SARMA’S UNIFIED SCRIPT FOR EASY WRITING AND EFFICIENT DIGITAL TRANSMISSION

ABSTRACT:
“Unified Script” is claimed to be capable of writing all languages. Endeavors were made to (i) Use one symbol for pronouncing similar-sounding letters from different languages and (ii) Fabricate symbols by combining the visual characteristics of such scripts. Both failed because these change the speaking language. Sarma’s Unified Script or SUS proposed for replacing the scripts of any language by simple and orderly-constituted symbols.

In SUS the letters of any language are divided into groups of five, where the first ones act as ‘group heads’. Group-heads are created by placing small vertical line at four locations of a horizontal line in clock-wise direction. Remaining letters of each group are created in the same way by placing a smaller vertical line around each group-head.

So. there happens no change in the speaking-language, learners lean create scripts by themselves and digital transmission of language becomes possible through minimum number of symbols.

ARTICLE TEXT:
INTRODUCTION :
Carry bags transfer goods from one place to another and there happens no change in the quality of goods even if the bag is changed. Scripts play the same role in documenting and transferring the speaking languages. The concept of using ‘unified script’, an imaginary script capable of writing all languages of the world evolved long ago. In 1260 AD, emperor Kublai Khan endeavored to devise a common script to write all languages spoken in various regions of Tibet. They devised the unified script named ‘Phags-pa’ by using the principle of using common symbol for similar sounding letters. In 1999, Vitaly Vitash from Russia published another unified script, ‘Interbret’ in which he combined the visual characteristics of similar sounding letters. None could see success mainly because these endeavors change the speaking language. Sarma’s Unified Script, abbreviated as SUS was devised and published in 2009. It utilizes the principle of replacing the scripts of any language by carefully designed scripts in chronological order, such that there happens no change in pronunciation. Also the scripts are of such nature that in place of learning each of them independently, the learners themselves can create those after they are taught the basic principles.

METHODOLOGY :
As per principle of SUS, the first letter of any language is replaced by the first SUS script, the second letter by the second SUS script and so on. At the beginning the letters and signs of any language are divided into groups of five’s. The first letter of each group is known as ‘Group head’. SUS has carefully designed scripts first, for the group heads and then, for the remaining letters.

The scripts of SUS are created with only 4 straight strokes as shown in Figure 01. In designing these scripts, special attention has been paid for utilizing a principle such that the learners themselves can create the scripts after they are taught the ‘basic principles for creation’. These are :

(i) All letters, modifiers or other signs will be arranged within an imaginary square. A horizontal line would run along the middle of the box as shown in Figure 01 (a).
(ii) Creation of Group heads : Around the horizontal line, there are 4 locations viz. (a) Below left, (b) Above left, (c) Above right and (d) Below right [(Figure 02 (a)]. There is a half-vertical line that rotate in a clock-wise direction around the horizontal line. At first it is placed at location (a) and creates the first group-head. Then it sits at location (b) and makes the second group-head and so on. After 4 group heads are created, other group heads are created by combining the already created group heads. In this way it is possible to create 15 group heads. These group heads and the way they are created have been shown in Figure 03.
(iii) Creation of remaining letters of a group : In order to create the remaining 4 letters of (say) group 01, a smaller vertical line is placed on the above 4 locations exactly in the same manner. It has been shown in Figure 02 (b). This operation continues for all the group heads. In this way it is possible to create as many as 15 X 5 = 75 letters and signs.
(iv) Capital, Small and Medium letters : In some language there are, or may have Capital, Small and Medium versions of letters. The SUS scripts created in the above way would be treated as the most commonly used letters. In English language it is the Small letters. If the small horizontal line is placed above these scripts, these turn to Capital letters. Also, if this line is placed below, these turns to Medium letters, as shown in Figure 02 (c).
(v) Creating combined letters : There are languages which use combined letters and pronounce accordingly. For combined pronunciation, SUS uses a plus (+) sign. Even when two letters are placed side by side, some languages demand that those will be pronounced independently. In order to do this, SUS uses a minus (-) sign. These two signs have been shown at the end of Figure 06.

