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Not directly related to the crash, but I have a question about Telugu and similar scripts: How do their speakers think about the structure of the script? Do the

by kens 9y ago

Not directly related to the crash, but I have a question about Telugu and similar scripts: How do their speakers think about the structure of the script? Do they consider each vowel and consonant a separate "thing" that just happens to get written as a complex grapheme, or is the grapheme the unit you think about and it just happens to be made up of smaller parts? I.e https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script#Consonant_Conjuncts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telugu_script#Consonant_Conjun... Also, do you learn the large number of graphemes separately? Or are they the "obvious" way to write the consonant and vowel? Or is there a set of rules you learn?

jsjohnst 9y ago
I’m curious too. Koreans, for example, think in an alphabet similar to ours (actually fewer letters), but it forms into a grapheme. I don’t think that is the case here, but don’t know for sure.
- Manishearth 9y ago
  Not Korean, but the Korean case is different, a bit. Korean syllable blocks are viewed as syllable blocks -- a new concept, whereas Indic consonant clusters are simultaneously viewed as letters of their own and fundamentally composed of more letters.
Manishearth 9y ago
I can answer your question for Devanagari: - You normally think of clusters as single "letters". The word for them in Marathi is "joined letter". This notion of "letter" may not be totally in line with what English speakers would expect. - You still think of clusters as having component parts that make it up. However, क्ष/ज्ञ and sometimes त्र are thought of as their own "fundamental" consonants even though they're clusters. I think folks think of things like क्र as being both -- a letter of its own, that is built up from component letters. - Most of the clusters in Devanagari are predictable. So for any given pair you usually know how to make a "half form" for the first one and join it on, or you know how to stack them. Usually whilst reading it's obvious because you see the components; and whilst writing it's usually fine to try what makes sense. - For unpredictable clusters, you just eventually get used to them. No different from learning that some words are spelled weirdly in English, really. Though I very much dislike ह्म , ह्य, and द्य since they're kinda confusing. I think Bengali has a lot more unpredictable conjuncts; I stumbled across this a lot when I tried to learn the script a year ago. I suspect folks just get used to those.
- bhasi 9y ago
  I'm no linguist, but Malayalam has a more predictable stacking rule than Devanagari, more so in the modern alphabet/sandhi scheme than the old. For instance, one can barely tell apart ह्म and ह्य, but their Malayalam equivalents are pretty distinct: ഹ്മ (old scheme) and ഹ്‌മ (modern scheme) for the first, and ഹ്യ for the second.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  As someone who can read both Devanagari and English/Latin script, I'm just curious, when you read Devanagari does the text size need to be larger for good comprehension? There seems more subtlety with the word structure, like tiny little flicks which seem to have significant meaning. While Latin-like script has characters like the comma/full-stop, and modifiers like the dot on the i, these are far rarer than Devanagari's modifiers from what I have seen. Another related question is, because Devanagari's information density seems higher, does that mean shorter text for the equivalent information? PS - Sorry if anything I said was offensive, that wasn't my intent. I am just an ignorant idiot wanting to learn someone's experience with a different language script, nothing more.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    How could anyone possibly consider this offensive?
  - Manishearth 9y ago
    Not really, I can read at normal text sizes. But it is somewhat annoying (much like how tiny English can be readable but annoying to read) and used to have my default font size bumped up by one in my browser. I currently have it bumped up quite a bit for Chinese because I really have trouble with the "tiny little flicks" problem in Chinese. The consonants of Devanagari are easy to tell apart; they are pretty different. In most cases the "similar" ones are basically with an extra line (प/ष, ब/व) or with a little loop (य/थ, ट/ढ) . (The line/loop has no semantic meaning, these letters are just random letters that look similar) . The only super annoying one is घ vs ध -- the thing up top is a loop in the second one, but depending on the font/handwriting can be rather unclear. The vowels are also easy to tell apart. There are 12 main ones, and they're made up from some really basic components which are quite distinguishable. So you can easily distinguish consonant+vowel combos. Consonant clusters can get tricky, like I said there are a bunch of ambiguous ones. Fortunately you end up realizing which is which and then it's nbd. But like, द्म and ह्म can be infuriatingly similar and you just get it from context. Bear in mind, at one stage you start sight-reading words, so the actual details of the word matter less. > Another related question is, because Devanagari's information density seems higher, does that mean shorter text for the equivalent information? Visually? Yeah. Words can be really small. But it ends up roughly being the same number of code points (and probably more bytes in UTF-8).
skynetv2 9y ago
the sounds get "joined". the extensions to the vowels are added to consonants to create a compound. for example: letter "Ka" క becomes "Kaa" కా by adding "Ka" and "A" like A in apple. అ becomes the line and circle that gets added to the consonant. Consonants are not mixed with each other, cannot be. this seems like it could help for those interested in more info https://www.omniglot.com/writing/telugu.htm https://www.omniglot.com/writing/telugu.htm
- nagVenkat 9y ago
  I might be wrong or I am not getting your meaning but I do think consonants can be “mixed”.Say విక్రమ .But I think we are considering mixing differently.
suraj 9y ago
