Hope many of you would have seen the movie "Indian", in which the letter written by the killer will be found. That letter will have old tamil alphabets...that is "ik" and "ku" will be a single letter in the word "makkalukku". The investigator in the movie will say that that style of writing vanished in 1940's.
Today I happened to see a board written in Kannada, where I found the same "ik" and "ka" written as a single letter for the word "Deccan".
I remember seeing the same in malayalam also.
Secondly, the word "malai" (mountain) in tamil contains "lai" as a single letter in olden days, with a twist in front of "la". Even now my grand-parents write like that.
I believe these changes have come into existence in last 50-60 years. My question here is -- When did "iyartamil" (writing tamil!) face this transition in the letters, whereas other south indian languages still continue to write the same way ? And also, why this change happened ?
Hi I remember one change coming in the early 80's when tamil was made more apt for the typewriter. they used to call it periyar tamil. but changes may occur in any language when the medium of writing changes.
the chisel- eluththaani- pen- keyboard.
there are languages like malay which use the roman alphabet for it lacks a script of its own. venketesh
As I know, Malayalam script has also changed a lot. The way 'ru', 'nu', ku (uharangal) are written is different now. As another member pointed, it may be to help incorporate the letters for computing and other moden usage.