Introduction
Along with the number of languages and scripts involved, Indic languages provide challenges to developers because of their complexity and orthographic nature.
Linguistically, India is a unique country. No other region has a comparative variety of distinct languages and scripts. Apart from some shared general characteristics, they are different enough that developers should understand their individual characteristics.
India has 18 official languages:
| Language | Script |
|---|---|
| Bengali | Bengali |
|
Assamese Manipuri |
Assamese, nearly identical with Bengali script |
| Gujarati | Gujarati |
|
Hindi Marathi Konkani Sanskrit Nepali |
Devanagari |
| Kannada | Kannada |
| Kashmiri | Sharada/Urdu/Devanagari |
| Malayalam | Malayalam |
| Punjabi | Gurmukhi/Urdu |
| Oriya | Oriya |
| Sindhi | Devanagari/Urdu |
| Tamil | Tamil |
| Telugu | Telugu |
| Urdu | Devanagari/Urdu |
The written forms of Indic languages behave differently from scripts such as English. For example, as you read these lines in English you pronounce the syllables in a strict left-to-right sequence of consonants and vowels. In Indic scripts, however, visual pronunciation indicators in a syllable do not always occur from left to right. This behavior creates specific problems in the creation of computing solutions for these languages.
Another difficulty is the lack of a standard definition for the behavior of Indic languages. We have made some progress in getting achieving consensus for a single ‘definition’ of each language and making it available for linguists to perfect and developers to use. This consensus may later function as a standard.
In the following pages we briefly cover a vast subject and address the general behavioral aspects of Indic languages.
