Simplified Tamil script

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.
Left column shows pre-modern forms and right column contain the corresponding reformed representation

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.

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

Periyar 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

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
  1. 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.
  2. Unicode Consortium. (2019). South and Central Asia I: Official Scripts of India. In The Unicode Standard, Version 12.0 (pp. 489–498).
  3. Mello, Fernando. "Evolution of Tamil typedesign" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 March 2012. Retrieved 31 December 2011.
  4. Caṇmukam, Ce. Vai. (1983). Aspects of language development in Tamil. All India Tamil Linguistics Association. p. 96.
  5. James, Gregory (2000). Colporuḷ: a history of Tamil dictionaries. Cre-A.
  6. K. Kailasapathy (1979), The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-evaluation, Social Scientist, Vol. 7, No. 10, pp. 23-27
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