Virama ( ्) is a
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
phonological concept to suppress the
inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit virāma, a
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
in many
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient In ...
, including the
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
and
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
scripts, or
# saṃyuktākṣara (
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
: संयुक्ताक्षर) or implicit virama, a conjunct consonant or ligature.
Unicode schemes of scripts writing
Mainland Southeast Asia languages, such as that of
Burmese script
Burmese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia
* Burmese people
* Burmese language
* Burmese alphabet
* Burmese cuisine
* Burmese culture
Animals
* Burmese cat
* Burmese chicken
* Burmese (horse), ...
and of
Tibetan script
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic language ...
, generally don't group the two functions together.
Names
The name is
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
for "cessation, termination, end". As a
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
word, it is used in place of several language-specific terms, such as:
}, ''sukun''
, ް◌
, Derives from Arabic "sukun"
, -
, ''Srog med''
,
Tibetan
Tibetan may mean:
* of, from, or related to Tibet
* Tibetan people, an ethnic group
* Tibetan language:
** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard
** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...
, ''Srog med''
, ྄
, Only used when transcribing Sanskrit
Usage
In
Devanagari
Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...
and many other
Indic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
, a virama is used to cancel the
inherent vowel of a consonant letter and represent a consonant without a vowel, a "dead" consonant. For example, in Devanagari,
# is a consonant letter, ''ka'',
#् is a virāma; therefore,
# (''ka'' + virāma) represents a dead consonant ''k''.
If this ''k'' is further followed by another consonant letter, for example, ṣa ष, the result might look like , which represents ''kṣa'' as ''ka'' + (visible) virāma + ''ṣa''. In this case, two elements ''k'' क् and ''ṣa'' ष are simply placed one by one, side by side. Alternatively, ''kṣa'' can be also written as a
ligature , which is actually the preferred form.
Generally, when a dead consonant letter C
1 and another consonant letter C
2 are conjoined, the result may be:
#A fully conjoined ligature of C
1+C
2;
#Half-conjoined—
#*C
1-conjoining: a modified form (half form) of C
1 attached to the original form (full form) of C
2
#*C
2-conjoining: a modified form of C
2 attached to the full form of C
1; or
#Non-ligated: full forms of C
1 and C
2 with a visible virama.
If the result is fully or half-conjoined, the (conceptual) virama which made C
1 dead becomes invisible, logically existing only in a
character encoding
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values tha ...
scheme such as
ISCII or
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
. If the result is not ligated, a virama is visible, attached to C
1, actually written.
Basically, those differences are only glyph variants, and three forms are
semantically identical. Although there may be a preferred form for a given consonant cluster in each language and some scripts do not have some kind of ligatures or half forms at all, it is generally acceptable to use a nonligature form instead of a ligature form even when the latter is preferred if the font does not have a glyph for the ligature. In some other cases, whether to use a ligature or not is just a matter of taste.
The virāma in the sequence C
1 + virāma + C
2 may thus work as an invisible control character to ligate C
1 and C
2 in Unicode. For example,
*''ka'' क + virāma + ṣa ष = ''kṣa''
is a fully conjoined ligature. It is also possible that the virāma does not ligate C
1 and C
2, leaving the full forms of C
1 and C
2 as they are:
*''ka'' + virama + ''ṣa'' = ''kṣa''
is an example of such a non-ligated form.
The sequences ङ्क ङ्ख ङ्ग ङ्घ , in common Sanskrit orthography, should be written as conjuncts (the virāma and the top cross line of the second letter disappear, and what is left of the second letter is written under the ङ and joined to it).
End of word
The
inherent vowel is not always pronounced, in particular at the end of a word (
schwa deletion
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it r ...
). No virāma is used for vowel suppression in such cases. Instead, the orthography is based on Sanskrit where all inherent vowels are pronounced, and leaves to the reader of modern languages to delete the schwa when appropriate.
[Akira Nakanishi: Writing Systems of the World, , pp. 48.]
See also
*
Sukun, a similar diacritic in Arabic script
*
Zero consonant In orthography, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a word or syllable starts with a vowel (i.e. has a null onset). Some abjads, abugidas ...
References
External links
Blog: Sorting it all Out
{{Navbox diacritical marks
Brahmic diacritics chitranzh