Having already been used to writing Telugu using English characters
back in India, without a consistent notation, we have to now adapt
that system to the consistency imposed and demanded by RIT. Actually,
the "demand" comes into play only when you have te RIT software, and
use it to see or print the stuff. Otherwise, for information exchange
in this medium, where I look at it on the screen and read it to myself,
or print it as it is in Roman characters, a liitle bit of inconsistency,
when context clearly overrides the interpretation, is not that problematic.
The use of "ch" for charitra instead of caritra is one such that we
have carried as a baggage. I see that RIT allows (c,ch) and (C,Ch,CH,c')
for the two sounds. To me, too confusing an array of choices, until
one has adapted to the particular (if consistent) style adopted by
the wRITer in question.
There lies the problem. I find myself inconsistently following sometimes
an "I", sometimes "ee". Logic and intuition clash here. Same thing
with "oo", and "U". u/U, i/I seem logical, u/oo, i/ee seem inituitive.
Sometimes I write Suresh, many times, surEsh, where as it should be surES -?
As far as writing satyanaaraayana, satyanArAyaNa, Satyanarayana - I give up.
Because we know these words so throughly, the letters on the screen or
paper serve as simple cues for the word, and not all of them have to be
correct for the word to be read correctly. Hwoever, when the same stuff
is sent to a printer, unless we infuse the same amount of context sensitivity,
and whatever to an underlying spell-checker/grammar-checker in the software,
quite a few mistakes would be made.
The state of the art with respect to SC/GC's even for English is far short
of what is needed, as compared with a human editor.
Indicating breaks in a word by a hyphen does make the word to be read
easier. As in the example "kalaga-lEdanu-kunTAnu". Here the breaks are
quite arbitrary. I come across the same problem in an entirely different
situation; when typing Telugu stuff for a magazine. To make the lines less
jagged, often I have to break a word, and absent clear rules for the
same, I impose my own whimsical rules. In "kalagalEdankunTAnu", the break
after kalaga- seems to be more intuitive than after lEdanu-. If you look
at the isolated words "kalaga, lEdu, anukunTAnu", the breaks cannot
happen at the places indicated.
More grist for the mill.........
Ramakrishna
PS: One would think that this fodder is clearly suitable to the SCIT.
However, how does one suddenly jump into the forum, with references to
prior posts that haven't made that leap?