I can't speak for Telugu however, [Devanagari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari) is very similar and used throughout northern India. Each vowel and consonant is considered as a separate entity. Each consonant has a pure form and a combined form with every consonant. There are also combinations of two or more consonants that can also be combined with each vowel! For learning, you just learn the sounds separately for each vowel and consonant. So you can read & pronounce anything written in Devanagari script but not understand it if its a different language :)
callalex 9y ago
An interesting debate that may be closer to home for English speakers: is ñ a letter? The Spanish alphabet considers it to be a different letter than n, but é is not a different letter than e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ
- umanwizard 9y ago
  Historically LL, CH, and RR have been considered separate Spanish letters, too. Since 1995, opinions diverge.
raincom 9y ago
To understand Telugu and similar scripts, one has to think in terms of syllables. Only when we look at these scripts from Roman alphabet, do we see the discussion of consonant and vowel graphemes in the script. /peɪ/ is a syllable in English, but can be represented by these grapheme clusters: <pay>, <pei>, <pai>. The similar syllable is represented in Telugu or Devanagari this way: పే (Telugu script) or पे (Hindi/Devangari script); there are phonetic differences in the way this syllable represented: (a) /p/ is aspirated in English, but not in the telugu/devangari syllable; (b) the diphthon /eɪ/ is realized as a monophthong in Telugu/Devanagari scripts. <ja, virama, nya> sequence plays a major role in Sanskrit sandhi. In Sanskrit, in assimilatory contexts, a voiced palatal affricate /dʒ/ + a palatal nasal /ñ/ + some open vowel, leads to this sequence <ja, virama, nya>. Since this assimilation occurs in many contexts, the resultant grapheme is taught as part of alphabet in this special set of clusters: kSa, tra, jna ( క్ష త్ర జ్ఞ) or (क्ष त्र ज्ञ). In fact, there was a poet in Telugu, whose name was ksEtrajna (combo of these three graphemes with ligatures). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrajna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrajna (in general) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrayya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrayya (Telugu poet) The context of jna in Sanskrit: for instance, declension of the masuclar stem: rAjan http://littleredbook.vedicsociety.org.in/noun-tables/rajan---an-masculine http://littleredbook.vedicsociety.org.in/noun-tables/rajan--...
ktta 9y ago
Telugu is my native language. Here's how I learnt it. There's two types of letters. One type is used as an addendum to the other type. The first type are called vowels and the second consonants (I'd say that's mischaracterization but whatever). In this[1] picture, the top half of the alphabets are the type which are the addendum part, and the bottom part are the 'primary' ones. So how it goes is that one of the bottom always comes with one on the top. Most often it tends to be the very first vowel, which is pronounced 'a:', and it is the default way letters are learnt(pronunciation chart[2] for each of the vowels). So each of the consonants (the bottom part) can be used with any one on the top. Let's take the very first consonant. It is pronounced 'ka'(because by default, consonants are accompanied with the first 'vowel' which is 'a:'). Now, lets take a look at the the bottom part of picture [2]. That same consonant is pronounced differently when accompanied with each of the first one. For example: kaa, kee, kuu, etc. The first half the the pronunciation is the same, but the second half, is replaced which whatever vowel's symbol is attached as an addendum. Also notice the the center part of the alphabet hardly changes visually between changes in vowels. Not to throw a lot at once, but there's another part. Each of the consonants can again be used as addendum to any other consonant (which always comes with a vowel). Take a look at this[3]. Notice the little tick at the top you saw in [2] is still there? That picture contains the letters 'ka', which each of the consonants being tacked on. The vowel is always still there. That's because, as I said consonants always come with a vowel attached. The consonant addendum is optional though. Congratulations, you can now pronounce (almost all of) Telugu (and almost any Devanagari script using this same play book). It is because these scripts are deterministic, and there is a single pronunciation unlike English and many other languages. [1]:https://www.telugucorner.com/images/aksharamulu.jpg https://www.telugucorner.com/images/aksharamulu.jpg [2]: https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_vwl.gif https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_vwl.gif [3]: https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_conjuncts.gif https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_conjuncts.gif
- Manishearth 9y ago
  > Congratulations, you can now pronounce (almost all of) Telugu (and almost any Devanagari script using this same play book). It is because these scripts are deterministic, and there is a single pronunciation unlike English and many other languages. weeeellllll, not exactly. For example, spoken Marathi differs considerably from written Marathi, with vowels turning into other vowels, etc. My favorite example is the word लहान which is spelled "lahaan" but is often pronounced pronounced "lhaan" OR "laahaan". Almost all Indic language experience schwa deletion -- you will say the word "kanpur" with no vowel between the n and p even though it is spelled "kanapur". Anusvars have a range of pronunciations that depend on the word being used -- they can nasalize a vowel, or add a nasal consonant like n or m. However, these scripts are definitely way more phonetically consistent than English. These differences are minor.
t_heptapod 9y ago
As a telugu speaker, let me try answering you question.. The squiggly character you see has two characters joined The top and Bottom.. The top By itself can be used separately so It would be called "ja" The bottom if used by itself would be called "na" So basically the grapheme you see is made by joining to consonants Ja and na ..so it basically becomes "Jna" (spelt gna) there are specific rules like english but like any language we have to learn these rules..eg I know that I can add k+ nowledge and that makes something in english.. But what if I add ra+no "rnoledge", yes you can add but that sounds weired, not sure if there is any rule which says you cannot add R+na, same with telugu.

