User:Brmanjunath

ITRANS-2-An improved version of ITRANS ITRANS - a transliteration scheme devised for transliterating Indian languages to English which is currently in vogue is mainly a transliteration scheme for languages with the devanagiri script. Though it may be adequate for many of the Indian languages, it’s not adequate for the southern Indian languages-Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil. Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam languages have 50 + letters in their alphabet. Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Tamil languages have short vowels “e” and “o” and the Tamil also has a letter which sounds like twisted “L”. Itrans lacks representation of these letters and transliteration of these using itrans will not be correct pronunciation. Also usage of “t”s and “d”s in the Itrans scheme can cause some confusion. For example: using small case letter “ t” to pronounce a sound “th” like in English words theft, think, thermometer etc , can cause mistakes in pronunciation specially for people not familiar with south Indian languages. A word “thAraka” written in Itrans scheme as “tAraka” may be pronounced with the normal “t” sound like in “tree or teach”. Similarly usage of the small case letter “d” to denote a sound like in “then, there or that” also can cause mistakes in pronunciation. As these Indian languages are transliterated to English, It does not seem appropriate to use in transliteration the English letters “t” and “d” to sound like “th”. It will not make it easier to read. The sounds “t”, “d” and “th” are there in English language as well as in the Indian languages and does it not make sense to use them to sound like they naturally sound? It is more appropriate and sensible to use them in transliteration without distorting their natural sound. In ITRANS the “t” sounds like “th” as in the words “theft, thick, thin” etc and “d” sounds like “th” as in words “then, there” etc. It doesn’t make sense.

There is a need for an improved version of ITRANS which compensates for the deficiencies of ITRANS and ITRANS-2 will do that. Using ITRANS-2 makes it easier to pronounce specially for persons who are unfamiliar with the south Indian languages and Samskrutha(Sanskrit). There will be fewer mistakes in pronunciation with regards to the 3rd and 4th series of consonants: t, T, d, D, and th, TH, dh, Dh. Using the improved version ITRANS-2, all the words we use (in samskrutha and other south Indian languages and also Hindhi) can be written in simple English with least distortion of the pronunciation. Also, ITRANS-2 is simple to write and read, using just small case and large case letters of English with no special characters.

ITRANS-2:

                    All letters will be in small case except for the long vowels and hard consonants . Long vowels and hard consonants will have large case letters.

Vowels: a A i I u U R (this letter is not in use that much except in words like “Rushi” meaning a sage, “Ruthu”etc) e E ai o O ou Consonants: k K g G (I have left out the ~N sound – again this is not much used) ch Ch j J (have left out the “nya”-not used) t T d D N th Th dh Dh n p P b B m y r l v sh Sh s h L Extra alphabet s: gnya to write the word “gnyAna” meaning knowledge and zh for the Tamil alphabet (which sounds like a twisted “L”)like in words “azhagu”, mazhaikkaNNa” etc Brmanjunath (talk) 14:39, 15 June 2012 (UTC)