Sunday, 27 July 2014

Resources to learn Modi script

I am an ordinary Modi Lipi learner. I learned Modi script using books by ढवळे प्रकाशन( Dhavale Publication).

I have joined Facebook groups like
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MoDi.Lipi
https://www.facebook.com/ModiLipiMitra
https://www.facebook.com/groups/179844758709395/

On these group people put old documents in Modi script and provide their transliteration (लिप्यंतर) in Devanagari script.

This helped me a lot to learn new concepts.


Challenges while reading Modi documents :-  
1) Modi script has many alphabets which are similar. While writing them fast, they look quite similar. So one has to guess the actual letter using context.

2) Also every person has unique style of handwriting so some alphabets can be seen quite different from standard ones.

3) Reading Modi script is essentially reading handwritten documents. As one excepts many people have bad handwriting

4) If we have to guess words from context then we should know the language very well. Though language is Marathi; most of the documents are 100-200 years old. Marathi language used in those days is quite different from modern/current Marathi. So many words are no more use

5) Language is also filled with many Arabic/Persian (अरेबिक/फारसी) language words/phrases.

6) Documents mention dates and days in Arabic/Persian/Islamic  (अरेबिक/फारसी/मुसलमानी) calender. e.g. हिजरी सन / सुहूर सन etc.

7) Documents are filled with many acronyms/short forms. 


Thus knowing standard Modi alphabets is just very tiny step for learning it. By practice one has to accumulate knowledge of
1) Old Marathi words
2) Arabic/Persian (अरेबिक/फारसी) language words/phrases.
3) Short-forms/Acronyms
4) Old style calender 
5) Different ways of writing same alphabet
6) Different ways of writing same combined alphabet (जोडाक्षर)
5) Similar looking shapes but indicating different alphabets.

So In this blog I am trying to note down things which I observe related to above points.