A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

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Woods
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A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby Woods » 2021-07-17, 0:43

Does anybody speak Nepali?

I have a couple of questions about the script, which is also shared with Hindi and some other languages.


1) Is it possible to type the "half-characters", i.e. the short forms without the vertical strokes, as standalone characters on a computer?

If I look at the pictures on this website, it looks more like the guy cut half of them with a picture editor:

Image

https://nepalgo.de/post/48993924557/the-consonant

I can't tell from their appearance in my paper book either.


I am also interested to know if it is possible to render the vowel diacritics only as characters that can be typed on a computer, but I am more inclined to believe it isn't.



2) How does an Android keyboard layout for Devanagari / Nepali work?

Feel free to skip that question since I think it will be easy to figure out, but I will write my observations.

Under Nepali language I have two options one called "Devanagari," the other "Nepali" and the former is selected by default. So I put the "Devanagari" layout on my phone.

There is one line with ten vowels at the top and are buttons which can add the dots for the अं and अ: for nepali and some other diacritics for other languages. The consonants are under it in two sets and in the first one, there is a button to the right which says "क्षत्रज्ञ" and when you press it, at its place comes another called "कखग" which takes you back. I guess the first page has most simple consonants and the second - the remaining ones and compounds?

Is there anything else I haven't yet figured out? I don't know the letters yet, but I got quickly over the vowels and learnt a couple of the consonants too.



3) The most complicated thing seems to be the ligatures (e.g. two क's on top of each other.)

Is it that some of those are common and other not that much? And does it vary from language to language?

For example, I wasn't able to find two क's on top of each other anywhere on the Internet, even though to me this is one of the prettiest ones. Not even in the dedicated Wikipedia page about Devanagari ligatures as a typed character, only as a picture.

Or maybe I didn't know how to search?

Does anyone have observations which ligatures are used especially in Nepali and Hindi but also in other languages, and by what proportion of speakers?

Are all ligatures possible to type on a computer as standalone characters included in UniCode or only some of them and then the rest is considered separate letters and it's up to the font how it's going to visualise it? Indeed, I have never looked into a writing system where the letter shapes change according to their position in the words, so I don't know how these things work.


And one more thing about ligatures - if you use them, do you have to do it consistently with all of them in all words or can you select some ligatures you like and others not?


4) It seems like some characters always take part of the vertical stroke away (अ), while some can either do or not depending on the person writing (थ); also that all characters need to be attached to the line at the top, but with some one can choose from which side to do it - left or right (छ). Are these observations correct?


I wrote another question about the intercompatibility of different abugidas in the South-Asian languages sub-forum.

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Re: A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-07-17, 4:33

Woods wrote:I wasn't able to find two क's on top of each other anywhere on the Internet

I found one here just below where it says "The symbol क (ka) may be compressed to क्‍ ", but if I try to copy the stacked kka, it becomes क्क when I paste it here. If I'm understand correctly (not sure), you type
क + ् + कIt gives you क्क, but if you have the right language and keyboard settings installed (which I don't) it can also stack them like it does on that site.

Image

Is it possible to type the "half-characters", i.e. the short forms without the vertical strokes, as standalone characters on a computer?

How do I write a half letter?
Basically, the same as above: half letters are written by adding ् after the letter.
मान + ् + छे gives you मान्छे (again, if you have the right language and keyboard settings installed).

Woods wrote:Or maybe I didn't know how to search?

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but it might help: Nepali keyboard layout ligatures and Nepali keyboard layout conjuncts or Nepali virama unicode

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Re: A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby Woods » 2021-07-27, 16:54

It seems like they aren't using too many computers out there. My Linux has only one layout available which seems to be one of two variants - Traditional and Phonetic. I have the Phonetic only. I haven't found enough information about whether the traditional is capable of doing things that the phonetic one can't.

There is this website where you can choose one of both layouts and type with the mouse cursor, and in the instructions it's said that it's possible to type standalone half-letters by pressing the letter + the no-consonant marker (the one that looks like a reversed comma) + a "zero-width jointer located on [shift][x] key". That actually worked, but only on that virtual keyboard when selecting the Traditional variant. I am yet to find if it can be done with the phonetic one and how. I've been looking for it because I want to be able to type these half-letters for learning purposes.

https://www.branah.com/nepali

On my Android phone, I again have the Phonetic variant only, in addition to that "Devanagari" option that I've used so far. I guess it is meant for other languages and probably has more functionalities, but it will be confusing if I have different layouts on different devices. I wasn't able to find the same Devanagari layout on my PC under either Nepali or Hindi, but my operating system is generally not so good at input methods for non-Western languages.


Linguaphile wrote:
Woods wrote:I wasn't able to find two क's on top of each other anywhere on the Internet

I found one here just below where it says "The symbol क (ka) may be compressed to क्‍ ", but if I try to copy the stacked kka, it becomes क्क when I paste it here.

Yeah, it seem like it reads it as two different letters, because even though they're stacked on top of each other, I can select half of it and it's sliced from top to bottom. So the person who made that website has probably encoded two different fonts so that we see the letter positions differently.


Linguaphile wrote:half letters are written by adding ् after the letter.
मान + ् + छे

That works only if you have another letter coming after that as part of the same word (what I mean in my 2nd paragraph above :)

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Re: A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-14, 16:01

Woods wrote:It seems like they aren't using too many computers out there.

I'm not sure I can really help you find what you're looking for if you're even still interested in it (you probably aren't), but :shock: ...phones have become increasingly common in India as far as I can tell. People very commonly use Latin script when writing in their languages online, though, and unfortunately seem to feel little motivation to change that.

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Re: A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby Woods » 2022-02-16, 22:20

vijayjohn wrote:I'm not sure I can really help you find what you're looking for if you're even still interested in it (you probably aren't), but :shock: ...

If I remember well, I was asking if there was a way to render on the screen the "half-letters", i.e. the ones that normally connect with the following one but without the succeeding consonant or inherent vowel. I was looking for something like that to use in my notes, and also the vowel diacritics separated from the consonants if there are such symbols in UniCode. I think I've seen the half-letters separately, although with some circle attached to them, which I would rather have them without, but that is better than nothing.

Also I haven't looked into Nepali for half a year (well, somebody was teaching me how to say "how was your weekend" last week, but I haven't even learnt that yet :)

And I've got like ten different other important things to do right now, that's why I haven't done that thing on racism that we were talking about yet.

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Re: A couple of Nepali / Hindi / Devanagari questions

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-17, 21:28

Yes, I'm not aware of how to avoid the dotted circle, and don't worry about the thing on racism. Take your time. :)


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