ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2525
2002-11-21
Universal Multiple-Octet Coded Character Set
International Organization for Standardization
Organisation internationale de normalisationеждународная организация по стандартизации
Doc Type: Working Group Document
Title:On Oriya VA and WA, and a proposal to encode one Oriya letter in the UCS
Source: Michael Everson and Anthony Stone
Status:Individual Contribution
Action:For consideration by JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC
Date:
2002-11-21
FPDAM 2 for ISO/IEC 10646-1 contains U+0B35 ORIYA LETTER VA with a glyph that may not beappropriate for that character name. The glyph ˇ that appears in the FPDAM looks like a ligature of ìU+0B13 ORIYA LETTER O and ¨ U+0B2C ORIYA LETTER BA. However, this may be an example of the rightglyph for the wrong character.
Mahapatra 1996 shows a variation of the same glyph ˛ with a transliteration v and a phonetic
representation [w]. ISCII 1991 also shows ˇ corresponding to va. However, very different glyphs areshown in a number of other sources. Reichsdruckerei 1924 and Haarmann 1990 both give a BA with small
ring above the ring of the BA (˚ and ˙ respectively); a book called Or.iā Lipi at the Universitätsbibliothek
Tübingen shows BA with a dot within the ring (˝ ); again, the transliteration is va. Two very old sources
give a peculiar glyph for va: Faulmann 1880 shows ¯ and Taylor 1883 shows ˘ ; Diringer 1947
reproduces this: ˜. (Faulmann also gives the unusual ˆ for fa.)
A number of other features lead us believe that the glyph ˇ is properly used for wa rather than va. In thefirst place, subscripted BA ¨ is pronounced [wa] in Oriya, and if this letter is in origin a ligature of O andBA this makes good sense. Now, compare the chart from Or. iā Lipi, which shows both ˝ and ˇ side byside in the alphabet. In our view, the former ˝ represents va (being a modification of ¨ ba) and the latterˇ represents wa: a combination of ì the vowel o and subjoined ¨ ba, intended to show the sound w inforeign loan words. Praharaj 1931 also describes this as representing “the English sound of W”.
Looking at the Oriya script in general, it is useful to explain why these two extended letters exist. SinceSanskrit µ® vana becomes Oriya ¨ ® bana (in orthography and pronunciation), it is reasonable for Oriya
to have an extended letter va for use in academic/technical text. For instance, basic Oriya script cannot
distinguish Sanskrit ¨µ bava from ¨¨ baba or µµ vava. It appears sensible that a modified version ofOriya BA would have been created to fill the need for this distinction (note that a different glyph ˘ is also
found for the same thing). It could also be useful in such contexts for English [v], although we have notseen this.
The extended Oriya character ˇ wa, however, originally seems to have been used only in Perso-Arabic or
English loan words for [w]. See the examples below from Praharaj 1931. The ISCII 1991 table with ˇparallel to va in other scripts may perhaps be explained by phonetics. Similarly, in ISCII 1991 Bengali tantastha a (pronounced [dJ]) is parallel to Ø ya and Bengali semivowel k ya [j] is put separately as ﬂ ẏa,with the same treatment of the equivalent Oriya characters (ﬂ [dJ] and Ø [j] respectively).
It is our belief that the glyph for ORIYA LETTER VA now being added to the standard should be ˝ , and that asecond character, ORIYA LETTER WA with a glyph ˇ, should be added as soon as possible to enable Oriya
users to make a choice between which of these characters they prefer to employ.
1Diringer, David. 1996 (1947). The alphabet: a key to the history of mankind. New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal. ISBN 81-215-0780-0
Faulmann, Carl. 1990 (1880). Das Buch der Schrift. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn. ISBN 3-8218-1720-8
Haarmann, Harald. 1990. Die Universalgeschichte der Schrift. Frankfurt: Campus. ISBN 3-593-34346-0
Mahapatra, B. P. 1996. “Oriya Writing”, in Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds. The world’s writing
systems. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0
Praharaj, G. C. 1931. Pūrn. acandra Or. iā Bhās.ākos.a. Cuttack.
Reichsdruckerei. 1924. Alphabete und Schriftzeichen des Morgen- und Abendlandes, zum allgemeinen
Gebrauch mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Buchgewerbes. Unter Mitwerkung von Fachgelehrten
zusammengestellt in der Reichsdruckerei. Berlin: Reichsdruckerei.
Taylor, Isaac. 1883. The alphabet: an account of the origin and development of letters. Vol. 1: Semiticalphabets; Vol. 2: Aryan alphabets. London: Kegan Paul.

ÖÜáàâäã‡åèêìî
ïñóòôöõúùûü†°¢£§•¶ß®
™´¨≠ÆØ∞≤≥˝ı
ﬂ∏∂∑πÙ
-Ç -É -Å2

From Praharaj 1931. The beginning of the entry for ˇ WA, following the entry for ≤ LA.
3

From Praharaj 1931. More from the same entry, mentioning for ®¬ Ü ÖÙ∞ ‘ˇ’ nūa aks.ara ‘wa’ (newletter ‘wa’).
4

5

From Praharaj 1931. Showing ˇ WA used for Urdu words, transliterated as wa. On other pages the letter is used in English loan words.

