ABSTRACT
The major Dravidian scripts used today are associated with the Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu languages. All these are phonologically based, and are written from left to right. All other vowels are written as obligatory diacritics. Some are above the associated consonant, some below, some to the left side, some to the right, and some in combined positions, depending on the language. The writing system provides a symbol for a single obstruent phoneme in each articulatory position; in terms of pronunciation, this corresponds to stop and fricative allophones, voiced and voiceless. A standard reference grammar of Tamil, which includes descriptions of the writing system, is A. H. Arden. The four major scripts have been adapted to writing other Dravidian languages. Kannada script forms the basis of modern writing systems for Kodagu and Tulu adaptations are required in both cases to accommodate phonological distinctions not present in Kannada the ‘retracted’ vowels in Kodagu.
