Talk:Xrirampur Romanization

Is the N-slash supposed to be parallel to the Edh? It's always confused me... How about an N-acute instead? ń ð The slashes line up better this way, i think :)

-Steg. Boroparkpyro 00:10, 5 Apr 2005 (PDT)

The system was originally designed for Fraktur rather than Roman, and the n-slash looks a lot better in Fraktur, and the N-slash infinitely better! As a matter of fact I'm not sure I agree with Kristian about using the system in all manner of non-scientific contexts tho. BPJ 05:34, 15 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Cerebral?

Shouldn't the consonants referred to as "cerebral" be referred to as "retroflex"? *Here* at least, "cerebral" is no longer a current term even among Indologists. Deiniol 07:57, 11 Jun 2005 (PDT)

How do you articulate sounds with your brain? ;o) The Jervan 09:12, 11 Jun 2005 (PDT)

The term "cerebral" is due to a misunderstanding of the term múrdhanya which means both 'relating to the skull' and 'relating to the palate'. BPJ 13:49, 11 Jun 2005 (PDT)

The correct spelling is Xrírámpur!

Kristian, you'll have to roll back your change of the spelling, since the correct spelling is Xrírámpur! That is r + long í rather than the syllabic /r=/ ry -- not all /ri/s in modern Indo-Aryan languages go back to /r=/, or there would be nol need to distinguish the different spellings. The use of anusvara before stops is also a licence (a kind of abbreviation) rather than the preferred spelling which is a nasal+stop ligature.

BTW I think we should not use diacritics in the main page titles, since that makes the URLs nearly impossible to type:

http://ib.frath.net/w/index.php?title=Talk:Xryram%CD%82pur_Romanization

BPJ 05:43, 15 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Really? A few days ago, I was looking for the Bengali way of spelling it, since you had marked the spelling of it with a question mark in the India page. I had trouble finding any info on the net until I did a search for photos, and I could have sworn I found this spelling: শৃরঁপুর . I suppose the photo showed a spelling mistake? If you're right, I'll have to ask Jan how to undo redirected pages. I'm afraid of redirecting pages to a previous page, we'll end up with a complete circuit and I'm not sure that'll work.

That spelling doesn't make any sense from a Sanskrit POV -- I don't even think /r=r/ is a possible phoneme sequence! It has all the looks of being (using *here's* transliteraion for a moment) Śrī-rāma-puram i.e. "town of Lord Ráma". In India Bengalis are notorious for confusing long and short i and u, so why not also ri/rī/ṛ? I guess just about anyone in Northern India would be liable to confuse ri and ṛ in spelling, over-using the latter very likely. I'll ask the issue on the Indology list. BPJ 12:36, 18 Jun 2005 (PDT)

As for diacritics, well, I know they're almost impossible to type, and I know that I said in Lla Dafern that I would not include them in the main page titles, but it occured to me that the Japanese and French language pages used diacritics, so why not the Indian pages? I think they're important. Besides, the redirects should make it easier to type. Type in the name without diacritics, and you'll be redirected to a page with diacritics. Another option would be to go to the India page and click your way forward. It's not a big problem, IMO.

Boreanesia 07:12, 15 Jun 2005 (PDT)

I've got partial confirmation that Śrī-rāma-puram is the correct Sanskrit form. At least there is a 'Shrirampur' in Maharashtra that is so spelled. BPJ 01:37, 22 Jun 2005 (PDT)

OK I got this today: BPJ 14:36, 22 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 00:46:43 -0700 (PDT) From:
"P.K.Ramakrishnan" <peekayar@...> Subject:
Re: The name Serampore/Shrirampur

zrIrAmapura! is correct. But in all North Indian
names these get shortened as zrIrampur, jaipur etc.
zrIrampur became serampore in French.

Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: Dear
Indologists!

What is the origin, correct spelling and meaning of
the (Bengali) place-name Serampore/Shrirampur?  A
friend claims that the correct spelling is
zRraMpura, but that spelling looks suspicious on
account of the Rr combo.  To me it looks like it
should be zrIrAmapura!

It's a mess.

Does the Romanization really have to use so many strange markings? Looking at whole words, I feel like the writer wants to convey sounds beyond the humanly articulatorily possible. Couldn't more digraphs and maybe an apostrophe or tilde here and there have done the job? In particular, the use of tilded m for vowel nasalization strikes me as intentionally messy. :P Then again, I realize of course that not all languages have yet reached the unambiguous perfection of Jovianto yet. :O) The Jervan 05:54, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Except for Venedino Sen Flekso, you mean? ;)

Well, I can't say the tilded m strikes me as particularly messy. *Here*, they often use an m with a dot over it (or under it, I forgot). For the rest, if you look at the backstory, I don't get the impression that the Romanization was created for aesthetic reasons. IJzeren Jan 06:36, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Indeed. It was first created for scholarly reasons. It was also first intended as Frakturization, rather than Romanization. Some letters may look quite odd in the Roman alphabet, but are perfect for the Fraktur alphabet.
--Boreanesia 08:57, 16 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Indeed. It is much better in Fraktur! Perhaps it is not so much used in non-scholarly contexts, or perhaps other diacritics than the acute and the special letters þ/ð (or even those two) are disregarded -- compare how *here* diacritics are disregarded in non-scholarly contexts, except that ś and ṣ are replaced by sh. (And in fact Tamil often fares better than Sanskrit through imaginative use of th, z, zh!) BPJ 12:34, 18 Jun 2005 (PDT)

Well, perhaps we need a non-scholarly version of the Romanization? Doobieous 15:33, 22 Jun 2005 (PDT)

I think we do, and it's simple: leave out all diacritcs except perhaps the acute accent and maybe replace þ and ð with t and d, or is there anything to indicate that the man in the street *there* has more care/truck with (foreign) diacritics than *here*? Besides the system was originally made tongue-in-cheek -- me noting that most transliteration systems *here* are based on English or German letter values, what about a mad mix of Portuguese, Icelandic and Danish, with a mix-in of the Indians' own quaint ways of transliterating Persian and Arabic! BPJ 12:08, 23 Jun 2005 (PDT)