This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.Writing systemsWikipedia:WikiProject Writing systemsTemplate:WikiProject Writing systemsWriting system articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.IndiaWikipedia:WikiProject IndiaTemplate:WikiProject IndiaIndia articles
@Vanisaac: I am confused as to the scope of this page. Should the 'comparison' be including ḷa or not? The cell for Thai shows both la and ḷa, while the cell for Khmer shows only ḷa. Burmese, Lao (since 1930's), Tai Tham, Sinhalese, Brahmi and Devanagari all have nukta-free ḷa as well as la, but its not shown in the gyph tree. --RichardW57 (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at it now, I think I was pretty confused about the scope of the page when I made it too. This is one of those situations where I was kind of punting when I put the content out there originally because I didn't have a broad enough knowledge to say for certain what would be the best way to proceed. I think it really boils down to how early the distinction between La and Ḷa really happened, and how long it took before scripts were inheriting those distinct letters from parent to child writing system. Moreover, how much of the modern distinction between the two letters was inherited from a predecessor script, vs. an invention within the already extant script to make a novel distinction. I wish I had a more definitive answer, but you have kind of listened to all of my greatest hits when I was originally worried about scope and relatedness from the earliest versions of these pages. VanIsaac, MPLLcontWpWS23:55, 28 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanisaac: I've dug into the history, and according to an early Unicode proposal for Brahmi, [[1]] by Baums and Glass, Brahmi wound up with 3 different ḷa characters, one minor, and two which were later disunified as 𑀴 U+11034 BRAHMI LETTER LLA and 𑁵 U+11075 BRAHMI LETTER OLD TAMIL LLA, derived from ḍa and ḷa respectively. I think I should populate a comparative tree on a user page with the triples (ḍa, ḷa, ḷa) to check the assignments of origin. My expectation is that ḷa will end up being split between Ḍa (Indic) and La (Indic). --RichardW57m (talk) 13:59, 29 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Vanisaac: My first draft is at User:RichardW57/ḍa ḷa la. It supports the idea of a split between northern and southern scripts as to whether ḷa comes from ḍa or la. Two apparent oddities are Gurmukhi and Odia. Gurmukhi has reinvented its LLA, as a LA plus NUKTA. I think you would exclude it from the tree as simply being consonant plus mark. Odia seems to derive its ḷa from la, but there are also claims of a strong connection with Telugu, so that may be borrowing across branches. The upshot is that ḷa should be recorded on this page for Theravadin and major Dravidian scripts. --RichardW57 (talk) 01:23, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I absolutely agree that the tree should only have the actual derivative characters. The inclusion of all the equivalent letters without relation was based on its inheritance from the previous templates on the page. VanIsaac, MPLLcontWpWS04:02, 30 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]
