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2005-03-29 11:57 AM -0500
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The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0
Devanagari Script
Chapter 9
Unicode Consortium,
http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch09.pdf
Downloaded and rewritten in HTML by
U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.) on behalf of TIL Computing and
Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR, for research on Burmese language. This page
contains additions by UKT (U Kyaw Tun). Not for sale.
These pages are in Arial Unicode MS font. Please remember that not all
Unicode fonts are alike. Myanmar characters are in gif picture format and you
do not need any Myanmar font to read it. Myanmar spellings in both Myanmar script
and in Romabama and are included. Romabama spellings are within { }, and
words within < > are regular English words.
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South Asian scripts
Devanagari
Encoding principles
Principles of script |
Rendering Devanagari characters |
Consonant Letters |
Independent vowel letters |
Dependent vowel signs|
Virama |
Consonant conjuncts |
Explicit virama |
Explicit half-consonants |
Rendering |
Combining marks |
Digits |
Punctuation and symbols
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The scripts of South Asia (representing the orthographic syllable) share so many
common features that a side-by-side comparison of a few will often reveal structural
similarities even in the modern letterforms. With minor historical exceptions,
they are written from left to right. They are all
abugidas
(also called syllabic alphabet and alpha-syllabary) in which
most symbols or akshara
{ak~hka.ra} stand for a consonant
{byi:~} plus an inherent vowel
(usually the sound /a/ : in Myanmar:
{a.} -- neither
{a}, nor
{a:}).
Word-initial vowels in many of these scripts have distinct symbols, and word-internal
vowels are usually written by juxtaposing a vowel-sign in the vicinity of
the affected consonant-akshara
{byi:~ ak~kha.ra}. Absence of the inherent vowel, when that occurs, is
frequently marked with a special sign.
In the Unicode Standard, this sign is denoted by the Sanskrit word virāma (Burmese-Myanmar:
{a-that}). In some languages another designation is preferred. In Hindi, for example, the word
hal refers to the character itself, and halant refers to the consonant-letter
that has its inherent vowel suppressed; in Tamil, the word puḷḷi is used.
The virama sign
(
{tan°hkun} -- meaning: flag.) nominally serves to suppress the inherent vowel of the consonant
to which it is applied; it is a combining character, with its shape varying from script to script.
Most of the scripts of South Asia, from north of the Himalayas to Sri Lanka in the south,
from Pakistan in the west to the easternmost islands of Indonesia, are derived
from the ancient Brahmi script
{brah~mi ak~hka.ra}. The oldest lengthy inscriptions of India, the edicts of Ashoka from
the third century, were written in two scripts, Kharoshthi and Brahmi. These are both
ultimately of Semitic origin, probably deriving from Aramaic, which was an important
administrative language of the Middle East at that time. Kharoshthi, written from right to left,
was supplanted by Brahmi and its derivatives. The descendants of Brahmi spread with
myriad changes throughout the subcontinent and outlying islands. There are said
to be some 200 different scripts deriving from it. By the eleventh century, the modern script
known as Devanagari was in ascendancy in India proper as the major script of Sanskrit literature.
This northern branch includes such modern scripts as Bengali, Gurmukhi, and Tibetan; the southern
branch includes scripts such as Malayalam and Tamil.
The major official scripts of India proper, including Devanagari, are all encoded according to a
common plan, so that comparable characters are in the same order and relative location. This structural
arrangement, which facilitates transliteration to some degree, is based on the Indian national
standard (ISCII) encoding for these scripts, and makes use of a virama
{a-that}. Sinhala has a virama-based
model, but is not structurally mapped to ISCII. Tibetan stands apart, using a subjoined
consonant model for conjoined consonants, reflecting its somewhat different structure and usage.
The Limbu script makes use of an explicit encoding of syllable-final consonants.
Many of the character names in this group of scripts represent the same sounds,
and naming conventions are similar across the range.
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See:
• Code chart: U0900 Devanagari
• MS Windows XP Character Map U0901 to U0970
UKT: Burmese has many characters corresponding to Devanagari. At least, in five
characters, we find the similarity:
• virama ् (Myanmar
{athat}
),
• visarga ः (Myanmar
{wus.sa.}
),
• anusvara ं (Myanmar
{thé:thé:tin}
),
• danda । (Myanmar
{poad'hti:}), and
• double danda ॥ (Myanmar
{poad'ma.}
).
