On Mon, 05 Sep 2005 19:57:40 +0000, Richard Wordingham
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:

>--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@w...> wrote:
>> The sign is called "Tamil visarga" in the Unicode standard,
>> which I suppose means that its origin is the visarga sign
>> /h./, used in Sanskrit for a voiceless /h/.
>
>The Unicode Technical Committee have been persuaded to recant on that
>description. (They can't change the name.)

The practice of encoding aytham at the position of visarg
goes back to ISCII. Although aytham (unlike visarg) is
considered a spacing letter in ISCII.

>Interestingly, there is a
>two-dotted Tamil symbol that is used for Sanskrit and Saurashtra in
>the Tamil script. It's not in Unicode. For Sanskrit it seems to be
>the real visarga - for Saurashtra it seems to perform the same role as
>Tamil aytham. Just to confuse matters, the Saurashtra *script* has
>yet another symbol for the aytham role!

What does it look like?

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...