Periyar E. V. Ramasamy and Tamil Grammar - Tamil Alphabet Reform

Tamil Alphabet Reform

Periyar's ideas on Tamil alphabet reforms and his reasons were for the following such as the vowel 'ஈ' (i), having a cursive and looped representation of the short form, 'இ' (I). In stone inscriptions of 400 or 500 years ago, many Tamil letters are found in other shapes. As a matter of necessity and advantage to cope with the printing technology, Periyar thought that it was sensible to change a few letters, reduce the number of letters, and alter a few signs. He further explained that the older and the more divine a language and its letters were said to be, they need reform. Because of changes brought about by means of modern transport and international contact, and happenings that have attracted words and products from many countries, foreign words and their pronunciations have been assimilated into Tamil quite easily. Just as a few compound characters have separate signs to indicate their length as in ' கா ', ' கே ' (kA:, kE:), Periyar argued why should not other compound characters like ' கி ', ' கீ ', 'கு ', ' கூ ' (kI, ki:,kU, ku:) (indicated integrally as of now), also have separate signs. Further, changing the shape of letters, creating new symbols and adding new letters and similarly, dropping those that are redundant, were quite essential according to Periyar. Thus, the glory and excellence of a language and its script depend on how easily they can be understood or learned and on nothing else".