The Devanagari script is used for writing classical Sanskrit and its modern historical
derivative, Hindi. Extensions to the Sanskrit repertoire are used to write other related languages
of India (such as Marathi) and of Nepal (Nepali). In addition, the Devanagari script is used
to write the following languages: Awadhi, Bagheli, Bhatneri, Bhili, Bihari, Braj Bhasha,
Chhattisgarhi, Garhwali, Gondi (Betul, Chhindwara, and Mandla dialects), Harauti, Ho, Jaipuri,
Kachchhi, Kanauji, Konkani, Kului, Kumaoni, Kurku, Kurukh, Marwari, Mundari, Newari, Palpa,
and Santali.
All other Indic scripts, as well as the Sinhala script of Sri Lanka, the Tibetan script,
and the Southeast Asian scripts, are historically connected with the Devanagari script as
descendants of the ancient Brahmi script. The entire family of scripts shares a large number of
structural features.
The principles of the Indic scripts are covered in some detail in this introduction to the
Devanagari script. The remaining introductions to the Indic scripts are abbreviated but
highlight any differences from Devanagari where appropriate.
Standards. The Devanagari block of the Unicode Standard is based on ISCII-1988
(Indian Script Code for Information Interchange). The ISCII standard of 1988 differs from and is
an update of earlier ISCII standards issued in 1983 and 1986.
The Unicode Standard encodes Devanagari characters in the same relative positions as those
coded in positions A0-F416 in the ISCII-1988 standard. The same character code layout is followed
for eight other Indic scripts in the Unicode Standard: Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil,
Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. This parallel code layout emphasizes the structural similarities
of the Brahmi scripts and follows the stated intention of the Indian coding standards to enable
one-to-one mappings between analogous coding positions in different scripts in the family.
Sinhala, Tibetan, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Myanmar, and other scripts depart to a greater extent from
the Devanagari structural pattern, so the Unicode Standard does not attempt to provide any
direct mappings for these scripts to the Devanagari order.
In November 1991, at the time The Unicode Standard, Version 1.0, was published, the Bureau
of Indian Standards published a new version of ISCII in Indian Standard (IS)13194:1991. This
new version partially modified the layout and repertoire of the ISCII-1988 standard. Because
of these events, the Unicode Standard does not precisely follow the layout of the current
version of ISCII. Nevertheless, the Unicode Standard remains a superset of the ISCII-1991
repertoire except for a number of new Vedic extension characters defined in IS 13194:1991
Annex G-Extended Character Set for Vedic. Modern, non-Vedic texts encoded with
ISCII-1991 may be automatically converted to Unicode code points and back to their original
encoding without loss of information.
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UKT: The medium of communication between two normal human-beings
is sound which involves the vibration of air molecules between the speaker and
the hearer. This is what we mean by "language". Through out human history, until
recently, attempts have been made to represent the sound by making visual marks
on suitable materials such as palm leaves and stone-tablets.
These visual marks do not constitute the language but only its representation
and is known as the "script". Burmese and English are languages whereas Myanmar
and Roman are scripts.
The fundamental unit of language is the syllable: for English, it
is the English syllable and for Burmese the Burmese syllable.
The English syllable is represented by the alphabet-script known as
the Roman script (the smallest unit being the "letter"), whereas the Burmese
syllable is represented by abugida-script the smallest of which is the akshara.
The fundamental unit of the Roman alphabet, the "letter",
is of two kinds: the consonant-letter, and the vowel-letter. The English syllable
is represented by one or more vowel-letters, or by the vowel-letter(s) modified
by consonant-letters. Then comes the most important difference between the two
scripts: the fundamental unit of the Myanmar-script is the orthographic-syllable
or the akshara representing a syllable of the Burmese-speech.
