How to read Marathi Text
Those who are staying out of Maharashtra for long time have difficulty in teaching Marathi to their children. Even though they use Marathi language in house and children can understand meaning of spoken Marathi and also can speak Marathi, their knowledge remains limited to casual conversation.
What they need is formal education for reading and writing in Marathi. However, no serious efforts are being made in this direction. In most of the cases, children start leaning with great enthusiasm but get discouraged soon due to complexity of Marathi characters and do not progress much beyond certain limit. Moreover, children as well as their parents cannot spare necessary time for learning or teaching.
Inability to read and write Marathi leads to ignorance about the Marathi literature, culture and children gradually become non native speakers. This has serious implication of loosing affinity for homeland, family and their native community. The future generations of people staying away from their homeland will eventually become foreign to their own homeland.
It is necessary therefore to develop easy and fast learning tools for reading and writing. Though there are translation tools available on internet, they are counter productive to actual reading and writing ability.
First interim step according to me is to train children to practise reading loudly the Marathi text stories and poems with English pronouncing substitutes. (Shri. M. N. Gogate of Marathi Vidnyan Parishad had suggested use of Hinglish ie combination of Hindi and English. However he advocated English alphabets in place of Marathi characters. ) This will help in linking the meaning of words to their pictorial representation in the form of Marathi characters.
Side by side, ways should be found to teach basic alphabet, the character recognition and tips for writing letters.
Most of the Indian languages are phonetic languages and the character sequences are organised on the basis of vocal sound. However, the glyphs used for such characters are so diverse that it is difficult to remember them by any logic. Moreover, there are many complex characters formed by joining two or more characters. ( This is not the case for English) Such joining is done directly changing the original shape of character, which adds to the complexity in recognition. Anyway, we have to accept the reality and find out some regrouping techniques for easy recognition.
I have made some regrouping based on similarity of shapes of characters.
( Modified as per Unicode format for Devnagari Ref: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/devanagari/list.htm)
Vowels
अ आ (A, AA)
इ ई (I, II)
उ ऊ (U,UU)
ए ऐ (E, AI)
ओ औ (O, AU)
अं अ: (A+ANUSVARA, A+VISARGA)
In above pairs first character has short sound length and second character has longer duration.
Grouping of characters based on shape similarity
(You will notice that some characters are members of more than one group.)
अ आ अं अ: (A, AA, AM, AHA)
उ ऊ (U, UU)
ए ऐ (E, AI)
ग म भ न (GA, MA, BHA, NA)
व ब क ख ( VA,BA,KA,KHA)
प फ ष (PA, PHA, SSA)
र स ख श ( RA, SA, KHA, SHA)
ट ठ द (TTA, TTHA, DA)
ड इ ई ह झ ज्ञ ( DDA, I, II, HA, JHA, DNYA)
त ल न ज्ञ (TA, LA, NA, DNYA)
य थ ( YA, THA)
च ज (CA, JA - opposite to each other resembling spoons)
घ ध छ (GHA, DHA, CHA)
ळ ( LLA)
Let us see if above grouping helps in remembering the character shapes easily.
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What they need is formal education for reading and writing in Marathi. However, no serious efforts are being made in this direction. In most of the cases, children start leaning with great enthusiasm but get discouraged soon due to complexity of Marathi characters and do not progress much beyond certain limit. Moreover, children as well as their parents cannot spare necessary time for learning or teaching.
Inability to read and write Marathi leads to ignorance about the Marathi literature, culture and children gradually become non native speakers. This has serious implication of loosing affinity for homeland, family and their native community. The future generations of people staying away from their homeland will eventually become foreign to their own homeland.
It is necessary therefore to develop easy and fast learning tools for reading and writing. Though there are translation tools available on internet, they are counter productive to actual reading and writing ability.
First interim step according to me is to train children to practise reading loudly the Marathi text stories and poems with English pronouncing substitutes. (Shri. M. N. Gogate of Marathi Vidnyan Parishad had suggested use of Hinglish ie combination of Hindi and English. However he advocated English alphabets in place of Marathi characters. ) This will help in linking the meaning of words to their pictorial representation in the form of Marathi characters.
Side by side, ways should be found to teach basic alphabet, the character recognition and tips for writing letters.
Most of the Indian languages are phonetic languages and the character sequences are organised on the basis of vocal sound. However, the glyphs used for such characters are so diverse that it is difficult to remember them by any logic. Moreover, there are many complex characters formed by joining two or more characters. ( This is not the case for English) Such joining is done directly changing the original shape of character, which adds to the complexity in recognition. Anyway, we have to accept the reality and find out some regrouping techniques for easy recognition.
I have made some regrouping based on similarity of shapes of characters.
( Modified as per Unicode format for Devnagari Ref: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/devanagari/list.htm)
Vowels
अ आ (A, AA)
इ ई (I, II)
उ ऊ (U,UU)
ए ऐ (E, AI)
ओ औ (O, AU)
अं अ: (A+ANUSVARA, A+VISARGA)
In above pairs first character has short sound length and second character has longer duration.
Grouping of characters based on shape similarity
(You will notice that some characters are members of more than one group.)
अ आ अं अ: (A, AA, AM, AHA)
उ ऊ (U, UU)
ए ऐ (E, AI)
ग म भ न (GA, MA, BHA, NA)
व ब क ख ( VA,BA,KA,KHA)
प फ ष (PA, PHA, SSA)
र स ख श ( RA, SA, KHA, SHA)
ट ठ द (TTA, TTHA, DA)
ड इ ई ह झ ज्ञ ( DDA, I, II, HA, JHA, DNYA)
त ल न ज्ञ (TA, LA, NA, DNYA)
य थ ( YA, THA)
च ज (CA, JA - opposite to each other resembling spoons)
घ ध छ (GHA, DHA, CHA)
ण ( NNA)
ळ ( LLA)
Let us see if above grouping helps in remembering the character shapes easily.