--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Patrick Chew <patchew@...> wrote:

> It is only until the King Rama VI script that {mai trii}

and {mai

> cattawaa} came into standardized use. Danvivatana notes that {mai

trii} and

> {mai cattawaa} were already in use during the Thonburi kingdom in

the 18th

> century.

Thank you for the information.

> There is no comment as to the historical origin/rationale

for the

> shapes of the tone marks. I would, however, submit that the shape

of the

> {mai thoo} may be cognate to that of the tone mark in Lanna, where

one set

> of tone marks contrasts </> (tone 1) versus <//> (tone 2).

That's my feeling too. I wondered if there might have been any
foreign influence, as with Russian handwriting, where many letters
have the shapes of unrelated Latin letters.

Actually, I'd have represented the fuller tone mark 2 as <|/>
(ignore any breaks in the bar). <//> could be taken to be tone mark
1 plus -a- (may I call it mai han-akat?). In some styles, tone mark
2 and this vowel sign are almost identical - see for example the
title (also given in the Thai script) at
http://se-ed.net/tua-mueng/tm07.html . There is only the slightest
hint of the vertical section.

> (For those who don't know... Thai tonal patterns are

dependent

> upon historical consonantal values, i.e. voiced, unvoiced

unaspirated

> (glottalized and voiced continuants, as well), unvoiced aspirated

(and

> unvoiced continuants), and the tone mark associated with it. Of

course

> current users are unaware of the historical values of the glyphs

they use,

> but have memorized correspondences of this glyph and this tone

make this

> sound...)

Do they notice the association with the order of the alphabet? I
get the feeling that they feel the consonant grid one meets in most
Sanskrit primers has nothing to do with Thai.

Richard.