Learning Indian scripts based on shape similarity

Permalink: https://sites.google.com/site/sarvabhashin/articles/shapesimilarity

“An Introduction To Tamil Script – Reading & Writing” was the book that helped me learn to read Tamil. I first picked it up more than 8 years ago, and made good strides thanks to its rather novel approach, effectively being able to read Tamil fairly well within a month.

This book, authored by two of the most respected names in Indian linguistics – Debi Prasanna Pattanayak and MS Thirumalai – and originally published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) in 1980, uses a method we could call the ‘Shape Similarity Method’. Unlike the traditional method of teaching Indic alphabets – which involves teaching vowel letters followed by consonant letters, and then followed by the special forms of vowels when attached to consonants (vowel signs or mātrā) – this book starts off with letters that have the simplest shape, and slowly moves on to more complicated ones.

Also deviating from tradition, vowel signs / mātrā are taught before the individual vowel letters themselves. Here again, the books begins with the vowel signs that have the simplest shape and then goes on to the more complicated ones (such as signs that come before the consonant).

Renu Gupta in her paper “Initial literacy in Devanagari: What Matters to Learners” mentions that for members of the South Asian diaspora wishing to learn their heritage language, learning the script presents an additional hurdle. This is also true of Indians in India who would want (or need) to learn a script, for instance, the script used in the state or region they currently live in. On a related note, I constantly encounter a number of young people – almost all from urban areas, I should add – who are able to speak their mother tongue to a reasonable extent but are unable to read it well or at all.

In such a context, this shape-based learning methodology seems to be an extremely useful tool to help adult learners learn new scripts, for whom time is limited and similarities in shape can prove confusing if the script is taught the traditional way.

Though Gupta in her paper mentions that “[t]he effectiveness of the shape similarity method is not clear because the results have not been documented”, she goes on to say that “there may be some advantages in using this approach… [f]or literate adults”. I agree wholeheartedly with the latter statement, as I myself have been through this experience and can vouch for its effectiveness.

Unfortunately, it seems that CIIL hasn’t given Google Books permission to publish (even a part of) their wonderful publications on script learning, which is a pity, because the method used in these books is a highly practical and innovative one and has potential to help adults in the subcontinent become multi-scriptal instead of just multilingual – a huge practical benefit.

Here is a picture of the first page of the Tamil script book (I hope this isn’t a violation of copyright; it’s just one page!) –

Thankfully, CIIL has taken at least some of their script-teaching material online. Their Kannada script page, which also uses the Script Similarity Method, is available at http://www.ciil-learnkannada.net/ccck/webpages/contents/script.htm (you might have to create a user account and log in, and also download special fonts – it’s really unfortunate that a body like the CIIL has still not moved to Unicode).

Updated: 2012-04-02