by kens 9y ago

jsjohnst 9y ago

I’m curious too. Koreans, for example, think in an alphabet similar to ours (actually fewer letters), but it forms into a grapheme. I don’t think that is the case here, but don’t know for sure.

Manishearth 9y ago
Not Korean, but the Korean case is different, a bit. Korean syllable blocks are viewed as syllable blocks -- a new concept, whereas Indic consonant clusters are simultaneously viewed as letters of their own and fundamentally composed of more letters.

Manishearth 9y ago

I can answer your question for Devanagari: - You normally think of clusters as single "letters". The word for them in Marathi is "joined letter". This notion of "letter" may not be totally in line with what English speakers would expect. - You still think of clusters as having component parts that make it up. However, क्ष/ज्ञ and sometimes त्र are thought of as their own "fundamental" consonants even though they're clusters. I think folks think of things like क्र as being both -- a letter of its own, that is built up from component letters. - Most of the clusters in Devanagari are predictable. So for any given pair you usually know how to make a "half form" for the first one and join it on, or you know how to stack them. Usually whilst reading it's obvious because you see the components; and whilst writing it's usually fine to try what makes sense. - For unpredictable clusters, you just eventually get used to them. No different from learning that some words are spelled weirdly in English, really. Though I very much dislike ह्म , ह्य, and द्य since they're kinda confusing. I think Bengali has a lot more unpredictable conjuncts; I stumbled across this a lot when I tried to learn the script a year ago. I suspect folks just get used to those.

