Re: functional classification of writing systems

http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/

I will also be creating a link on my school website to Richard
Ishida's Tamil picker as well as to a Tamil email that uses
transliteration. This way I can get more feedback from Tamil
families at my school here in Vancouver.

On reading 'clusters of letters' yes, but keyboarding is not
reading. Before children can read they often keyboard by copying a
written model typing in the letters in sequence.

Suzanne McCarthy

--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "suzmccarth" <suzmccarth@...> wrote:
>
> Multilingual Systems in Madras, India has developped a system
> for syllable-level representation. Unfortunately it is not
unicode.
> They have been recognized in India for their work with the
> disadvantaged.
>
> www.acharya.iitm.ac.in
>
> > Additionally, calling Korean Hangul a syllabary is at odds with
> the
> > perception of most Koreans, who see Hangul as an alphabet
> whose letters
> > just happen to be grouped into syllable blocks.
>
> I agree, they have less need for syllable - level representation
> than Tamil.
> >
> > > While the analytic nature of the syllabaries may be useful for
> > > technical encoding, these systems are still learned by some
> native
> > > speakers as syllabaries. Some members of these language
> communities
> > > will have reduced access to digital literacy if the syllabic
> nature
> > > of their system is not reflected at some level in the input
> method.
> >
> > Even if Koreans read Hangul syllable blocks one block at a
> time, that
> > does not make the writing system a syllabary. Peter Daniels
> and others
> > have pointed out that fluent readers of English, and other
> languages
> > written with alphabets, read clusters of letters at a time.
>
> Yes, this is known. Shall I take the Tamil syllabary off my
> bulletin board and initiate a course in phonemic awareness and
> improved short-term memory retention. The child understands
> the alphabet, he understands the syllabary but going from
> inputting a visual and sound sequenced string in English to a
> non-visual sequenced string in Tamil without the benefit of
> syllable-level representation is very difficult for the beginner
> reader and writer.
>
> > Character encodings and input methods do not have to be
> designed
> > together. Keyboards can be built to bridge any gaps between
> the
> > character encoding, the way native speakers view their script,
> and the
> > practical limits on number of keys.
>
> I have decided that the transliteration systems built into tamil
> email are wroth a try.
> >
> > -Doug Ewell
> > Fullerton, California
> > http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/