Talk:Tamil language

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Discussion on antiquity

It is one of the classical languages of the world, with rich literature spanning over 2000 years, making it arguably the oldest living language.

Linguistically speaking, no language is "older" or "younger" than any other in a meaningful sense, because every language extends back in time through an unbroken string of ancestors as far as anyone has been able to determine (obviously excepting constructed languages and perhaps pidgins). What people probably are trying to say with this kind of comment is either that the language and its ancestors have been spoken in the same area for a very long time (this is often applied to descriptions of Basque, which appears to have been present in Europe longer than the surrounding Indo-European languages, and thus somtimes gets called the "oldest language in Europe"), or that the language has been attested in records going back a very long time. In either case, it's unclear whether "living language" is intended to include Latin and its descendant Romance dialects, ancient Greek and its descendant modern Greek, Old Persian -> modern Persian, Aramaic, etc. This really ought to be clarified. Brion VIBBER

I too felt that was going a bit too far, and for now I've changed it to "one of the world's oldest languages". But I'm Tamil, and I'm sure that:

Written literature goes back to ~ 2500 years.
It evolved before Sanskrit came to India, which means that it was spoken in a form reasonably close to the modern version really long back.

Anyways I'll do some fact-checking and get back to this.

(BTW) there are about 70 million speakers today. Arvindn 13:43 Nov 26, 2002 (UTC)

Are you claiming a child with no eduction other than reading modern Tamil can read the classic texts? And that they could converse with a native speaker from 2000 years ago? --Morwen

Yes. With a little bit of help. 8 year old kids are regularly taught the Thirukkural in school (~2000 yrs old), and though it seems a bit weird at first its not really hard to understand it. I'm not saying anything about conversing, we'll talk about that when time travel is invented :-) -- Arvindn

Cool. That should be stated directly, then - as just random claims to be the 'oldest' come off as, well, rather chauvanistic (to me at least). [[User:Morwen|Morwen]

Prof George Hart's (Unive of Berkeley, CA, USA) recent speech on Tamil will hit the nail on the head !

"The status of Tamil as one of the great classical languages of the world is something that is patently obvious to anyone who knows the subject. To deny that Tamil is a classical language is to deny a vital and central part of the greatness and richness of Indian culture." See link below: http://tamil.berkeley.edu/Tamil%20Chair/TamilClassicalLanguage/TamilClassicalLgeLtr.html

Debunking the 5000 year claim

Recently, someone edited Tamil to contain the claim that written Tamil extends back 5000 years, oh and that Tamil _is_ proto-Dravidian. This is quite impressive because it would mean it predates the Indus Valley Civilization, and also written Sanskrit, and probably Brahmic scripts. Meanwhile, in reality, I can find the following cites easily, just from google

"Its oldest work, the Tolkappiyam,, contains parts that, judging from the " earliest Tamil inscriptions, date back to about 200 BCE." [1] (http://www.geocities.com/bhel_ywca/Tamil2.htm)

"We Tamils also sometimes make the mistake of considering other Dravidian languages such as Telugu, Kannada as daughter languages of Tamil. That is not scientifically correct. Kannada, Telugu are most probably sister languages of Tamil. There is evidence that tribal ancestral language of Telugu separated from the common ancestor about 3,500 years ago. There are over 50 Dravidian languages used around the South Asia. In Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Sri lanka. Many oft them are minor Tribal languages facing extinction due to the impact of regional languages like Hindi, Bengali, Nepal, Urudu, Telugu,

Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam." [2] (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilyouth/message/3)

Invisible sentences

There are some invisible sentences in the page Tamil language which turn up when you edit the whole page but that are not visible in the main page. They are preceded and succeeded by some strange signs like arrows. So when I edit a particular section in the area where the invisible sentences are, they edit those sentences rather than the ones I want. These sentences are on language in general, so is this a bug /error or a content error? KRS 10:22, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Those are HTML comments that are used to hide parts of the article from appearing. They are there because there are parts of the Wikipedia:Wikiproject languages template that haven't been filled in for this language. It seems that the edit this section links don't ignore the commented out sections, so this seems to be a bug in the software. --Nohat 15:46, 2004 Jan 30 (UTC)

A bug? I would think it's desirable behavior. If the editing interface completely ignores comments, then you can never restore the commented-out sections because they won't appear at all. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:36, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it is desirable behaviour. -- Sundar 04:13, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Old issue

It seems to have removed the "old" issue from the page after Brion's and Morwen's rant. The page should at least have the note that "Few historians and linguists believe that Tamil is one of the surviving older language"---incase if you prefer more NPOV. It is widely accepted the fact that Tamil is one of the older languages and a parent language of many dravidian languages. No need to hide the truth because of those rants.--Rrjanbiah 07:41, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

A few paragraphs

There are a couple of very strange paragraphs, from a linguistic point of view:

Tamil Literature spans 2500 years. This language was the first to develop a distinct prose form of writing among the classical languages of the world.