bhasi 9y ago
I'm no linguist, but Malayalam has a more predictable stacking rule than Devanagari, more so in the modern alphabet/sandhi scheme than the old. For instance, one can barely tell apart ह्म and ह्य, but their Malayalam equivalents are pretty distinct: ഹ്മ (old scheme) and ഹ്‌മ (modern scheme) for the first, and ഹ്യ for the second.
Someone1234 9y ago
As someone who can read both Devanagari and English/Latin script, I'm just curious, when you read Devanagari does the text size need to be larger for good comprehension? There seems more subtlety with the word structure, like tiny little flicks which seem to have significant meaning. While Latin-like script has characters like the comma/full-stop, and modifiers like the dot on the i, these are far rarer than Devanagari's modifiers from what I have seen. Another related question is, because Devanagari's information density seems higher, does that mean shorter text for the equivalent information? PS - Sorry if anything I said was offensive, that wasn't my intent. I am just an ignorant idiot wanting to learn someone's experience with a different language script, nothing more.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  How could anyone possibly consider this offensive?
- Manishearth 9y ago
  Not really, I can read at normal text sizes. But it is somewhat annoying (much like how tiny English can be readable but annoying to read) and used to have my default font size bumped up by one in my browser. I currently have it bumped up quite a bit for Chinese because I really have trouble with the "tiny little flicks" problem in Chinese. The consonants of Devanagari are easy to tell apart; they are pretty different. In most cases the "similar" ones are basically with an extra line (प/ष, ब/व) or with a little loop (य/थ, ट/ढ) . (The line/loop has no semantic meaning, these letters are just random letters that look similar) . The only super annoying one is घ vs ध -- the thing up top is a loop in the second one, but depending on the font/handwriting can be rather unclear. The vowels are also easy to tell apart. There are 12 main ones, and they're made up from some really basic components which are quite distinguishable. So you can easily distinguish consonant+vowel combos. Consonant clusters can get tricky, like I said there are a bunch of ambiguous ones. Fortunately you end up realizing which is which and then it's nbd. But like, द्म and ह्म can be infuriatingly similar and you just get it from context. Bear in mind, at one stage you start sight-reading words, so the actual details of the word matter less. > Another related question is, because Devanagari's information density seems higher, does that mean shorter text for the equivalent information? Visually? Yeah. Words can be really small. But it ends up roughly being the same number of code points (and probably more bytes in UTF-8).

skynetv2 9y ago

the sounds get "joined". the extensions to the vowels are added to consonants to create a compound. for example: letter "Ka" క becomes "Kaa" కా by adding "Ka" and "A" like A in apple. అ becomes the line and circle that gets added to the consonant. Consonants are not mixed with each other, cannot be. this seems like it could help for those interested in more info https://www.omniglot.com/writing/telugu.htm https://www.omniglot.com/writing/telugu.htm

nagVenkat 9y ago
I might be wrong or I am not getting your meaning but I do think consonants can be “mixed”.Say విక్రమ .But I think we are considering mixing differently.

suraj 9y ago

I can't speak for Telugu however, [Devanagari](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari) is very similar and used throughout northern India. Each vowel and consonant is considered as a separate entity. Each consonant has a pure form and a combined form with every consonant. There are also combinations of two or more consonants that can also be combined with each vowel! For learning, you just learn the sounds separately for each vowel and consonant. So you can read & pronounce anything written in Devanagari script but not understand it if its a different language :)

callalex 9y ago

An interesting debate that may be closer to home for English speakers: is ñ a letter? The Spanish alphabet considers it to be a different letter than n, but é is not a different letter than e. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ

umanwizard 9y ago
Historically LL, CH, and RR have been considered separate Spanish letters, too. Since 1995, opinions diverge.