The English-Roman syllable has structure CVC (consonant-letter,
vowel-letter, consonant-letter -- please avoid using
"consonant-vowel-consonant"). However, the effective unit of Burmese-Myanmar is
the orthographic syllable, consisting of a consonant-letter and vowel-letter (CV) core and,
optionally, one or more preceding consonantal-letters, with a canonical
structure of (((C)C)C)V.
The writing systems that employ Devanagari and other Indic
scripts constitute
abugidas -- a cross between syllabic
writing systems and alphabetic writing systems. The effective unit of these
writing systems is the orthographic syllable
{ak~hka.ra},
consisting of a consonant and vowel (CV) core and, optionally, one or more preceding consonants,
with a canonical structure of (((C)C)C)V. The orthographic syllable need not correspond exactly
with a phonological syllable, especially when a consonant cluster is involved, but the writing
system is built on phonological principles and tends to correspond quite closely to pronunciation.
The orthographic syllable is built up of alphabetic pieces, the actual letters of the
Devanagari script. These pieces consist of three distinct character types:
• consonant-letters,
• vowel-letters (dubbed by Unicode 4 as "independent vowels"), and
• vowel-signs ("dependent vowel signs" of Unicode 4).
In a text sequence, these characters are stored in logical (phonetic) order.
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Devanagari characters, like characters from many other scripts, can combine or change shape
depending on their context. A character's appearance is affected by its ordering with respect
to other characters, the font used to render the character, and the application or system
environment. These variables can cause the appearance of Devanagari characters to differ from
their nominal glyphs (used in the code charts).
Additionally, a few Devanagari characters cause a change in the order of the displayed
characters. This reordering is not commonly seen in non-Indic scripts and occurs
independently of any bidirectional character reordering that might be required.
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Each consonant letter represents a single consonantal sound but also has the peculiarity of
having an inherent vowel, generally the short vowel /a/ in Devanagari and the other
Indic scripts. Thus U0915
क DEVANAGARI LETTER KA (and
{ka.}
MYANMAR LETTER KA) represents not just /k/ but /ka/.
In the presence of a vowel-sign, however, the inherent vowel /a/ associated with a consonant
letter is overridden by the vowel-sign.
Consonant letters may also be rendered as half-forms (e.g.
), which are presentation forms
used to depict 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.)
Some Devanagari consonant letters have alternative presentation forms whose choice depends
upon neighboring consonants. This variability is especially notable for U0930 र DEVANAGARI
LETTER RA, which has numerous different forms, both as the initial element and as the final
element of a consonant cluster. Only the nominal forms, rather than the contextual alternatives,
are depicted in the code chart.
UKT: Forms of Myanmar {ra.}:
;
(e.g. in
) ;
in {ra.ris} for en-characters, and
in {ra.ris} for em-characters
The traditional Sanskrit/Devanagari alphabetic encoding order for consonants follows
articulatory phonetic principles, starting with velar consonants and moving forward to bilabial
consonants, followed by liquids and then fricatives. ISCII and the Unicode Standard both observe
this traditional order.
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UKT: Sanskrit is learnt by some Myanmar Buddhist monks. However, Pali is learned
to a greater extent by both monks and lay-persons alike. Pali and Sanskrit used
in Myanmar are in Myanmar script. The following is the traditional way of presenting
the 33 Myanmar consonants (Burmese:
{byi:~}; Pali: vyañjana). Grouping (in Pali) are from An Elementary Pali Course,
by Ven. Narada Thera,
http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/ele_pali.pdf |
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Dental-labial [v] is written in Burmese-Myanmar and M-Pali as [w] or {wa.}.
Burmese-Myanmar and M-Pali {th.} is absent in E-Pali , where this character is written with
[s]. {a.} /a/ represents the inherent vowel present in consonants.
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The independent vowels in Devanagari are letters that stand on their own. The writing system
treats independent vowels as orthographic CV syllables in which the consonant is null. The
independent vowel letters are used to write syllables that start with a vowel.
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UKT: There are 12 vowels in Burmese-Myanmar. |
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The dependent vowels serve as the common manner of writing non-inherent vowels and are
generally referred to as vowel signs, or as matras in Sanskrit. The dependent
vowels do not stand alone; rather, they are visibly depicted in combination with a base
letterform. A single consonant, or a consonant cluster, may have a dependent vowel applied to
it to indicate the vowel quality of the syllable, when it is different from the inherent vowel.