TEACHING SUS TO NEW LEARNERS :
The ways in which the new learners will be taught SUS have been narrated below.
While teaching, it may be found that teachers are accustomed to traditional and SUS scripts. So, it may be required to prepare the beginners’ lesson books with both the scripts.
(i) All letters and signs of any language will be divided into groups of five and the first letter of each group will be called the ‘group head’.
(ii) At first the learners will be taught the pronunciations of the group-heads only.
(iii) Then they will be taught how to write the scripts of the group-heads by using the horizontal line at the middle and placing the vertical line or lines at various locations. The learners will be taught how this line changes its positions in the clock-wise direction. After knowing this, the learners themselves will be able to create those.
(iv) The following step will be to teach the pronunciation of the sounds of the remaining letters of the first group.
(v) After they have learnt the pronunciation, then they will be taught how to write these by using the small vertical line exactly in the above mentioned way.
(vi) Step (iv) and (v) would continue till the learners have learnt the pronunciation and writing of all letters.

LANGUAGES HAVING SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS :
What has been written above is the rules generally applicable for all languages. It is obvious that all languages are not similar in points of letters, use of modifiers, signs etc. We generally find the following six types of languages.
(a) Languages having only one type of letters, either Capital or small. (Example : Arabic, Urdu).
(b) Languages having two different versions of scripts, viz. Capital and small. (Example : English).
(c) There may be languages having three versions of scripts, viz. Small, Capital and Medium.
(d) Languages having consonant and vowel letters and vowel modifiers. (Example : Arabic)
(e) Languages having letters, vowels, signs and combined letters. (Example : Bengali, Sanskrit etc.)
(f) Languages which are written in the reverse way, i.e. from right to left. (Example : Arabic, Urdu).
The various means by which the above requirements of languages can be addressed by SUS has been explained below.
(a) In case of languages having only one type of letters, steps (i) to (vi) written above will be sufficient.
(b) For language (Example : English) having two different versions of scripts, the scripts created in the above way will be the small letters. Then the application of a small horizontal line over the small letters will make them Capital letters.
(c) For languages (if any) having three versions, the normal scripts will be small letters. If the small horizontal line is placed above them, these will be turn to capital letters, and that placed below will make the medium versions.
(d) For languages using modifiers (Example: Arabic, Bengali and Sanskrit), in SUS the modifiers have been replaced by scripts. These modify the pronunciation of the previous letter, exactly in the way the vowels do in English language.
(e) For languages using ‘combined letters’ (Example : Bengali and Sanskrit) a (+) plus sign is used for combining the sounds of two adjacent scripts or letters. Also a (-) minus sign is used for separating their sounds, if necessary.
(f) For languages using scripts in non-conventional directions (Example : Arabic, Urdu), the same SUS scripts is used in the preferred directions.

It has been found that it is possible to create as many as 15 X 5 = 75 scripts in the above way. Each of these can have two more versions by using the small horizontal line above or below. So, the total number of scripts comes to be 75 X 3 = 225. Most of the languages have letters and signs much below this number.

English language : The 26 Small letters of English and their SUS versions have been shown in Figure 04. The process of creating Capital versions from Small have been explained in Figure 02 (c).

Arabic language : The 27-letter alphabet and 9 modifiers of Arabic alphabet and their SUS versions have been shown in Figure 05. All the processes are similar excepting that the scripts are written from right to left.

Bengali Language : The 50-letter alphabet and modifiers of Bengali of language and their SUS versions have been shown in Figure 06. The Bengali letters have got a special characteristics. Its consonant letters end up with vowel sound like, ‘o’. This creates problem in combining the pronunciation of two adjacent consonant letters. In order to solve this problem, it was essential to introduce ‘combined letters’ (known as ‘zukto-borno’) and ‘special sign’ (known as ‘fola’) in Bengali. The authors found that all Bengali words can be pronounced as it is without any ‘combined letters’ (‘zukto-borno’) or ‘special sign’ (‘fola’), if only two special signs are used. So, SUS introduced two signs, one for ‘associating’ and the other for ‘disassociating’ pronunciations of the adjacent letters. These signs have been shown at the end of Figure 06.

ADVANTAGES : From the above discussions it is seen that any language having maximum 225 scripts can be written by SUS. Some of the advantages of SUS in Learning, Writing, Typing and Digital transmission of scripts are the following.

