be used with the computer. Work is also going on as to whether Tamil characters can be recognized by the computer.4

Compared to many other Indian languages Tamil is the most efficient language for communication.5 However, it is a great pity that telegrams in Tamil are not normally accepted or sent by the posts and telegraphs department and even a popular government like the Tamil Nadu government is not able to extend this facility to the common man. Telegrams are received in English and a literate person in Tamil Nadu who knows only Tamil is reduced to the state of an illiterate.

A number of proposals have been made to reduce the already existing signs in Tamil to help the foreign scholars and little children and some others. The number of signs in Tamil is much smaller than those in other Indian languages. Tamil also has the Pulli system by which letters are written one next to the other and double letters which occur one below the other do not exist in Tamil.

Some others have proposed that new signs must be introduced to allow for the unambiguous representation of sounds like Z, B, G and F which occur in foreign words. During the earlier periods like the period of Rajaraja Chola, Sanskrit words in Tamil inscriptions were written in the Grantha script which was used then in Tamilnad to write Sanskrit. The Grantha script was not used in North India. The problem of foreign words is not peculiar to Tamil alone. Even in English the Roman script is not adequate to represent foreign words. The Tamil name for plantain is a good example.

The Roman script used for writing English is certainly not a phonetic script. For instance the signs for A, E, I, and O represent more than one sound each depending upon the context. The following words illustrate this fact: cat, gate; met, mete; kit, kite; pot, post, wrote. We can pick out the consonantal signs C, S and T. They represent more than one sound and we give a few illustrations: cake, price; sit, session; top, caution; Linguists point out many more examples and discuss many other sounds used in spoken English which are used by the native speakers in Britain and America but not by speakers of Indian English.

The reformers of the Tamil script must also take into account the fact that the old books will continue to exist for many more years to come. Any literate person must be able to read the old books and should know all the old signs. The Viduthalai style of reform that has been introduced also has shortcomings and those should not be easily dismissed. For purposes of typing and teleprinting it is quite reasonable but to compel children to learn Tamil that way is a different matter.

If reducing the number of symbols is the only factor in the construction of a typewriter keyboard one can easily build up letters from basic signs such as straight vertical lines, horizontal lines and curved lines of limited shapes. Then a number of typewriter strokes will be necessary to type a single character. Instead of having single strokes for the letters like naa and nai we have to type two keys to get a single letter. It takes more time and takes up more space. The amount of paper that can be saved by retaining the old system is not insignificant.

The ancient Vatteluthu script of Tamilnad was given up in Tamilnad and it lived for a few centuries more in Kerala and disappeared. One of the causes for its disappearance was that in handwritten Vatteluthu many signs looked alike and there was a lot of confusion between different signs. In the Viduthalai Tamil script there are a number of combinations of letters which are difficult to distinguish from one another when written by hand. The forms for naa and nai reached the stage of separate signs after many centuries of evolution so that there was less confusion between different letters. Distinguish- ability between letters and combinations of letters is a very important criterion in any script. This criterion has been sadly neglected in the Viduthalai script which is harmless when found in the newspaper but is harmful when it is compulsorily taught to children in school.

Over enthusiasm of many individuals to introduce their own brand of Tamil script on the Tamil people should be viewed with caution. Let the newspapers experiment with different reforms but let the school children be left alone. I hope I have demonstrated that the subject is closely connected with the sentiment of the people and the common man does not want any government to meddle with his script.6 However, the governments are powerful and it is difficult to check the damage.

REFERENCE

1. Gift Siromoney, "Entropy of Tamil Prose", Information and Control, Vol. 4, pp. 297-300, (1963).
2. Gift Siromoney, "Efficient methods of telegraphy, typewriting and teleprinting in Tamil", Tamil Culture, Vol. 10, pp. 107-120, (1963).
3. Gift Siromoney, S. Govindaraju and M. Chandrasekaran, Kalvettu Ezhuthukkalil Tirukkural, Madras Christian College, Madras, 1980.
4. Gift Siromoney, R. Chandrasekaran and M. Chandrasekaran, "Computer recognition of printed Tamil characters", Pattern Recognition, Vol. 10, pp 243-247, (1978).
5 B. S. Ramakrishna, K. K. Nair, V. N. Chiplunkar, B. S. Atal, V. Ramachandran and R. Subramanian, "Some aspects of the relative efficiencies of Indian Languages", Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 1962.
6. S. Bala and Gift Siromoney, "Public opinion survey on Prohibition, Tamil script reform and declaration of emergency", Madras Christian College Magazine, Vol. 48, pp. 16-17, (1979).

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