--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
wrote:

> suzmccarth wrote:

> > It was only in the 18th century that the long e, long o and
> > diphthongs came to be represented. Was this a result of the
> > bilingual German - Tamil dictionaries/grammars and Bible

translation

> > work?
>
> There are mss. considerably older than that. What's in them?

3rd to 18th century only 8 vowels - we know that - I think I read
somewhere that it was the missionaries that added the extra 4
vowels - the date is right - but I don't remember. Fabricius and
Rhenius were German Bible translators for Tamil in the 1700's.
Catholics helped with typesetting in the 16th century but the 12
vowel system did not exist then.

>
> > It has been suggested that James Evans of the Cree syllabary had
> > seen the Tamil script before he worked among the Ojibway/Cree. I
> > don't know of any direct evidence. However, the Methodists were
> > involved in work in Tamil and had English translations of the

German

> > Tamil grammars by the time Evans was in his early 20's.
> >
> > I don't see how we could ever know for sure about this since I

have

> > never heard that he mentioned Tamil in his letters - but it seems
> > possible.
>
> And it "seems possible" that American Indians are the Lost Tribes

of

> Israel, or St. Brendan's Welshmen. It just isn't so.

Who says that James Evans did not see a Tamil grammar - they were in
print in England at that time and a Methodist missionary, Percival,
was translating the Bible into Tamil. Evans was a Methodist. I am
not saying that Evans was familiar with Tamil - I am saying that it
is possible that he had seen the Tamil writing system.

Just because he was young - he left for Canada with his family at
age 22 or 23 doesn't mean that he hadn't seen Tamil. When did the
average qalam member become interested in writing systems - age 12 -
14?

I am not trying to make a new theory out of this but I am tryng to
fill in the historical details to understand the evolution of the
Tamil script.

Suzanne

> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...