System and method for writing Indian languages using English alphabet

• US 20030195741A1
• Filed: 04/12/2002
• Published: 10/16/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/12/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Anees B. Mani, Babu V. Mani
• Original Assignee: Anees B. Mani, Babu V. Mani
• Inventors: Mani, Anees B., Mani, Babu V.
• Granted Patent: US 7,177,794 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/8
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/53 Processing of non-Latin text kana-to-kanji conversion G06F40/129; vowelisation G06F40/232

Abstract

A system and method for writing Indian languages using the English writing scheme is provided that includes specifying a script using the English alphabet to represent the various characters and character combinations in various Indian languages. The specified script follows the writing conventions of English. This script is based on how the Indian languages are spoken and rules are specified to facilitate mapping the sounds represented in English characters to the native language in its written form. This common method is intended for writing Hindi and related languages, such as Sanskrit, Marathi, and Gujarathi, and Bengali and somewhat distant, but closely related Dravidian languages, such as Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, and Telegu.

Claims

1. A system and method for writing Indian languages, spoken in the Indian sub-continent, using the English writing scheme, where:

the Indian language vowels, consonants, and their combinations are substituted with English character strings composed of the English characters A through Z; and

each letter of the English alphabet has the same value whether it is written as an upper case character or a lower case character.

2. The system and method of claim 1, where the English representation is a phonetic representation of the Indian language.

3. The system and method of claim 1, where the present invention is used as a language independent writing system and method for Indian and related languages.

4. The system and method of claim 1, where English writing conventions, such as use of upper case, which is consistently used to begin a sentence and to indicate proper nouns, use of lower case, hyphen, and punctuation marks are used without any restriction.

5. The system and method of claim 1, where the Indian language alphabet consists of the English character strings, A, AA, I, II, U, UU, RW, RWU, LW, LWU, E, EE, AI, O, OO, AU, MX, NX, M, HX, AE, OE, XA, and XAA representing the vowels, the English character X representing absence of vowel following a consonant, the English character strings, K, KH, G, GH, NG, C, CH, J, JH, NJ, T, TD, D, DT, NH, TH, TJ, DJ, DH, N, P, F, B, BH, M, Y, R, RH, L, LH, ZH, V, Z, SH, S, H, TT, NT, ST, Q, KQ, GW, DW, DTW, NN, PF, YW, DJH, LHH, NGH, NHH, NJH, THH, KQH, GWH, DWH, NNH, PFH, YWH, TXT, NXN, KL, GL, PL, FL, BL, ML, VL, SL, ZL, and HL representing the consonants, and any combinations of these character strings with or without the use of the character X used to uniquely identify characters when they are combined.

6. The system and method of claim 1, where the English character X is used to separate two characters in the Indian language, when juxtaposition of two characters might lead to misinterpretation of the resulting character string.

7. The system and method of claim 1, where the English character X is used to indicate the absence of a vowel following a consonant.

8. The system and method of claim 1, where the English character X indicates the presence of a combined vowel, where one of the consonants M, N, or H is combined with a vowel to form a distinct vowel in the Indian language.

9. The system and method of claim 1, where the use of the English character X can be reduced or even eliminated by using intelligent computer programs, which encapsulates language specific rules to unambiguously identify the correct spelling from the context with or without the use of dictionaries.

10. The system and method of claim 1, where the English character H is used as a suffix to represent the doubling of Indian characters that require two English characters for their representation as single characters as is the case when the Indian characters, NG, NJ, NH, TH, DJ, LH, NN, GW, DW, and PF are doubled, eliminating the need for four English characters to represent them.

11. The system and method of claim 1, where juxtaposition of consecutive consonants without intervening vowels represents a combined character in the Indian language, provided the resulting character string does not conflict with a defined character in the Indian language.

12. The system and method of claim 1, where a computer program performs a word by word real-time translation of the written text using the English characters into the corresponding Indian language text.

13. The system and method of claim 1, where a computer program, generally known as a macro used with word processing, spread-sheet or similar software, is used to translate selected portions of a text written using the English characters into the corresponding Indian language text.

14. The system and method of claim 1, where software utilities, such as word processing, spell checking, sorting, and database storage and retrieval, which are generally available for English, are utilized for the Indian language written using English characters.

15. The system and method of claim 1, where software programs are written to perform word processing in Indian and related languages, including but not limited to Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Marathi, Sanskrit, Bengali, and Gujarathi.

16. The system and method of claim 1, where text to speech and speech to text technologies are applied to Indian and related languages.

17. The system and method of claim 1, where the English representation includes special identifiers, including, but not limited to Indian language identification, foreign language identification, font identification, alternate spelling, and key words to be replaced with stored information from a dictionary.

18. The system and method of claim 1, where the present invention is applied to a foreign language, which has a similar alphabet or writing scheme, including but not limited to Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Burmese, and other South Asian languages.

19. The system and method of claim 1, where a subset of the facilities provided by the present invention is used with or without extensions for one or more languages.