--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <

> I believe it does. From what I can make out from a search for a
> clear statement on Tamil phonology on the net

, the extra letters are

> a subset of the 'Grantha' characters, a more extensive set than

the

> five listed in your book. (It's annoying when terms have

different,

> overlapping meanings!) These extra ones are not in Unicode, as is
> bemoaned in the ill-tempered discussion of voiced initials

containing

> http://www.infitt.org/tscii/archives/msg00373.html .
>
> The explanation for their apparent lack is that they are not

needed

> for Classical Tamil and that they are a mark of foreign words

(like

> sk- in English), so Literary Tamil strives to avoid such words.

So back to my original question - does Spoken Tamil have initial
consonant clusters such as "pri" (Prince) and "bru" (Brunswick)or
not? Are these represented as "piri" and "pira" in Tamil because of
their actual pronunciation in ST, because of the constraints of
Unicode, because of the perception that Tamil writers have of Tamil
pronunciation of these sounds or because of LT tradition? Why not
put a a pulli over the initial consonant? (I do realize that this
wouldn't differentiate the initial voiced/voiceless contrast.)

Suzanne