Konkani belongs to somewhat a unique class of Wikimedia languages where many scripts may be used for the same content. Not exclusive, this list includes at least English, Devanagari, Kannada and Malayalam. The ideal goal in the case of a Konkani Wikimedia project is to have an input system in any script from the above set as the user prefers and then also to render the output in any script from the above set. The content itself may be stored in some particular script or code space. If I remember correctly, there have been several discussions in possible techniques and tools to enable such a feature. Amir (Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי), Shiju Alex or Santhosh Thottingal may be able to enlighten us more about this. This may also be the case for Sanskrit, as Sanskrit used to be scribed in different scripts (other than just in devanagari) in different regions. Perhaps, we should even have a Harward-Kyoto transliterated version for Sanskrit. On an even more ambitious scale, I dream about each Indic language being available for input and output in every other Indic scripts. (Imagine someone in Kerala trying to read and practice a Bengali poem without having to know the Bengali script itself, and vice versa.) -Viswam On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Tejaswini Niranjana <teju(a)cscs.res.in>wrote;wrote:

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Tejaswini Niranjana &lt;teju(a)cscs.res.in&gt; wrote: I wouldn't call it utopian, but it would be long-haul. One way of ensuring that work on that gets done is to frame a project idea and put it up as a project under Google Summer of Code, preferably with an interested mentor. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>

This is not a very big task. All Indic scripts are separated by decimal 128 in Unicode charts. For ex., take Hindi “ka”. Add 128 to its Unicode value to get Bengali “ka”. I had written a simple such transliterator long ago, using VB.NET. I did not write any web interface to that. Regards, Pavanaja From: wikimediaindia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaindia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Vishnu t Sent: 11 March 2013 10:26 To: Wikimedia India Community list Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Getting a new language Wikipedia going... How long a haul this could be? Asking out of curiosity. On 11 March 2013 10:17, sankarshan &lt;foss.mailinglists(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:11 AM, Tejaswini Niranjana &lt;teju(a)cscs.res.in&gt; wrote: I wouldn't call it utopian, but it would be long-haul. One way of ensuring that work on that gets done is to frame a project idea and put it up as a project under Google Summer of Code, preferably with an interested mentor. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan> _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

But then there is one issue of missing characters in some scripts. For example Tamil has very few characters. When we transliterate from other language into Tamil, say Kannada, we will have to put one character instead of another. The original character will be lost. When we transliterate back to Kannada from Tamil 2 or more characters will become just one. One classic example is the case of kaanthi and gaandhi. In Tamil, both are written same. There were huge discussions on this topic in the Indic Unicode mailing list. Thanks and regards, Pavanaja -----Original Message----- From: wikimediaindia-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimediaindia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of sankarshan Sent: 11 March 2013 13:53 To: Wikimedia India Community list Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Getting a new language Wikipedia going... On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 10:38 AM, Pavanaja U B < <mailto:pavanaja@vishvakannada.com> pavanaja(a)vishvakannada.com&gt; wrote: Then I'd say all that remains is pointing an interested party to the source code of your tool and, asking them to assess writing a web-app. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay < <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan> https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan> _______________________________________________ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Wikimediaindia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit <https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 2:39 PM, sankarshan &lt;foss.mailinglists(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Make use of Indic soundex tables http://silpa.org.in/Soundex Tables here http://thottingal.in/soundex/soundex.html Read more at http://thottingal.in/blog/2009/07/26/indicsoundex/ ~ regards Anivar

On Monday, March 11, 2013, Tejaswini Niranjana wrote: FYI, Many languages in MediaWiki has script variants with automatic script conversion. Here is my assessment on Konkani and technical instructions if somebody from Konkani community interested in this http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_in_Konkani_language Thanks Santhosh

Dear Tejaswini Niranjan, My apologies for the delay in responding, was offline for much of the day. Depending on whom you ask, you could get different replies about the script Konkani uses. My understanding is as follows: Devanagari-script Konkani = Official script in Goa. Prizes are mostly given for books in this script. Konkani studies at the university (BA and MA level, also a few PhDs) are done in this script. One daily newspaper run in this script in Goa. Roman-script Konkani = widely used in Goa due to historic reasons (the first printing press in Asia was set up here in 1556) from the mid-16th to at least the mid-20th century. Lots of writing in this script. Still used. Kannada-script Konkani = widely used in Karnataka (also among Karnataka-expats in places like Mumbai). Numerous magazines and newspapers run in this script. Malayalam-script Konkani = has been used by Konkani speakers in Kerala. Not sure how active now ... as some in Kerala have expressed an interest to shifting over to Devanagari. Perso-Arabic script Konkani = used by some (smaller) communities along the Karnataka coast. Not sure how widely used currently. Kindly note that there is also some degree of dialectical variations among the different scripts. So, in my view, automatic machine conversion from one script to another could result in incomprehensible text. But a machine conversion aided by a human knowing more than one script could work. Frederick Noronha फ्रेड्रिक नोरोन्या ಫ್ರೆದೆರಿಕ್ ನರನ್ಯಾ ഫ്രെദെരിക് നരന്യാ فريدريك نورونيا -- FN Land +91-832-240-9490 Cell +91-982-212-2436 fn(a)goa-india.org Goa,1556 titles: http://bit.ly/Goa1556Books2 Links to my books: http://fredericknoronha1.wix.com/fngoaindia On 11 March 2013 08:16, Tejaswini Niranjana &lt;teju(a)cscs.res.in&gt; wrote: