System and method for writing Indian languages using English alphabet

#The present invention relates generally to a transliteration system, and more particularly, to a system and method for representing Indian languages, such as Malayalam, Hindi, and Tamil, using the English alphabet.

#Indian languages in general are written the way they are pronounced. Many of the vowels and consonants found in the Indian languages are the same. Some have a few more and some have fewer characters than others do. There are different character sets, and the writing schemes have different sets of rules. In the written form, each language has hundreds of character combinations. It is extremely difficult to represent them in a standard keyboard. There have been some attempts to reduce the number of characters in each language to help with electronic print media. For instance, the print media has stopped using many of the former consonant-vowel combinations, where each such combination represented a separate character, and started using independent vowel symbols along with the consonants. The same way, many combined consonants also gave way to consonants written as separate characters, thus reducing the total number of characters required in a language. With such recent innovations, the Indian writing scheme can be described in terms of stand-alone vowels, vowel symbols used along with consonants, the consonants, and a few special characters, and the rules governing the character combinations.

#Even with the reduction in the number of characters supported in each language, it was not easy to represent the total number of characters required in an Indian language in a standard keyboard. For instance, in Malayalam, which is a South Indian language, there are fifteen stand-alone vowels and fourteen vowel symbols, and thirty-six consonants and a number of other special characters. Indian languages are case insensitive languages, i.e., the concept of lower case and upper case characters does not exist in Indian languages. Even by distinguishing the upper case letter keys from the lower case letter keys, the standard English keyboard only supports fifty-two letters in total. As such, people began to use other character keys to represent the additional letters.

#For a more complete understanding of the present invention and its advantages, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals represent like parts, in which:

#FIG. 1 shows the base vowels present in Indian languages. The vowel forms shown in FIG. 1 are the vowel forms used when these vowels appear on their own, i.e., when they are not combined with consonants. The English character representation for the Indian language characters is referred to as B-Script. Malayalam is a South Indian language, which is also the official language of Kerala. Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit use Devanagiri script. Other North Indian language scripts are based on Devanagiri. When an entry is not applicable or not required, it is indicated by a “—”.

#FIG. 2 shows the vowel symbols, corresponding to the stand-alone vowels shown in FIG. 1. Indian languages use vowel symbols when vowels are combined with consonants. In the English character representation, referred to as B-Script, for the Indian vowels, there is no distinction between the stand-alone forms of the vowels and the vowel symbols used in combination with consonants. This distinction between the two forms of the vowels is necessary when a text written in B-script is translated to an Indian script. This distinction can be inferred from the context of the vowel. FIG. 2 uses two consecutive dots, “..” to show the relative placement of vowel symbols when they are combined with consonants.

#FIG. 1 categorizes vowel sounds into three groups, short vowels 101 through 105, long vowels 106 through 110, and other vowels 111 through 120. English character A is used to represent the short vowel 101. English character E is used to represent the short vowel 102. English character I is used to represent the short vowel 103. English character O is used to represent the short vowel 104. English character U is used to represent the short vowel 105. All letters are treated the same whether they are written in the upper case or lower case.

#Of the vowels shown in FIG. 1, Hindi and related languages using the Devanagiri script do not support short E 102 and short O 104, which are present in Malayalam and other south Indian languages. However, the short E 102 and short O 104 can be translated to the Devanagiri EE 107 and OO 109 and a native speaker can understand the distinction between the short and the long forms. This distinction is important if it is necessary to represent South Indian words using these short vowel forms are written in Hindi.

#Long vowels 106 through 110 are used in most Indian languages. Writing the corresponding short vowels twice next to each other forms long vowels. The English character string AA represents long vowel 106. The English character string EE represents long vowel 107. The English character string 11 represents long vowel 108. The English character string OO represents long vowel 109. The English character string UU represents long vowel 110. All letters are treated the same whether they are written in the upper case or lower case. If B-script is used exclusively for an Indian language, which does not support both short and long forms of these vowels, then either representation in B-script can be mapped into the same character in the Indian language. Some Devanagiri fonts have characters to indicate the above distinction between short E 102 and long EE 107. The same way, such fonts also distinguish between short O 104 and long OO 109. B-script maintains this distinction, even if software programs written exclusively for specific languages may only support the characters found in that language and may or may not maintain such distinctions.