suzmccarth wrote:

>
> Marco,
>
> Thanks for that explanation.
>
> Now that I am looking at Hindi and Punjabi I am surprised at the
> number of different things the virama codepoint seems to do with a
> glyph visually. Its function is to remove the vowel but in Hindi the
> first consonant becomes a half form and in Punjabi the r,h and v are
> subjoined as the second consonant in the conjunct. So the virama
> does both those things besides sometimes appearing as itself?

That's just a software shortcut -- there's no actual virama when you
write a conjunct. But using the conjoined forms is the equivalent of a
virama; remember, Tamil is the odd-script-out in South Asia, the only
one that's abandoned conjunct forms completely. (Tibetan and Javanese
both still use a few of them, and Burmese uses them only in
Sanskrit-origin words.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...