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Virama
Virama ( ्, ) is a Sanskrit 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 in many Brahmic scripts, including the Devanagari and Bengali scripts, or # saṃyuktākṣara (Sanskrit: संयुक्ताक्षर) or implicit virama, a conjunct consonant or ligature. Unicode schemes of scripts writing Mainland Southeast Asia languages, such as that of Burmese script and of Tibetan script, generally do not group the two functions together. Names The name is Sanskrit for "cessation, termination, end". As a Sanskrit word, it is used in place of several language-specific terms, such as: Usage In Devanagari and many other Indic scripts, 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 Dev ...
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Malayalam Script
Malayalam script (; / ) is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script used to write Malayalam, the principal language of Kerala, India, spoken by 45 million people. It is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. The Malayalam script resembles Tulu script and Tigalari script, used to write the Tulu language, spoken in Tulu Nadu, coastal Karnataka (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi district, Udupi districts) and the northernmost Kasargod district of Kerala. Like many Indic scripts, it is an alphasyllabary (abugida), a writing system that is partially "alphabetic" and partially syllable-based. The modern Malayalam alphabet has 15 vowel letters, 42 consonant letters, and a few other symbols. The Malayalam script is a Vatteluttu alphabet extended with symbols from the Grantha alphabet to represent Indo-Aryan languages, Ind ...
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Inherent Vowel
An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. There are many known abugida scripts, including most of the Brahmic scripts and Kharosthi, the cursive Meroitic script, which developed in Nubia (today in Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan), and the Ge'ez script. Many of them are still used today. Old Persian cuneiform also uses a device similar to an inherent vowel, though only with a subset of its consonants, so some authors do not consider it to be a true abugida. Although it is the earliest known script to use the inherent vowel principle (from the 6th century BC), no direct link among these four writing traditions has yet been demonstrated. Most Brahmic scripts and Ge'ez scripts use the consonant characters as base graphemes, from which the syllables are built up. Base graphemes having a consonant with an inherent vowel can be usually changed to other graphemes by joining a t ...
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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 ''diacritic'' is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas ''diacritical'' is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute , grave , and circumflex (all shown above an 'o'), are often called ''accents''. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters. The main use of diacritics in Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. Historically, English has used the diaeresis diacritic to indicate the correct pronunciation of ambiguous words, such as "coöperate", without which the letter sequence could be misinterpreted to be pronounced . Other examples are the acute and grave accents, which can indica ...
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Kannada Script
The Kannada script ( IAST: ''Kannaḍa lipi''; obsolete: Kanarese or Canarese script in English) is an abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write Kannada, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Kannada script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Karnataka. Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Beary and Sanketi also use alphabets based on the Kannada script. The Kannada and Telugu scripts share very high mutual intellegibility with each other, and are often considered to be regional variants of single script. Other scripts similar to Kannada script are Sinhala script (which included some elements from the Kadamba script), and Old Peguan script (used in Burma). The Kannada script ( ''akṣaramāle'' or ''varṇamāle'') is a phonemic abugida of forty-nine letters. The character set is almost identical to that of other Brahmic scripts ...
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Tamil Language
Tamil (, , , also written as ''Tamizhil'' according to linguistic pronunciation) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world,. "Tamil is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India" (p. 7). attested since 300 BC, 300 BCE.: "...the most acceptable periodisation which has so far been suggested for the development of Tamil writing seems to me to be that of A Chidambaranatha Chettiar (1907–1967): 1. Sangam Literature – 200BC to AD 200; 2. Post Sangam literature – AD 200 – AD 600; 3. Early Medieval literature – AD 600 to AD 1200; 4. Later Medieval literature – AD 1200 to AD 1800; 5. Pre-Modern literature – AD 1800 to 1900" at p. 610 Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders in South India, with Tamil inscriptions found outside of the Indian subcontinent, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Egypt. The language has a well-documented history wit ...
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Burmese Language
Burmese (; ) is a Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Myanmar, where it is the official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar people, Bamar, the country's largest ethnic group. Burmese dialects are also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, India's Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura states and the Burmese diaspora. The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as the Myanmar language in English, though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as ''Burmese'', after ''Burma''—a name with co-official status until 1989 (see Names of Myanmar). Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca. In 2019, Burmese was spoken by 42.9 million people globally, including by 32.9 million speakers as a first language, and an additional 10 million speakers as a second language. A 2023 World Bank survey found that 80% of the country's population speaks Burmese ...
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Brahmic Scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used by various languages in several language families in South Asia, South, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia: Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan, Dravidian languages, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman languages, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, and Tai languages, Tai. They were also the source of the Collation, dictionary order (''gojūon'') of Japanese language, Japanese ''kana''. History Brahmic scripts descended from the Brāhmī script, Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka, who used the script Edicts of Ashoka, for imperial edicts. Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, w ...
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Bengali Language
Bengali, also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Bangla (, , ), is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is native to the Bengal region (Bangladesh, India's West Bengal and Tripura) of South Asia. With over 242 million native speakers and another 43 million as second language speakers as of 2025, Bengali is the List of languages by number of native speakers, sixth most spoken native language and the List of languages by total number of speakers, seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. Bengali is the Official language, official, National language, national, and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh, with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken scheduled languages of India, language in India. It is the official language of the Indian states of West ...
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Sinhala Language
Sinhala ( ; Sinhala: , , ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( ), is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka, who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. It is also the first language of about 2 million other Sri Lankans, as of 2001. It is written in the Sinhalese script, a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. The language has two main varieties, written and spoken, and is a notable example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia. Sinhala is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka. Along with Pali, it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Early forms of the Sinhalese language are attested to as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi, a regional associate of the Middle-Indian Prakrits that had been ...
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Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion, diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age#South Asia, Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a lingua franca, link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Indo-Aryan languages# ...
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Sat (Sanskrit)
(Sanskrit: ; IAST: ) is a Sanskrit word that can be translated as "truth" or "essence.“ In Indian religions, it refers to a kind of virtue found across them. This virtue most commonly refers to being truthful in one's thoughts, speech and action. For Yoga particularly, ''satya'' is one of five yamas, the virtuous restraint from falsehood and distortion of reality in one's expressions and actions. Etymology and meaning In the Vedas and later sutras, the meaning of the word evolves into an ethical concept about truthfulness and an important virtue. It means being true and consistent with reality in one's thought, speech, and action. has cognates in a number of diverse Indo-European languages, including the word "sooth" and "sin" in English, "" ("") in Russian, "" (truthful) in Danish, "" in Swedish, and "" in Avestan, the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. () is the root of many Sanskrit words and concepts such as ("pure, truthful") and ("truth"). The Sanskrit ...
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Khmer Language
Khmer ( ; , Romanization of Khmer#UNGEGN, UNGEGN: ) is an Austroasiatic language spoken natively by the Khmer people. This language is an official language and national language of Cambodia. The language is also widely spoken by Khmer people in Eastern Thailand and Isan, Thailand, as well as in the Southeast (Vietnam), Southeastern and Mekong Delta regions of Vietnam. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali especially in the royal and religious Register (sociolinguistics), registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla and Angkorian Empire, Angkor. The vast majority of Khmer speakers speak ''Central Khmer'', the dialect of the central plain where the Khmer are most heavily concentrated. Within Cambodia, regional accents exist in remote areas but these are regarded as varieties of Central Khmer. Two exceptions are the speech of the capital, Phnom Penh, and that of the Khmer Khe in Stung Treng ...
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