Welcome to RIT. This file describes the transliteration scheme. For details on invoking RIT read the file invoking rit This file describes only the transliteration scheme.
RIT lets you type in roman characters and outputs a postscript file which can contain Telugu and English characters. It uses the character # to switch between Telugu and English modes. For example,
maaku ee rOju #school# lEdu
would print school in English and rest of the words in Telugu. What about the beginning of the file? In which mode does it start with? It depends on whether you are running 'rit' or 'ritx'. 'rit' starts a file with Telugu mode whereas 'ritx' starts with English mode. Use 'rit' if you don't know LaTeX or don't want to bother about it. Use 'ritx' if you want to use all the formatting capabilities of LaTeX.
How do you print # itself? Well you just type \#. To get \ itself type \\.
Here is the transliteration scheme:
a aa A a' i ea ee ii I i' ia u uu oo U u' ua R ~l ~L e ae E e' ai ei o oa oe O o' ou au ow k kh kH Kh KH K g gh gH Gh GH G ~m c ch C Ch CH c' j z jh jH Jh JH J ~n T t' Th th' D d' Dh DH dh' dH' N n' t th d dh n n& p ph pH Ph PH f P b bh bH Bh BH B m m& y r l v w V W s' S sh sH Sh SH s h H L l' ksh x ~r r'' ^ pollu | poem mode n m followed by kKgGcCjJTDtdpPbBlLsShHv sunna m' ma-pollu n' na-pollu @M @m arasunna @h visarga @n @N nakarapollu @2 avagraha
Each line above represents exactly one telugu character. They are listed in the order normally written in Telugu. Alternate spellings are separated by a blank. For example, ottu pha has six alternates:
ph pH Ph PH f PSpecial attention needs to be paid to the following.
sunna generation
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RIT doesn't have any special letter for sunna. Instead, when 'n' or 'm' is followed by a consonant except 'r' or 'y' RIT assumes it to be a sunna. However, this rule doesn't work in all the cases. Sometimes, you want to prevent a sunna generation when 'n' or 'm' is followed by a consonant. For example, RIT would generate a sunna after 'a' if you write 'anvayamu'. What you want instead is a 'na' with a 'va' ottu. You can prevent a sunna generation by writing 'n&' or 'm&'. The correct spelling is 'an&vayamu' instead of 'anvayamu'.
pollu
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If the last letter in a word ends in a consonant, RIT automatically supplies a pollu. For example, consider writing the English word 'color' in Telugu. You might write it as 'kalar' or 'kalaru'. In 'kalar' the last consonant 'r' doesn't have a vowel associated. In this case RIT automatically supplies a pollu to 'r'.
Sometimes you need a pollu in the middle of a word, usually when writing an English or Hindi word in Telugu. For example consider writing the word 'lifeless' in Telugu. If you write it as 'laifles' RIT would think you want a 'fe' with a 'la' ottu. To prevent that you can write it as 'laif^les'.
Special Symbols
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I hope it is quite clear from the above table how to genearate arasunna, visarga, nakarapollu, and avagaha from the above table. Avagraha is necessary only when writing Sanskrit text in Telugu.
Poem Mode
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The normal mode for RIT is prose, i.e. it automatically concatenates lines into paragraphs. However when you type a poem you don't want to merge separate lines into one paragraph. For handling this RIT has a mode called poem mode. You can enter poem mode by typing a vertical bar |. You can end the poem mode by typing the same vertical bar.