Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> [...]
> suzmccarth wrote:
> [...]
> > I read recently that for devnagri the half-form is the dead
> > consonant because the full form is considered to be a
> > representation of the consonant on the left *plus* a residual or
> > historic representation of the short a on the right, for some
> > letters. That is, the right hand side of some consonants is
> > actually the short a. This rationalizes the use of the half form as
> > the bare consonant.
>
> I must have been lucky enough to miss this.
>
> Where are you _getting_ these fantasies??????
>
> Have you _ever_ looked at Brahmi letters????????
>
> Have you _ever_ looked at Devanagari????????

I think that the fault for spreading bullshit is with the people who *write*
about it, rather that with those bona fide *readers* who step in these
writings. I'd suggest that your rows of question marks should be reserved to
the people who wrote what Suzanne read, rather than to her.

Anyway, I am not 100% that this is *totally* a myth.

Comparing modern Devanagari with the old Brahmi script (as seen, e.g., in
Ashoka's stones), I noticed that the 20 Devanagari letters which have a
so-called "danda" (the vertical stroke on the right-hand side of a letter)
fall in these three categories:

A) In 7 letters (a, kha, ga, ca, ta, na, la), Devanagari's "danda"
corresponds to a more or less vertical stroke in Brahmi in the right-hand of
the corresponding Brahmi letter.

B) In 6 letters (gha, ja, na, tha, pa, ma), Devanagari's "danda" does NOT
correspond to a stroke in Brahmi. The form of the modern letter looks like
the original shape PLUS a vertical stroke on the right hand.

C) In 7 letters (jha, dha, ba, bha, ya, wa, sa), the shape of Devanagari
changed too much from the Brahmi model allow this naive compare.

This brought me to imagine the following scenario: the "danda" of letters in
category (A) is apparently "etymological" (pass me the term), i.e. it arose
from the natural calligraphic evolution of Brahmi letters. In forming
conjuncts beginning with a letter in category (A), the "danda" in this
letters normally disappeared, leading to the so-called "half consonants".

Of course, the fact that this right-hand stroke looks exactly like the "aa"
vowel mark is absolutely coincidental but, at a certain age, this
coincidence could have been re-interpreted as a systematic feature of the
script.

The fact that removing "danda" from the shape of letters apparently
corresponded with removing the inherent vowel /a/ from the pronunciation
(joined with the fact that "danda" was so similar to the sign for the
phonetically similar vowel /a:/) could have resulted in the popular idea
that the "danda" is in fact the representation of the inherent vowel.

And this idea might have led to adding an "analogical danda" (pass me the
term) also to letters which originally did not have one, namely those in
category (B), and perhaps some of those in category (C).

*If* this scenario is true, it would result that the "myth" mentioned by
Suzanne was a myth only in origin. It would be, let's say, a "diachronic
myth" which drove the evolution of the script in a direction where it
partially become a "synchronic reality".

This would not be the only instance I know of wrong interpretations of some
graphical elements which somehow were accepted in the course of time. E.g.,
the final "x" in French "chevaux", which was originally an "s" with a final
flourish, wrongly reinterpreted as an "x"; anyway, in modern French spelling
it is an "x".

--
Marco