A. Administrative
1. Title
Proposal to encode one Oriya letter in the UCS.
2. Requester’s nameMichael Everson & Anthony Stone
3. Requester type (Member body/Liaison/Individual contribution)
Individual contribution.
4. Submission date
2002-11-21
5. Requester’s reference (if applicable)
6. Choose one of the following:
6a. This is a complete proposal
Yes.
6b. More information will be provided later
No.

B. Technical -- General
1. Choose one of the following:
1a. This proposal is for a new script (set of characters)
No.
Proposed name of script
1b. The proposal is for addition of character(s) to an existing blockYes.
1b. Name of the existing block
Oriya.
2. Number of characters in proposal
1
3. Proposed category (see section II, Character Categories)
Category A.
4a. Proposed Level of Implementation (1, 2 or 3) (see clause 14, ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000)
Level 1.
4b. Is a rationale provided for the choice?
No.
4c. If YES, reference
5a. Is a repertoire including character names provided?
ORIYA LETTER WA.
5b. If YES, are the names in accordance with the character naming guidelines in Annex L of ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000?
Yes.
5c. Are the character shapes attached in a legible form suitable for review?
Yes.
6a. Who will provide the appropriate computerized font (ordered preference: True Type, or PostScript format) for
publishing the standard?
Michael Everson.
6b. If available now, identify source(s) for the font (include address, e-mail, ftp-site, etc.) and indicate the tools used:
Michael Everson, Fontographer.
7a. Are references (to other character sets, dictionaries, descriptive texts etc.) provided?
Yes.
7b. Are published examples of use (such as samples from newspapers, magazines, or other sources) of proposedcharacters attached?
Yes.
8. Does the proposal address other aspects of character data processing (if applicable) such as input, presentation,sorting, searching, indexing, transliteration etc. (if yes please enclose information)?
No.
9. Submitters are invited to provide any additional information about Properties of the proposed Character(s) or
Script that will assist in correct understanding of and correct linguistic processing of the proposed character(s) or
script. Examples of such properties are: Casing information, Numeric information, Currency information, Displaybehaviour information such as line breaks, widths etc., Combining behaviour, Spacing behaviour, Directionalbehaviour, Default Collation behaviour, relevance in Mark Up contexts, Compatibility equivalence and other Unicode
normalization related information. See the Unicode standard at http://www.unicode.org for such information on otherscripts.
Also
seeUnicode
Character
Database
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/

6UnicodeCharacterDatabase.html and associated Unicode Technical Reports for information needed for considerationby the Unicode Technical Committee for inclusion in the Unicode Standard.
Spacing letter, category “Lo”, bidi category “L” (strong left to right)

C. Technical -- Justification
1. Has this proposal for addition of character(s) been submitted before? If YES, explain.
No. ORIYA LETTER VA has been.
2a. Has contact been made to members of the user community (for example: National Body, user groups of the scriptor characters, other experts, etc.)?
No.
2b. If YES, with whom?
2c. If YES, available relevant documents
3. Information on the user community for the proposed characters (for example: size, demographics, information
technology use, or publishing use) is included?
Dictionary users.
4a. The context of use for the proposed characters (type of use; common or rare)
Phonetic transcription of foreign words in Oriya.
4b. Reference
Praharaj 1931.
5a. Are the proposed characters in current use by the user community?
Yes.
5b. If YES, where?
By dictionary publishers.
6a. After giving due considerations to the principles in Principles and Procedures document (a WG 2 standing
document) must the proposed characters be entirely in the BMP?
Yes.
6b. If YES, is a rationale provided?
Yes.
6c. If YES, reference
Oriya character.
7. Should the proposed characters be kept together in a contiguous range (rather than being scattered)?
8a. Can any of the proposed characters be considered a presentation form of an existing character or character
sequence?
No.
8b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
8c. If YES, reference
9a. Can any of the proposed characters be encoded using a composed character sequence of either existing charactersor other proposed characters?
No.
9b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
9c. If YES, reference
10a. Can any of the proposed character(s) be considered to be similar (in appearance or function) to an existing
character?
No.
10b. If YES, is a rationale for its inclusion provided?
10c. If YES, reference
11a. Does the proposal include use of combining characters and/or use of composite sequences (see clauses 4.12 and4.14 in ISO/IEC 10646-1: 2000)?
No.
11b. If YES, is a rationale for such use provided?
11c. If YES, reference
12a. Is a list of composite sequences and their corresponding glyph images (graphic symbols) provided?
No.
12b. If YES, reference
13a. Does the proposal contain characters with any special properties such as control function or similar semantics?
No.
13b. If YES, describe in detail (include attachment if necessary)
14a. Does the proposal contain any Ideographic compatibility character(s)?
No.
14b. If YES, is the equivalent corresponding unified ideographic character(s) identified?

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