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| Along with the number of languages and scripts involved, Indic languages provide challenges to developers because of their complexity and orthographic nature. |
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| 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:
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Language
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Script
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| Bengali |
Bengali |
Assamese
Manipuri
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Assamese, nearly identical with Bengali script |
| Gujarati |
Gujarati |
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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.
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Continue to "Components of Indic languages"
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