This really should be in Tamil literature, not here.

Tamil seems to have undergone minimal changes and adaptations over the years. Classical Tamil is quite comprehensible to speakers of the modern language. The ancient Tamil book Tirukkural is an example. The verses from the book are often taught to young students of the language at the primary level, and they pick up the lines in the ancient dialect with little difficulty.

I have serious doubts about this sentence. No language in the world has escaped drastic phonological drift and semantic drift, no matter how classical it is, no matter how rigidly its literary tradition is passed on, or how strictly and universally education is carried out. Those drifts generally occur outside the context of literature or education, and often slowly and without anyone realizing it or paying much attention.

You can have your own doubts. But, don't introduce your POV into the articles. First, I should agree that some paragraphs in this article need rewording for NPOV. That doesn't mean what you've done is correct. There is a difference between Googling and finding pseudo-facts about a language and knowing a language as a native speaker, studying it and researching it.

It's not POV, it's fact. I have a Ph.D. in Linguistics, and one of my specialities is language change. No one is denying that many modern readers can understand the classical versions of their languages. What the person above is saying is that over time, languages change, and those changes may not necessarily be obvious. As well as some modern Tamil speakers may understand written classics, the chances of them being able to hold an intelligible conversation with someone who lived when the Tolkaappiyam was written are right around zero. The reasons are too complex to get into here. Regardless, what the person above wrote is correct, from a scientific point of view. Squidley 16:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As a native speaker of Tamil, I can vouch for the paragraph above. I am able to understand classical Tamil texts with ease. In fact, I am currently reading Tolkaappiyam to know about formal rules for disambiguation (to write a grammar for transliterating between phonetic romanised version and unicode). The difficulty if any is not in the vocabulary but because such texts are usually poetic and hence needs a lot of context to comprehend. Also, in poetry, the ordering of words is usually not same as the one used in common speech. Will you dare to call Shakespearean and Milton's English to be different from English Language itself? Every language undergoes changes, no doubt, but the generalisation ends there.

If you want to know how much value you can attach to my words, know that I am a native speaker of Tamil, learnt it only as any other student in Tamil Nadu will do for 12 years, learnt Hindi much more formally for 10 years, currently learning Kannada and was able to pick up Malayalam script in about a week's time.

-- Sundar 05:15, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

I put my comments on the talk page for 3 months and nobody answers, I edit the page and everyone pounces? :D I'm flattered.

If I stand for everyone in your view, I'm flattered too. :p -- Sundar 06:13, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Anyways: relax, As a Chinese speaker I can understand Classical Chinese with ease, even though Chinese has changed as much in 2500 years as any other language. So no, the generalization does NOT end there. Perhaps you'd like to look online for some reconstructions of Old Tamil phonology? In a classical language those tend to be hidden amazingly well by the writing system.

The experience of Western teachers of classical Chinese are very interesting. In general, they find that the students who do not speak Chinese natively learn classical Chinese much faster, and better, than the native speakers of Chinese. Why? Because all too often, the native speakers assume they know what a character means in a text, when in fact, they are merely assigning the modern value to it. The character for "temple" is an excellent example. Over time, it has meant "to serve," "servant," "eunuch," and "eunuchs' quarters," in addition to temple. Other words in other languages have similar convoluted histories.

So what am I trying to say? Well, you may very well understand classical Chinese with ease--but most people have to do quite a bit of study to get to that point, and even then, they often understand less than they think that they do. Squidley 16:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I did refer to a chapter on articulatory phonetics written in Tolkaappiyam and found the phonology to be almost identical to modern day Tamil. There can't be any ambiguity here because Tolkaappiyar has given method of pronunciation involving the diaphragm, wind pipe, larynx, tongue, jaws, teeth, lips etc. -- Sundar 06:13, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Premodern descriptions of pronunciation are notoriously vague, impressionistic, and, from a modern viewpoint, unreliable. I haven't read the section you're talking about, but regardless of how good the description is, it's best to take it with a grain of salt. Squidley 16:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And of course Shakespeare's English is different from the English of today. Shakespeare used "thou" and a whole series of verb forms to go with it. Surely you wouldn't simply attribute this to "poetic effect"? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 05:28, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Being different in certain usage of words is fine, but does that prompt us to classify that as a separate language as you do between Old Tamil and Modern Tamil? -- Sundar 06:13, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

