TIL
Update: 20120808
Introduction to Romabama
- a transcription-transliteration system
for BEPS (Burmese-English-Pali-Sanskrit) languages:
Rule 02
intro-RBM02.htm by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), Daw Khin Wutyi, B.Sc., and staff of TIL Computing and Language Centre, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale. No copyright. Free for everyone.
Contents of this page
Letters of Latin alphabet usedRomabama Rule 01 - ASCII characters
Romabama Rule 02 - Differentiation of capital and small letters
Romabama Rule 03 - Extended Latin alphabet and Digraphs
Romabama Rule 04 - Silent e and <e> as part of digraph <ei>
Romabama Rule 05 - Killed consonants
Romabama Rule 06 - {king:si:}/{kïn~si:} vowel-sign and repha
Romabama Rule 07 - Fossilized killed consonants
Romabama Rule 08 - Non-alphabetic characters
Essentially ~ (tilde) is used to show the {a.þût} : examples from Skt-Dev
Romabama Rule 09 - Extension of Myanmar akshara row 2 to accommodate medials
Romabama Rule 10 - Extension of Myanmar akshara vowels to accommodate Sanskrit vowels
Differentiation of Capital and Small letters
Retroflex consonants
UKT notes
• Retroflex consonants
Romabama Rule 02
Differentiation of Capital and Small letters
English-Latin alphabet : The 26 letters of the English-Latin alphabet are expanded to 52 letters by differentiating between the 26 small letters and 26 capital letters. Use of capital letters is rare in Romabama for every day use of Burmese-to-English. However, the situation changes when Pali - used for Buddhist religious text - is involved.An instance is the need to kill c2 consonants, such as -
{hka.} --> 
{hk} and 
{HTa.} --> 
{HT}. To take a specific example, how are we to represent for
: {moaK} seems to be better than {moahk}. The rational for this is, English <k> is pronounced nearer to {hka.} (IPA [k]) than 
{ka.} (IPA [kʰ]). See Rule 03 for the use of capital letters of the extended Latin alphabet. Retroflex consonants
The aksharas in row-3 in akshara-matrix are the Retroflex consonants. Their common POA (Place of Articulation) is between Velar followed by Palatal, and Alveolar followed by Dental. Unless you are a native of India or Myanmar it is impossible to articulate these sounds. Even the lay persons in Myanmar would pronounce them as row-4 -- the Dentals. See my note on retroflex consonants .Finding ASCII characters for row 3 proves to be challenging for Romabama.
I have used Eng-Lat small letters:
<t> forThe option left is to use capital letters:{ta.} त - r4c1,
<ht> for{hta.} थ - r4c2
<d> for{da.} द - r4c3 ,
<n> for{na.} न - r4c5 ,
<T> forEven then it is not enough. I have left out from the above list two aksharas because I am running out of D's. I have to take whatever is available as long as it is ASCII:{Ta.} ट - r3c1
<HT> for
<N> for{Na.} ण - r3c5
<D> for{Da.} ध - r4c4
<ð> forThis has proved satisfactory for Bur-Myan. However, for Pal-Myan (Pali-Myanmar) where r3 is used more frequently, it is not very convenient. Thus, how to represent the killed-{HTa.}{ða.} ड - r3c3
<Ð> for
{HT} (the use digraph in the coda position) has become a problem. As a temporary measure (as of 081019), I had used cap T underscored {T}. Soon I had to discontinue due to the underscore and the spell-check becoming confused in editing. Thus I have to change again and have to use digraph, e.g. 
{paaHT} , 
{þíHHTT-ning:} (Old spelling for 'king' - no longer listed in MLC dictionaries: modern form is 
{þa.ning:} MED2010-487. - personal communication with U Tun Tint 110527. ). UKT notes
Retroflex consonants
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroflex_consonant 120804A retroflex consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants, especially in Indology. Other terms occasionally encountered are domal and cacuminal.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, retroflex consonants are indicated with a hook in the bottom right, such as [ʂ ʐ ʈ ɖ ɳ ɭ ɽ ɻ]. Alternatively, especially for those sounds with a relatively forward articulation (e.g. in the alveolar or postalveolar region rather than the hard palate), they can be indicated with a retracted diacritic (underbar); this occurs especially for [s̱ ẕ]. (Other sounds indicated this way, such as [ṉ ḻ ḏ], tend to refer to alveolo-palatal rather than retroflex consonants.)
The term "postalveolar" was confusing for me at one time. It means a position after the alveolar. Unless you know the direction of how you are counting the POAs (Point of Articulation), the word "after" is meaningless. Indic phonetics count the POAs starting from the interior of the mouth, i.e. from velar to labial (lips), whereas the Western phonetics start from exterior of the mouth, i.e. from labial to velar. The IPA term follows the Western way and only when I came to know it, the affix "post-" had been a problem for me. -- UKT120804UKT: More in the Wikipedia article.
Go back retroflex-conso-note-b
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