Learning : If the existing scripts of any language are replaced by SUS, still the learners would have to memorize the same sounds of the letters. However, this job will be easier for them because they would have to do that in shorter steps. The first step will be to memorize only the group heads, which will be only 1/5th of the total number of letters. Then they would have to learn writing of these scripts, where they can in fact create those by themselves after they are taught the basic principle. Then they would have to learn the sounds of the remaining four letters of the first group. After the principle is known writing these will be rather a fun. This job would continue till all the groups are finished. In addition, those learning English would have to learn, how to write capital letters by adding a small line above. Also those learning Bengali would have to learn the use of two special signs for association and dissociation of letters.

If the time required for learning any language with (say) 52 scripts is 15 to 18 months, it will be possible for any mediocre learner to learn those in SUS in maximum 4 months. For the millions of children all over the world, the saving of 12 month-learning time per child may be considered as a unthinkable boon.

Writing : The scripts of most of the languages need to be written by using straight and curve lines in any directions, tracing back and forth, running at various angles along with frequent interruptions and manipulations. By comparing the complexities of the traditional scripts with SUS, it may be evident that one would need much less time to write through SUS. There are some languages which use modifiers, combined letters and special signs. SUS uses only scripts. Naturally one would need less time to write through SUS.

Typing : SUS can be typed by traditional keyboards. As for additional advantage, since the scripts incorporate the use of a line at four positions, these can easily be written by using a 4-way navigation key. In this case the total number of keys required will be : 1 navigation key and x no. of normal keys, where x equals to 1/5th of the number of letters. Thus, for typing a language with say, 52 letters, the number of keys required will be, 1 navigation plus 11 normal keys. This number is much less than 52 keys used in the traditional keyboards.

Digital transmission : For digital transmission of scripts, each different-looking script is required to be transmitted as independent symbol. Thus, for transferring the scripts of say ten languages having 50 letters each, the number of symbols to be transferred will be 50 X 10 = 500. If SUS is used, all these can be transmitted by only 50 SUS scripts or symbols. The transmitted SUS symbols can then be transformed into the scripts of various languages by using locally installed software.

CONCLUSION :
Love for script, even for the ugliest one is a matter of familiarization, long time use and customization. It has been proved that stroke-type scripts can write all types of writing that the figure-types can do. In addition, the stroke types present less confusion in deciphering handwriting, that arises in the figure-type writing written hurriedly. As a stroke-type script, SUS has got additional advantages because (i) the number of strokes are less, (ii) the learners can create the scripts, (iii) the strokes run only in two major directions, (iv) the configuration of the scripts are logic-based and (v) the numerical position of any letter can be identified from its appearance.

It is true that abrupt change of scripts of any language may create panic among its users But it may also be considered as a boon if it is proved that among others, such a change is capable of (a) Saving the pains of the learners in deciphering and writing, (b) Profuse lessening of their time for learning and writing, (c) Ensuring easier typing and (d) Creating situation for easy and economic digital transmission of languages. So far our information goes, till today SUS is the world’s latest unified script. Some aspects of its design and working principles have been explained in this article. Also the reason behind the failure of two earlier unified scripts have been discussed. In fact SUS have been carefully designed taking into consideration the reasons for their failures and inadequacies. The authors of SUS find reasons to believe most of the earlier limitations have been taken care of. However, the most notable contribution of SUS is, there is absolutely no possibility of change in the speaking languages due to the replacement of traditional scripts by SUS. In addition, it is easier to identify, write, type and transmit. With all these advantages the authors believe, SUS has got the potentiality to act as a superior option for replacing the scripts of, if not all, at least of many languages.

References :
(01) Book : “SUS” The Unified Script with a difference. Bijon B. Sarma. Published : February, 2013. ISBN 978-3-659-31132-1, Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany.

(02) Book : "SUS", the latest Unified Script. Bijon B. Sarma, Mira Rani Sarma Parai. Published : October 2010. ISBN 978-3-8383-7411-6, Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany.

(03) Book : SUS' For Writing Multiple Languages. By Mira Sarma-Parai, Bijon B. Sarma. Published: November, 2009. ISBN: 9781426909399. Trafford Publishing Ltd. Canada.

(04) Article : “Bangladeshi scholars invented Unified Scripts to write all the languages of the world” Ajoy Kar. http://www.priyoaustralia.com.au/articles/70851-bangladeshi-scholars-invented-unified-scripts-to-write-all-the-languages-of-the-world.html

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