One of the greatest living scholars of the English language and historical change, Roger Lass, has estimated that the chances of a modern English speaker being able to hold a conversation with an Elizabethan speaker (i.e., one from Shakespeare's time) are slim to nil. Squidley 16:11, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll explain with an example: There's a similar case with Chinese -- the quotes of Confucius, from 2000+ years ago, have been for centuries drilled into the minds of young children, and they understand it quite easily. But that doesn't mean that Chinese has not changed -- it has changed as much as any other language. It's just that all the phonological changes since Confucius have been cloaked by the writing system, leaving just the grammar and vocabulary changes, which aren't that significant any more in comparison. In other words, young children of today read Confucius' words with their own pronunciations, not that of Confucius -- this is why they can read it with relative ease. If Confucius came back alive, his speech would be as foreign to a modern Chinese as Russian or Swahili.

Or how about Arabic? Modern Standard Arabic, the variety spoken in formal contexts, is very similar to the Arabic of the Koran 1500 years ago; but the actual spoken dialects of Arabic are completely different things altogether. 1500 years of evolution separate the two -- the fact that Koranic Arabic has been taught to Arab children for 1500 years, or that the literary formal langauge has changed little in 1500 years, does not change the fact that spoken Arabic, the language alive and spoken among the people, has shifted nearly as much as any other language (though it may be less than other Dravidian languages). And again, we have the script as a "cloak" upon the actual changes in phonology that have taken place.

I've been googling a bit on the internet ([3] (http://www.flonnet.com/fl2022/stories/20031107000807300.htm) [4] (http://forumhub.com/tnhistory/2423.16758.15.51.46.html) [5] (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5180/tamil7.html)) and it seems that Tamil is just like Arabic or Chinese -- the language has changed much, but a conservative literary tradition has preserved a script that cloaks many of these changes and therefore makes the ancient language "feel" much closer to everyday people than most other languages in the world.

Following is the verbatim quote from the third link you had given.

There is little difference in syntax between ancient and modern Tamil. Although over a period of time word forms have changed the formation of syntax remains intact in all the Dravidian languages. In this respect there exist similarity between the languages of the South and the North, though they fall under a different category known as Indo-European languages. The fact that syntax changes very little, while other aspects of a language do, is brought out in the similarity one finds in the formation of syntax between the Dravidian languages of the South and the languages of the North of India. This explains why syntactical differences exist between the languages of North India on the one hand and Sanskrit, Greek and Latin on the other; and why there exists similarity between north and south Indian languages. This unity in syntactical formation becomes obvious if one analyses all the four major Dravidian languages of South India. If one analyses the continuos growth of Tamil language the perceivable truth is that there is little change in the formation of syntax both in the classical Tamil and the Tamil used in modern short stories.

Answer to your hypothesis that the script is the entity that preserves the familiarity, I should tell you that it is the script that has changed much with Tamil and the change was due to conscious efforts by the kings in order to make it easy for cutting on stones and later by modern scholars and politicians in order to make it suitable for printing.

-- Sundar 05:15, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Distinguish between font and spelling. You are explaining that Tamil has changed in "font", basically, the script is drawn differently. The same thing has happened to Chinese -- Confucius' large seal script is completely incomprehensible to modern Chinese. But Confucius used the same CHARACTERS — and if old Tamil inscriptions can still be understood by modern Tamil chlldren, then that means Tamil is also using the same LETTERS, i.e., the spelling hasn't changed that much, compared to, say, European languages. Which again means that you haven't defeated my point. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 05:28, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

The spelling hasn't changed much. So what's your point there? -- Sundar 06:13, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Malayalam developed from a dialect of Tamil called Koduntamil or Malaithamil (literally Tamil of the mountains), spoken by the people around the hilly ranges bordering Kerala and Tamil Nadu states.

Like biological species, languages don't derive horizontally -- they derive vertically. Thus we have humans and monkeys deriving from ancient apes, and ancient apes deriving from opossum-like mammals; we don't have humans deriving from monkeys or monkeys deriving from opossums. Similarly, Malayalam probably derived from Old Tamil (or a dialect of Old Tamil), but it would be strange and inaccurate to suggest that Malayalam derives from Tamil. Malayalam and Tamil hold the same relationship to Old Tamil as French and Italian hold to Latin -- as descendents of a common, more ancient language. And as such I think this should be explicitly stated, and the title "derived languages" should be changed. -- ran 05:41, Jun 18, 2004 (UTC)

Please see the excerpts from Iravatham Mahadevan, Early Tamil Epigraphy. From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. at [6] (http://www.flonnet.com/fl2013/stories/20030704000207100.htm). The rock cavern inscription in south India written in the Brahmi script are Tamil. An early Tamil, but I'm not aware anyone working in the field would give them a name different from "Tamil". And I assume, User:Sundar can read them, at least after transliteration.

