Simplified Tamil script or Reformed Tamil script refers to several governmental reforms to the Tamil script.
![A list of simplified Tamil syllables, 7 rows by 2 columns.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Simplified_tamil_script.png/300px-Simplified_tamil_script.png)
In 1978, the Government of Tamil Nadu reformed certain syllables of the modern Tamil script with view to simplify the script.[1] It aimed to standardize non-standard ligatures of ஆ ā, ஒ o, ஓ ō and ஐ ai syllables.[2] These reforms only spread in India and the digital world, whereas Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, Reunion and other Tamil speaking regions continue to use the traditional syllables.[citation needed]
Furthermore, only 13 out of 15 of the proposed simplifications were successful as people continued to use ஐ ai instead of the proposed அய் ay and ஔ au instead of the proposed அவ் av.[3]
History
editPeriyar E. V. Ramasamy was one of the people to suggest script reform.[4] A Script Reform Committee was formed in 1947 under Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, while in 1951 the Government of Tamil Nadu accepted its recommendations, it failed to enforce them.[5] He encouraged it on the basis that it allegedly eased typesetting as Periyar was himself a typesetter of his newspapers in early days. Other person who was responsible for helping Periyar was [1]
This was preceded by many reforms during early 20th century, led by Tamil purist movement, which purged most of the Grantha consonants from the Tamil-Grantha script (except ஜ ja, ஷ sha, ஸ sa, ஹ ha) and standardized the modern Tamil alphabet.[6]
References
edit- ^ Bellary Shamanna Kesavan, Prathivadibayangaram Narasimha Venkatachari (1984). History of printing and publishing in India: a story of cultural re-awakening, Volume 1. National Book Trust. p. 82.
- ^ Unicode Consortium. (2019). South and Central Asia I: Official Scripts of India. In The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0 (pp. 489–498).
- ^ Mello, Fernando. "Evolution of Tamil typedesign" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 March 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2011.
- ^ Caṇmukam, Ce. Vai. (1983). Aspects of language development in Tamil. All India Tamil Linguistics Association. p. 96.
- ^ James, Gregory (2000). Colporuḷ: a history of Tamil dictionaries. Cre-A.
- ^ K. Kailasapathy (1979), The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-evaluation, Social Scientist, Vol. 7, No. 10, pp. 23-27