Explicit appearance of a dependent vowel in a syllable overrides the inherent vowel of a single
consonant letter.
UKT:
{ma.tra},
{mat~ta},
{ma-tra} -- the length of time to pronounce a short vowel, a mora or prosodial
unit (a long vowel contains two moras and a prosodial vowel three -- U Hoke Sein,
The Universal Burmese, English, Pali Dictionary, 1st. ed., 1978, p578
The greatest variation among different Indic scripts is found in the way that the dependent
vowels are applied to base letterforms. Devanagari has a collection of non-spacing dependent
vowel signs that may appear above or below a consonant letter, as well as spacing dependent
vowel signs that may occur to the right or to the left of a consonant letter or consonant
cluster. Other Indic scripts generally have one or more of these forms, but what is a
non-spacing mark in one script may be a spacing mark in another. Also, some of the Indic
scripts have single dependent vowels that are indicated by two or more glyph components --
and those glyph components may surround a consonant letter both to the left and
right or may occur both above and below it.
The Devanagari script has only one character denoting a left-side dependent vowel sign: U093F
ि DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN I . Other Indic scripts either have no such vowel signs
(Telugu and Kannada) or include as many as three of these signs (Bengali, Tamil, and Malayalam).
A one-to-one correspondence exists between the independent vowels and the dependent vowel signs.
Independent vowels are sometimes represented by a sequence consisting of the independent form of
the vowel /a/ followed by a dependent vowel sign. Figure 9-1 illustrates this relationship
(see the notation formally described in the
Rules for Rendering
later in this section).
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
The combination of the independent form of the default vowel /a/ (in the Devanagari script,
U0905 अ DEVANAGARI LETTER A)
with a dependent vowel sign may be viewed as an alternative spelling of the phonetic information
normally represented by an isolated independent vowel form. However, these two representations
should not be considered equivalent for the purposes of rendering. Higher-level text processes
may choose to consider these alternative spellings equivalent in terms of information content,
but such an equivalence is not stipulated by this standard.
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Devanagari employs a sign known in Sanskrit as the virama or vowel omission sign
{a.thut}. In
Hindi it is called hal or halant, and that term is used in referring to the virama
or to a consonant with its vowel suppressed by the virama; the terms are used interchangeably
in this section.
The virama sign, U094D ् DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA,
{a.thut tan°hkun}
, nominally serves to cancel (or kill)
the inherent vowel of the consonant to which it is applied. When a consonant has lost its
inherent vowel by the application of virama, it is known as a dead consonant
(e.g.
); in contrast,
a live consonant (e.g.
) is one that retains its inherent vowel or is written with an explicit
dependent vowel sign. In the Unicode Standard, a dead consonant is defined as a sequence
consisting of a consonant letter followed by a virama. The default rendering for a dead
consonant is to position the virama as a combining mark bound to the consonant letterform.
UKT: The virama sign is known in Bama as {a.thut}
and is represented with a
{tan°hkwun}
(literal meaning: a flag) which has the appearance
.
For example, if Cn denotes the nominal form of consonant C, and Cd
denotes the dead consonant form, then a dead consonant is encoded as shown in Figure 9-2.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
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UKT: Known in Burmese-Myanmar as
{byi:~ twè:} -- Myanmar sa-loan paung that-poan kyam, 1986, p.htta .
There are more conjuncts in Sanskrit than in Myanmar.
There are two kinds of consonant conjuncts:
{paahT-hsin.} and
{kin:si:}
The Indic scripts are noted for a large number of consonant conjunct forms that serve as
orthographic abbreviations (ligatures) of two or more adjacent letterforms. This abbreviation
takes place only in the context of a consonant cluster. An orthographic consonant cluster is
defined as a sequence of characters that represents one or more dead consonants
(denoted Cd ) followed by a normal, live consonant letter (denoted Cl ).
UKT: There are two types of conjuncts In Myanmar: one type being used
as onset and the other present in the coda. It is sufficient at this point to say that a
"killed" consonant is never found in the onset.
•
{k-ka.} can be written as a vertical conjunct with the virama hidden as:
{k~ka.}.
This vertical conjunct is never found in the onset of a syllable because it can
not be pronounced.
{k~ka.}
is an example of
{paahT-hsin.}
• 
{tak-ka.} is a bisyllable which can be pronounced. It can be written with
as
{tak~ka.}. It then becomes a bisyllable and is part of the word for
<university>.
• An another form of consonant-conjunct is found when the killed consonant is
r1c5 
{nga.} (Latin small letter Eng, U014B, the IPA /ŋ/ -- present in English <sing>.
This "conjunct" is
{kin:si:}. An example is
{ing:ga.leit} meaning <English>. It should be noted that a
{kin:si:} can be un-ligatured without loss in meaning. Thus:
{ing:ga.leit} is perfectly ligitimate. Romabama does not differentiate between
the ligatured and un-ligatured forms.
• Only four conjuncts are allowed as onsets in Myanmar: {ya.pin.} shape:
; {ra.ris.}
or
; {wa.hswè:}
; and {ha.hto:}
or
formed from {ya.}, {ra.}, {wa.} and {ha.} respectively. -- They are known as "medials".
• More onset-conjuncts can be formed from the above four. e.g. {ya.pin.wa.hswè:}
. Note that the preferred term is not {wa.hswè:ya.pin.}.
Under normal circumstances, a consonant cluster is depicted with a conjunct glyph if such
a glyph is available in the current font(s). In the absence of a conjunct glyph, the one or
more dead consonants that form part of the cluster are depicted using half-form
glyphs. In the absence of half-form glyphs, the dead consonants are depicted using the
nominal consonant forms combined with visible virama signs (see Figure 9-3).
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
UKT: The following is a reproduction of Fig 9-3 showing
the sequence of Unicode fonts typed in:
(1) U0917+U094D+U0927 = ग्ध
(2) U0915+U094D+U0915 = क्क equivalent of
(3) U0915+U094D+U0937 = क्ष
(4) U0930+U094D+U0915 = र्क
A number of types of conjunct formations appear in these examples: (1) a half-form of GA
in its combination with the full form of DHA; (2) a vertical conjunct K.KA; and (3) a fully
ligated conjunct K.SSA, in which the components are no longer distinct. Note that in example (4)
in Figure 9-3, the dead consonant RAd is depicted with the nonspacing combining
mark RAsup(repha).
A well-designed Indic script font may contain hundreds of conjunct glyphs, but they are
not encoded as Unicode characters because they are the result of ligation of distinct letters.
Indic script rendering software must be able to map appropriate combinations of characters in
context to the appropriate conjunct glyphs in fonts.
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Normally a virama character serves to create dead consonants that are, in turn, combined
with subsequent consonants to form conjuncts. This behavior usually results in a virama sign
not being depicted visually. Occasionally, this default behavior is not desired when a dead
consonant should be excluded from conjunct formation, in which case the virama sign is visibly
rendered. To accomplish this goal, the Unicode Standard adopts the convention of placing the
character U200C
ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER immediately after the encoded dead consonant that is to be excluded from
conjunct formation. In this case, the virama sign is always depicted as appropriate for the
consonant to which it is attached.
UKT: Characters such as U200C
ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER are presented in Code charts. NWNJ
stands for ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER. See "U2000 General Punctuation" Unicode Consortium, Copyright 1991-2003 Unicode, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.unicode.org/charts/
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For example, in Figure 9-4, the use of ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER prevents the default formation
of the conjunct form
क ्ष
(K.SSAn).
(UKT: The previous character is obtained by inputting U0915 U094D U0937)
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
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When a dead consonant participates in forming a conjunct, the dead consonant form is often
absorbed into the conjunct form, such that it is no longer distinctly visible. In other contexts,
the dead consonant may remain visible as a half-consonant form. In general, a half-consonant
form is distinguished from the nominal consonant form by the loss of its inherent vowel stem,
a vertical stem appearing to the right side of the consonant form. In other cases, the
vertical stem remains but some part of its right-side geometry is missing.
