Balti scripts

[John Peterson]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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          John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
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Greg,

I'd be interested in getting a copy of the diss too. Can you give me
the details?

As long as we're on the subject: Many Munda languages are written in a
variety of different scripts, too. For example, Santali is written in
the Roman system in some parts of Jharkhand (the system introduced by
the missionaries), in Devanagari in other areas, in Bengali script in
West Bengal and Bengali-speaking areas of the state, in Oriya script
in Orissa and Oriya-speaking areas of Jharkhand (south-east corner)
and also increasingly in Ol Ciki, a modern script which is gaining
acceptance among many of the so-called "tribals" of the area for
writing all Munda languages.

Kharia, which I'm working on, is generally written in Devanagari,
although there are a few very vocal proponents for using the Roman
script, probably due to the fact that most (Dudh) Kharia are
Christian. To my knowledge, however, there are no (or at least VERY
few) proponents for using Ol Ciki for Kharia. The issue is a very
heated one, though, especially now as more and more books are being
printed in Kharia, with the question of how one writes the language
"correctly". But even in the different scripts, there is still no
general agreement on how to write a few of the phonemes of the
language, the most difficult issue being the glottal stop and the
pre-glottalized stops.

Just out of curiosity, how is the glottal stop written in other
minority languages of the region?

John
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Peterson
FB 7, Sprachwissenschaft
Universitaet Osnabrueck
49069 Osnabrueck
Germany
Tel. (+49) 541-969-4252
Fax. (+49) 541-969-4256
Homepage: http://www.southasiabibliography.de