Telegraph
Code for Marathi
Telegraph Code for Marathi
I suppose
a telegraph key could be regarded as an office machine at a pinch
And the designing of a dot-dash code for Marathi could be a proper
subject for the session on the Development of Reference Works, Office
Machines and Teaching Materials.
In order
to follow the argument the three annexures should be kept in sight:
1.
The Existing Code for Marathi and Hindi
2.
Key to the International Morse Code.
3.
The Code proposed for Marathi.
It is
a well-known piece of practical experience that the facility offered
by the Indian Post and Telegraph for sending telegrams in Indian languages
is not as popular as one could wish and that people still prefer to
send telegrams in English. (If they do not know English they first
get their message translated into English.) The only major exception
is probably reporting for Indian language newspapers. I mention this
fact only to bring out that there is still scope for improvement before
things get into a fixed groove and that such a technical improvement
may also contribute to overcoming the sales resistance technical sending
telegrams in Indian languages.
Some
of the shortcoming of the existing code as they appear to one student
of linguistic are the following:
(1) Granting that any coding of the Devanagari
alphabet (or any other alphabet on the same plan) is going to call
for more symbols than the coding of the Roman Alphabet in the International
Morse Code, the existing code is often unnecessarily large. I see no particular advantage for the frills, ,
, , ; one could
as well use sequences +, etc. Is it really necessary to have separate
coding for the independent
and attached forms for the vowels? + + etc. The
telegraphists brain may find it less burdensome to carry out the
conversion from + to
+ (and back) than to stroe an extra set of rules:
No market for
prefix E for
Prefix T for
prefix I for
Similar arguments apply to the T-prefix forms of
consonants: I am not sure
that the distinction between and
( + ) will be correctly followed (K-ID versus TK-ID ) in practice.
(2) Some harmonization with the International Code
seems to have been attempted: K for
, C for ,
U for attached
, etc. This principle could have been pushed a
little further by coding as rather than Q and not coding as X; by coding as D rather than Z and leaving
Z for coding ; by attempting to avoid
using F for attached ; and so on.
(3) The
motive behind using two-letter codes in which the first letter is
so to say a marking prefix is obviously to increase the memorizability
of the coding. But consistency has not always been maintained: aspirates
bear the prefix E but TI is
an exception; the attached form of
is not EA as one would expect from the rest of the table but A and
thus linking it up misleadingly to .
(4) The code falls short of meeting all the requirements
of Marathi: Marathi has a
distinction between and (both but pronounced ry-y and ry respectively, the
hyphen standing for the point of Syllabic division; cf. also for r-ry) and between , and (both +, but pronounced rh-h and-rh respectively).
The proposed
code removes some of these defects, exploits some of the good points
of the existing code by pushing them further, and at the same time
attempts to depart from is as little as possible.
Some room is also left for smooth adaptation to the Hindi writing
system and to those Indian alphabets which are on the same plan as
the Devanagari alphabet. The
chief innovations are: (1) The use of doubling as a marker for long
vowels: II,
II, EE etc. (2) The use of virāma
(code IQ) is to be limited to situations where ordinary orthography
actually has is (as in ). The so-celled intrinsic vowel
is symbolized positively by T as in ordinary Romanization of the Devanagari
alphabet. The symbol T was picked up because it is short enough (just
one dash): is a high-frequency vowel in most Indian languages. ( and
will be KT-II and K-II respectively).
The numerals
are of course shared by all the three codes (see the three Annexures).
ANNEXURE 1
The Existing
Code for Marathi and Hindi
Some symbols ( ,
) are useful
only for Marathi; some only for Hindi (,
; the words
, , ) the rest for both the languages.
The capital
Roman letters stand for corresponding International Morse Code (for
Key, see Annexure2).
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TA
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A
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D
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TD
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ED
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IA
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U
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TU
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EU
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ID
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IU
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F
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TF
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EF
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IF
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O
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TO
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EO
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IO
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.
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EN
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IN
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:
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EA
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.
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T
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E
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K
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TK
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EK
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IK
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G
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TG
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EG
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IG
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J
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EV
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IV
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TC
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EC
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IC
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TJ
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EJ
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IJ
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I
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EL
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IL
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W
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T
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E
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I
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Z
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T
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E
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I
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N
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EM
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IM
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P
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TI
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B
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TW
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EW
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IW
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M
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TZ
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EZ
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IZ
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Y
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TN
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R
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TP
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EP
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IP
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L
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TB
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EB
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IB
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V
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TM
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S
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TY
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H
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-
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TR
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-
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ER
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-
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TL
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TV
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ES
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IS
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EH
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IH
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TS
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TH
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EY
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IY
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Q
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TQ
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EQ
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IQ
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X
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TX
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EX
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IX
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MM
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TMM
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EMM
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IMM
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1
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1
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2
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2
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3
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4
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7
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8
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8
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9
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9
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0
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0
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ANNEXURE 2
Key to the International Morse Code
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A
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P
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B
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Q
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C
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R
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D
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S
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E
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T
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F
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U
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G
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V
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H
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W
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I
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X
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J
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Y
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K
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Z
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L
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M
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N
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O
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1
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2
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3
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7
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4
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8
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5
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9
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6
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0
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ANNEXURE 3
The Code Proposed
for Marathi
The capital Roman letters stand for the corresponding
International Morse Code (for Key, see Annexure 2).
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T
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TT
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I
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II
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U
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UU
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EE
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AI
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OO
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AU
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IM
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FM
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IF
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IQ
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K
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EK
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G
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EG
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NG
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C
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EC
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J
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EJ
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NQ
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E
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E
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IN
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W
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EW
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D
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ED
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N
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P
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EP
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B
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EB
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M
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Y
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R
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L
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V
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ES
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IS
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S
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H
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Il
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X
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Q
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IR
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EN
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EM
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ER
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1
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1
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2
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2
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3
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4
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4
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5
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5
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6
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7
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7
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8
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8
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9
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9
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0
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0
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Some of the possible extensions
for other Indian languages are following: short E. short
O, , Z, O, ,
EO, F. Note that in Marathi is merely a co-occurrence of and
(as in ֛ brandy).
COLOPHON
This was presented at
a seminar on Languages and society in India at the Indian Institute
of Advanced study, Shimla, October 1967 and published in Language
and Society in India limited Arabinda
poddar. The Institute, Shimla, 1969, +520-4.