In certain cases, it is desirable to prevent a dead consonant from assuming full conjunct
formation yet still not appear with an explicit virama. In these cases, the half-form of the
consonant is used. To explicitly encode a half-consonant form, the Unicode Standard adopts
the convention of placing the character U200D
ZERO WIDTH JOINER immediately after the encoded dead consonant. The ZERO WIDTH JOINER
denotes a nonvisible letter that presents linking or cursive joining behavior on either side
(that is, to the previous or following letter). Therefore, in the present context, the
ZERO WIDTH JOINER may be considered to present a context to which a preceding dead consonant
may join so as to create the half-form of the consonant.
For example, if Ch denotes the half-form glyph of consonant C, then a
half-consonant form is encoded as shown in Figure 9-5.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
• In the absence of the ZERO WIDTH JOINER, this sequence would normally produce the full
conjunct form क्ष (K.SSAn). This encoding of half-consonant forms
also applies in the absence of a base letterform. That is, this technique may also be used to
encode independent half-forms, as shown in Figure 9-6.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
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Consonant Forms. In summary, each consonant may be encoded such that it denotes
a live consonant, a dead consonant that may be absorbed into a conjunct, or the
half-form of a dead consonant (see Figure 9-7).
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
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Rules for Rendering. This section provides more formal and detailed rules for minimal
rendering of Devanagari as part of a plain text sequence. It describes the mapping between
Unicode characters and the glyphs in a Devanagari font. It also describes the combining
and ordering of those glyphs.
These rules provide minimal requirements for legibly rendering interchanged Devanagari text.
As with any script, a more complex procedure can add rendering characteristics, depending on
the font and application.
It is important to emphasize that in a font that is capable of rendering Devanagari,
the number of glyphs is greater than the number of Devanagari characters.
Notation. In the next set of rules, the following notation applies:
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Cn |
Nominal glyph form of consonant C as it appears in the code charts. |
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Cl |
A live consonant, depicted identically to Cn. |
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Cd |
Glyph depicting the dead consonant form of consonant C. |
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Ch |
Glyph depicting the half-consonant form of consonant C. |
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Ln |
Nominal glyph form of a conjunct ligature consisting of two or more component consonants.
A conjunct ligature composed of two consonants X and Y is also denoted X.Yn.
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RAsupA |
A non-spacing combining mark glyph form of U0930 ः DEVANAGARI LETTER RA positioned
above or attached to the upper part of a base glyph form. This form is also known as
repha.
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RAsub |
A nonspacing combining mark glyph form of U0930 ः DEVANAGARI LETTER RA positioned
below or attached to the lower part of a base glyph form.
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Vvs |
Glyph depicting the dependent vowel sign form of a vowel V.
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VIRAMAn |
The nominal glyph form of the nonspacing combining mark depicting U094D ् DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA.
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• A virama character is not always depicted; when it is depicted, it adopts this nonspacing mark
form.
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Dead Consonant Rule. The following rule logically precedes the application of
any other rule to form a dead consonant. Once formed, a dead consonant may be subject to
other rules described next.
Rule 1. When a consonant Cn precedes a VIRAMAn ,
it is considered to be a dead consonant Cd . A consonant Cn
that does not precede VIRAMAn is considered to be a live consonant
Cl.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
Consonant RA Rules. The character U0930 र DEVANAGARI LETTER RA takes one of
a number of visual forms depending on its context in a consonant cluster. By default, this
letter is depicted with its nominal glyph form (as shown in the
U0900 Devanagari ).
In some contexts, it is depicted using one of two nonspacing glyph forms that combine with a base
letterform.
Rule 2. If the dead consonant RAd precedes a consonant, then it is
replaced by the superscript nonspacing mark RAsup , which is positioned so
that it applies to the logically subsequent element in the memory representation.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
Rule 3. If the superscript mark RAsup is to be applied to a dead
consonant and that dead consonant is combined with another consonant to form a conjunct ligature,
then the mark is positioned so that it applies to the conjunct ligature form as a whole.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
Rule 4. If the superscript mark RAsup is to be applied to a dead
consonant that is subsequently replaced by its half-consonant form, then the mark is positioned
so that it applies to the form that serves as the base of the consonant cluster.
Image captured from 150% size of PDF page.
