--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, Marco Cimarosti <marco.cimarosti@...>
wrote:

> 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,

Here is my cue ... and here is my quote. Phrases from this
paragraph appear on many different websites on Devanagari, Gujerati
and Kannada, to mention a few, as well as in the Unicode book.


"Consonant letters may also be rendered as half-forms which are
presentation forms used to depict the the initial consonant in
consonant clusters. These half forms do not have an inherent vowel.
Their rendered forms in devanagari often resemble the full consonant
but are missing the vertical stem, which marks a syllabic core. The
stem glyph is graphically and historically related to the sign
denoting the inherent /a/ vowel."

http://www.unicode.org/uni2book/ch09.pdf page 4

Tamil-Brahmi I, contemporary with the first appearance of the Brahmi
script, had a represented short a, so I was open to considering
whether that there might have been an historic sign for
the "inherent" short a in Devanagari.

Cheers,

Suzanne

> 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