raincom 9y ago

To understand Telugu and similar scripts, one has to think in terms of syllables. Only when we look at these scripts from Roman alphabet, do we see the discussion of consonant and vowel graphemes in the script. /peɪ/ is a syllable in English, but can be represented by these grapheme clusters: <pay>, <pei>, <pai>. The similar syllable is represented in Telugu or Devanagari this way: పే (Telugu script) or पे (Hindi/Devangari script); there are phonetic differences in the way this syllable represented: (a) /p/ is aspirated in English, but not in the telugu/devangari syllable; (b) the diphthon /eɪ/ is realized as a monophthong in Telugu/Devanagari scripts. <ja, virama, nya> sequence plays a major role in Sanskrit sandhi. In Sanskrit, in assimilatory contexts, a voiced palatal affricate /dʒ/ + a palatal nasal /ñ/ + some open vowel, leads to this sequence <ja, virama, nya>. Since this assimilation occurs in many contexts, the resultant grapheme is taught as part of alphabet in this special set of clusters: kSa, tra, jna ( క్ష త్ర జ్ఞ) or (क्ष त्र ज्ञ). In fact, there was a poet in Telugu, whose name was ksEtrajna (combo of these three graphemes with ligatures). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrajna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrajna (in general) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrayya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshetrayya (Telugu poet) The context of jna in Sanskrit: for instance, declension of the masuclar stem: rAjan http://littleredbook.vedicsociety.org.in/noun-tables/rajan---an-masculine http://littleredbook.vedicsociety.org.in/noun-tables/rajan--...

ktta 9y ago

Telugu is my native language. Here's how I learnt it. There's two types of letters. One type is used as an addendum to the other type. The first type are called vowels and the second consonants (I'd say that's mischaracterization but whatever). In this[1] picture, the top half of the alphabets are the type which are the addendum part, and the bottom part are the 'primary' ones. So how it goes is that one of the bottom always comes with one on the top. Most often it tends to be the very first vowel, which is pronounced 'a:', and it is the default way letters are learnt(pronunciation chart[2] for each of the vowels). So each of the consonants (the bottom part) can be used with any one on the top. Let's take the very first consonant. It is pronounced 'ka'(because by default, consonants are accompanied with the first 'vowel' which is 'a:'). Now, lets take a look at the the bottom part of picture [2]. That same consonant is pronounced differently when accompanied with each of the first one. For example: kaa, kee, kuu, etc. The first half the the pronunciation is the same, but the second half, is replaced which whatever vowel's symbol is attached as an addendum. Also notice the the center part of the alphabet hardly changes visually between changes in vowels. Not to throw a lot at once, but there's another part. Each of the consonants can again be used as addendum to any other consonant (which always comes with a vowel). Take a look at this[3]. Notice the little tick at the top you saw in [2] is still there? That picture contains the letters 'ka', which each of the consonants being tacked on. The vowel is always still there. That's because, as I said consonants always come with a vowel attached. The consonant addendum is optional though. Congratulations, you can now pronounce (almost all of) Telugu (and almost any Devanagari script using this same play book). It is because these scripts are deterministic, and there is a single pronunciation unlike English and many other languages. [1]:https://www.telugucorner.com/images/aksharamulu.jpg https://www.telugucorner.com/images/aksharamulu.jpg [2]: https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_vwl.gif https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_vwl.gif [3]: https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_conjuncts.gif https://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/telugu_conjuncts.gif

Manishearth 9y ago
> Congratulations, you can now pronounce (almost all of) Telugu (and almost any Devanagari script using this same play book). It is because these scripts are deterministic, and there is a single pronunciation unlike English and many other languages. weeeellllll, not exactly. For example, spoken Marathi differs considerably from written Marathi, with vowels turning into other vowels, etc. My favorite example is the word लहान which is spelled "lahaan" but is often pronounced pronounced "lhaan" OR "laahaan". Almost all Indic language experience schwa deletion -- you will say the word "kanpur" with no vowel between the n and p even though it is spelled "kanapur". Anusvars have a range of pronunciations that depend on the word being used -- they can nasalize a vowel, or add a nasal consonant like n or m. However, these scripts are definitely way more phonetically consistent than English. These differences are minor.

t_heptapod 9y ago

As a telugu speaker, let me try answering you question.. The squiggly character you see has two characters joined The top and Bottom.. The top By itself can be used separately so It would be called "ja" The bottom if used by itself would be called "na" So basically the grapheme you see is made by joining to consonants Ja and na ..so it basically becomes "Jna" (spelt gna) there are specific rules like english but like any language we have to learn these rules..eg I know that I can add k+ nowledge and that makes something in english.. But what if I add ra+no "rnoledge", yes you can add but that sounds weired, not sure if there is any rule which says you cannot add R+na, same with telugu.