Talk:Sinhala alphabet

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To-do list for Talk:Sinhala alphabet: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • unify citations
  • rewrite ligature sections
  • find image of sigiriya graffiti
  • embellish prose
  • make screenshots of tables and update linked images
  • find the unicode encoding for transliteration of prenasalized consonants, i.e. a brevis over n or m
  • change membership of letters in suddha and misra according to Gair1997
  • update screenshots of tables
Priority 5  

Contents

[edit] Transcription of Sinhala script

The transliteration of Sinhala script is not done according to IPA. This article should be reviewed Paryeshakaya 09:51, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

To enhance the confusiuon: Transliteration, Transcription and Pronounciation are different things. The pronounciation should be given in IPA, the transliteration according to ISO 15919 (and additionally according to any Sri Lanka national standard that may exist) and Transcription should show the most popular system. --Pjacobi 10:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Ops, I mis-typed! You are right! Paryeshakaya 11:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] !?

Could someone help me out and explain where all this is coming from?

What is meant by "ü, ö, á, aá, í, ií, ú, uú, é, eé, ó, oó"?

"ø palatal lateral approximant (muurdhaja layanna)

ä voiceless uvular fricative (visarjaniiya)

q voiceless velar fricative (jihvaamuuliya) -- allophone of visarjaniiya

f voiceless bilabial fricative (upadhmaaniiya) -- allophone of visarjaniiya"

A "palatal lateral" would be an l-like sound in the region where c and j are pronounced. That doesn't exist in Sinhala. A "voiceless uvular fricative" must be like a German "ch" or Scotch "ch" as in "Loch Ness" - not there in Sinhala. Or is the visarga meant (sanskrit ":")? Why write an "ä" for that which in Sinhala is used in for the sound of "a" as in engl. "bat"? And the "voiceless bilabial fricative" wouldn't be an "f" (that`s labio-dental) but a "p" with air leaving through the lips - not there in Sinhala, and not even in Sanskrit.

I don't understand that at all, as a lot of the rest of the article. I think we need to redo this thing! Cheers, Krankman 18:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unique Sinhala

Sinhala is the only Indic language whice adopted the english sound "F" onto its own language. Hence the sinhala F is indeed labio-dental and isn't found in Sanskrit. Uvants 17:20, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aspirates

We should add some stuff on the two different systems, the `pure' one and the one with the aspirates. Jasy jatere 20:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. You mean the miśra siṃhala and śuddha siṃhala alphabets. I will add some info on the difference when I have the time. Krankman 22:50, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I think I have done the bulk of the technical synchronic stuff now. I have no information about diachrony, prestige, fluency, register, poshness etc, but I think you do. It would be nice if you could add some of this background info Jasy jatere 01:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Grapheme signs

If there is anyone who can put i and u between angle brackets without the following happening, go ahead: i u. Ideally, we should use grapheme brackets instead of angel brackets, they should have a special unicode number. Jasy jatere 20:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Look at this: <i>, <u>, isn't it beautiful? ;-) By the way: Nice work on the transliteration section! Cheers, Krankman 22:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ligatures

I put the ligature types, but I do not know how we are going to show them. I think browser support for Sinhala ligatures is weak, so we might as well go for png/svg. Any ideas? Jasy jatere 20:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I would use as many pictures as possible. In the text, all of the Sinhala characters are question marks (and as far as American computers go, my computer supports a lot of non-Latin writing systems). Do you know where I can obtain a Sinhala font? I have a Devanagari one, but I am missing all other abugidas. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:12, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, there it is, picture- and table-heavy. Not ideal for the visually impaired, but what can I do? I will resize the images so that they align neatly somewhere in the not-too-far future.
Re: fonts, I am using opera on xubuntu, and I get about a third of the Sinhala unicode characters displayed correctly out of the box, the rest are small rectangles. Have you tried the link to Sinhala fonts at the bottom of the page? Jasy jatere 01:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Topics to expand/cleanup

I've been asked to evaluate this article for possible points of improvement, etc., so here goes:

  • The article needs to be delisted. Some of the lists can stay, but sections such as "Vocalic diacritics" need to be converted into prose and wikitables, like Devanagari's section on symbols.
done
done
  • The article needs a section pertaining to its current usage, its frequency of use and its cultural/political meaning (if any).
I am not too much of an expert there, there is some info now
  • There needs to be a more general description of the language before all of the subsections pertaining to ligatures and diacritics.
There is a dedicated article Sinhalese Language for that purpose, so that it does not seem wise to reduplicate the information contained there.
  • The official name in Sanhala language should be present, along with its meaning/etymology (if it means anything other than "Sinhala script").
done
  • IPA should be in the description section.
This is not clear to me. IPA is used to render phonetic sounds. This article is used to illustrate the Sinhala script. There is no direct relation between the two. The relation is established by phonology, which discusses the phonetic realization of phonemes on the one hand, and the orthographic representation of phonemes by graphemes on the other hand. IPA should of course be present in Phonology of the Sinhalese Language, but not here.

I hope this helps. I've added a history section, and I'll try to add more to the article. Feel free to use this as a checklist, or ask me for clarification on anything above. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Comments in italics added by Jasy jatere 22:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC), and thanks for the feedback

[edit] table formatting

Following up on work by Ikiroid, I have formatted the table for the misra stops. I am not a designer, so I would like to have some feedback on style, accessibility, clearness etc before reformatting the other tables. Jasy jatere 21:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The Misra table should really be a wikitable like the others. I also think that the "other consonants" section below should be merged with it after the formatting is fixed. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 17:49, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that all the tables should have the same design. Is there are reason for prefering class="wikitable"? I am not very fond of all those lines everywhere. I agree that a lot of merging can be done once we have agreed on the formatting. Jasy jatere 18:13, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there is any specific preference in WP:MOS—if there is, I can't find one. Personally, I don't have a preference of one style over another, although wikitables are the de facto standared. Feel free to make them all in your style, it looks kind of cool that way. There might be some complainers on peer review or FAC, but if there isn't an official style, then it is all aesthetics anyway. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 20:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why was the Sinhala letter removed?

70.108.244.218, you removed the Sinhala letter without an edit summary or a comment on the talk page. Would you be so kind to tell us why you think that the picture should not be in the article? If you think you have a better picture to illustrate the use of Sinhala script, feel free to upload and link it. Jasy jatere 17:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I added it back into the article—either it was an accident, or it was removed for political reasons. Until we know more, we should keep it, it is really a nice depiction of the Sinhala script in non-ceremonial use. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:37, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling corrections and Unicode Sinhala

I made some changes necessory to correct some spelling mistakes.

"මිශ්ර" should be "මිශ්‍ර"

"ඟොඩිස" ... I think it should be "හෝඩිය"


ශ්‍ර : Use Zero Width Joiner in Unicode between "ශ්" and "ර" to make it "ශ්‍ර"