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Rule 5. In conformance with the ISCII standard, the half-consonant form RRAh is represented as eyelash-RA. This form of RA is commonly used in writing
Marathi and Newari.
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Rule 5a. For compatibility with The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0, if the dead consonant
RAd precedes ZERO WIDTH JOINER, then the half-consonant form RAh,
depicted as eyelash-RA, is used instead of RAsup .
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Rule 6. Except for the dead consonant RAd, when a dead consonant
Cd precedes the live consonant RAl , then Cd is replaced with
its nominal form Cn , and RA is replaced by the subscript nonspacing mark
RAsub, which is positioned so that it applies to Cn.
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Rule 7. For certain consonants, the mark RAsub may graphically
combine with the consonant to form a conjunct ligature form. These combinations, such as the
one shown here, are further addressed by the ligature rules described shortly.
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Rule 8. If a dead consonant (other than RAd ) precedes RAd,
then the substitution of RA for RAsub is performed as described above; however, the
VIRAMA that formed RAd remains so as to form a dead consonant conjunct form.
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A dead consonant conjunct form that contains an absorbed RAd may subsequently
combine to form a multipart conjunct form.
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Modifier Mark Rules. In addition to vowel signs, three other types of combining
marks may be applied to a component of an orthographic syllable or to the syllable as a whole:
nukta, bindus, and svaras.
Rule 9. The nukta sign, which modifies a consonant form, is placed immediately after
the consonant in the memory representation and is attached to that consonant in rendering. If
the consonant represents a dead consonant, then NUKTA should precede VIRAMA in the memory
representation.
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Rule 10. The other modifying marks, bindus and svaras, apply to the orthographic
syllable as a whole and should follow (in the memory representation) all other characters that
constitute the syllable. In particular, the bindus should follow any vowel signs, and the
svaras should come last. The relative placement of these marks is horizontal rather than vertical;
the horizontal rendering order may vary according to typographic concerns.
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Ligature Rules. Subsequent to the application of the rules just described, a set
of rules governing ligature formation apply. The precise application of these rules depends
on the availability of glyphs in the current font(s) being used to display the text.
Rule 11. If a dead consonant immediately precedes another dead consonant or a live
consonant, then the first dead consonant may join the subsequent element to form a two-part
conjunct ligature form.
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Rule 12. A conjunct ligature form can itself behave as a dead consonant and enter
into further, more complex ligatures.
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A conjunct ligature form can also produce a half-form.
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Rule 13. If a nominal consonant or conjunct ligature form precedes RAsub
as a result of the application of rule R6, then the consonant or ligature form may join with
RAsub to form a multipart conjunct ligature (see rule R6 for more information).
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Rule 14. In some cases, other combining marks will combine with a base consonant,
either attaching at a nonstandard location or changing shape. In minimal rendering there
are only two cases, RAl with Uvs or UUvs.
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Memory Representation and Rendering Order. The order for storage of plain text
in Devanagari and all other Indic scripts generally follows phonetic order; that is, a CV
syllable with a dependent vowel is always encoded as a consonant letter C followed by a vowel
sign V in the memory representation. This order is employed by the ISCII standard and
corresponds to both the phonetic and the keying order of textual data (see Figure 9-8).
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Because Devanagari and other Indic scripts have some dependent vowels that must be depicted
to the left side of their consonant letter, the software that renders the Indic scripts must be
able to reorder elements in mapping from the logical (character) store to the presentational
(glyph) rendering. For example, if Cn denotes the nominal form of consonant
C, and Vvs denotes a left-side dependent vowel sign form of vowel V, then a
reordering of glyphs with respect to encoded characters occurs as just shown.
Rule 15. When the dependent vowel Ivs is used to override the inherent
vowel of a syllable, it is always written to the extreme left of the orthographic syllable. If the
orthographic syllable contains a consonant cluster, then this vowel is always depicted to the
left of that cluster. For example:
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Sample Half-Forms. Table 9-1 shows examples of half-consonant forms that are commonly
used with the Devanagari script. These forms are glyphs, not characters. They may be encoded
explicitly using ZERO WIDTH JOINER as shown; in normal conjunct formation, they may be used
spontaneously to depict a dead consonant in combination with subsequent consonant forms.
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Sample Ligatures. Table 9-2 shows examples of conjunct ligature forms that are commonly
used with the Devanagari script. These forms are glyphs, not characters. Not every writing system
that employs this script uses all of these forms; in particular, many of these forms are used only
in writing Sanskrit texts. Furthermore, individual fonts may provide fewer or more ligature forms
than are depicted here.
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and 230 in the original pdf file.
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Sample Half-Ligature Forms. In addition to half-form glyphs of individual consonants,
half-forms are used to depict conjunct ligature forms. A sample of such forms is shown in
Table 9-3. These forms are glyphs, not characters. They may be encoded explicitly using
as shown; in normal conjunct formation, they may be used spontaneously to depict a conjunct
ligature in combination with subsequent consonant forms.
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Language-Specific Allographs. In Marathi and some South Indian orthographies, variant
glyphs are preferred for
U0932 ल
DEVANAGARI LETTER LA and
U0936 श
DEVANAGARI LETTER SHA, as shown in Figure 9-9. Marathi also makes use of the eyelash form of the
letter RA, as discussed previously in rule R5.
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Devanagari and other Indic scripts have a number of combining marks that could be considered
diacritic. One class of these marks, known as bindus, is represented by U0901 ँ
DEVANAGARI SIGN CHANDRABINDU and U0902
ं DEVANAGARI SIGN ANUSVARA. These marks indicate nasalization or final nasal closure of
a syllable. U093C ़
DEVANAGARI SIGN NUKTA is a true diacritic. It is used to extend the basic set of consonant letters
by modifying them (with a subscript dot in Devanagari) to create new letters.
U0951 ॑.. U0954 ॔ are a set of combining marks used in transcription of Sanskrit
texts.
UKT: Anusvara corresponds to Myanmar
{thé:thé:tin} (literary meaning: small one on top), nukta corresponds to
{auk-ka.hmyin.} (literary meaning: raised from below).
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Each Indic script has a distinct set of digits appropriate to that script. These digits
may or may not be used in ordinary text in that script. European digits have displaced the
Indic script forms in modern usage in many of the scripts. Some Indic scripts - notably Tamil -
lack a distinct digit for zero.
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U0964 ।
DEVANAGARI DANDA is similar to a full stop. Corresponding forms occur in many other Indic scripts.
U0965
॥
DEVANAGARI DOUBLE DANDA marks the end of a verse in traditional texts. U0970
॰
DEVANAGARI ABBREVIATION SIGN appears after letters or combinations.
UKT: Danda and double danda correspond to Myanmar
{poad~hprat} (colloquially
{poad hti:}) and
{poad~ma.} .
Many modern languages written in the Devanagari script intersperse punctuation derived
from the Latin script. Thus U002C , COMMA and U002E . FULL STOP are freely used in writing Hindi,
and the danda is usually restricted to more traditional texts.
Encoding Structure. The Unicode Standard organizes the nine principal Indic scripts in
blocks of 128 encoding points each. The first six columns in each script are isomorphic with
the ISCII-1988 encoding, except that the last 11 positions (U0955 .. U095F in Devanagari, for
example), which are unassigned or undefined in ISCII-1988, are used in the Unicode encoding.
The seventh column in each of these scripts, along with the last 11 positions in the sixth
column, represent additional character assignments in the Unicode Standard that are matched
across all nine scripts. For example, positions U+xx66 ... U+xx6F and U+xxE6 ... U+xxEF code
the Indic script digits for each script.
The eighth column for each script is reserved for script-specific additions that do not
correspond from one Indic script to the next.
Other Languages. Sindhi makes use of U0974 DEVANAGARI LETTER SHORT YA. Several implosive
consonants in Sindhi are realized as combinations with nukta and U0952 ॒ DEVANAGARI
STRESS SIGN ANUDATA . Konkani makes use of additional sounds that can be made with combinations
such as U091A च DEVANAGARI LETTER CA plus U093C ़ DEVANAGARI SIGN NUKTA and U091F
ट DEVANAGARI LETTER TTA plus U0949 ॉ DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN CANDRA O.
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