And the major (or even undisputed) POV between researchers in this field is, that at least until 600 CE, this language was spoken in a much larger region than current Tamil Nadu. Later the other Dravidian in the South India diverged from this trunk, to a significantly larger degree than contemporary Tamil from Early Tamil.

You can also check this, looking at their respective writing systems. The Tamil one is still isomorphic to the Brahmi one used for Early Tamil, wheras Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam have adopted a large number of consonants from the northern languages.

Pjacobi 07:25, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pjacobi, I was definitely able to read and make sense of the transliterations. -- Sundar 08:41, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Sundar did some great work in cleaning up that text. Malayalam is not the only language that claimed to be part of Tamil family, so the paragraph still needs some more rewording. --Rrjanbiah 08:09, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It definitely needs rewording. The problem is that some over-passionate Tamilians among us inadvertently overstate facts, which makes the whole argument lose the credibility. We need to slowly build a rational case and try to convince others. -- Sundar 08:41, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Grantha

May anbody watching this page be so kind to have a look at Talk:Grantha? -- Pjacobi 07:59, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Expansion

The article is 90% history and trivia (e.g. the awfully long list of dialects). Details on actual grammar and phonology would be necesary. --Circeus 00:28, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)

What are the things you wanted to know in *particular*? Or do you have any example language page which can be treated as a template? --Rrjanbiah 07:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What parts of speech does the language have? What is the basic word order? How flexible is the word order? Do nouns have gender? How many genders? Do they show plural and how? Are there cases? How many? Which ones? Are there prepositions or postpositins? Do verbs show tense, aspect, mood? Which tenses, aspects, and moods? Is there agreement between nouns and adjectives? Do adjectives come before or after nouns? What about articles if they exist and other determiners? Are there interesting pronouns such as dual, inclusive and exclusive, paucal, different levels of politeness? Do pronouns show different cases than nouns? How are words derived from roots? What changes to modern loanwords undergo?

Catalan language seems to be a reasonable model, without looking at too many. — Hippietrail 11:28, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Created a Tamil language/temp page. Should work more. --Rrjanbiah 20:09, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

If there's a template to be used, it's the one at Wikiproject: Languages. --Circeus 00:24, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Please see the section below. -- Sundar 10:41, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

Rewrite

I've copyedited, added new stuff on major sections, adapted the material to suit Wikipedia:WikiProject Language Template and added an image of zhakaram at User:Sundar/Tamil language. I'm now making the change to the current article. See this edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tamil_language&diff=9611631&oldid=9611536). Please feel free to refine it further so that this can be made into a featured article. -- Sundar 10:15, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)

To-do list

Please feel free to add any tasks that have to be done to improve the quality of this article. Once again, Kudos to Sundar for the great work. Needs comment from non-native speakers.

Clean up --Rrjanbiah 05:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
IPA conversion --Rrjanbiah 05:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
MP3 or any audio file for pronunciation --Rrjanbiah 05:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
ழ pronunciation is unique to Tamil--though Malayalam got the script. Needs discussion or fix. --Rrjanbiah 05:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Sounds like the Template needs fix to have room for pronunciation esp IPA or XAMPA. --Rrjanbiah 05:29, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Alphabets

Both this article and Tolkaappiyam use the word alphabets in the plural sever times over in contexts which make it quite clear that the correct word should be either letters or characters. Is this a mere oversight or is there some reason for it? — Hippietrail 11:48, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

animacy?

Hi.

Provide an example of animacy?

- Ish ishwar 22:24, 2005 Jan 25 (UTC)

avan varukiRaan. - He comes (referring to a person).

athu varukiRathu. - It comes (referring to an animal or an inanimate thing like a train).

Hope this example suffices. -- Sundar 05:23, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Sundar. But would I be able to ask you to gloss those two sentences for me? Can you show literals translations word-by-word and show what is a pronoun, what is a verb, what are the endings, person, number, gender, tense, etc. That would help my understanding immensely. — Hippietrail 06:21, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Let me have the following short passage as an example.

aasiriyar vakuppaRaiyuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum avan arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyidam pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn.

The first sentence means that the teacher entered the classroom.

aasiriyar : meaning teacher, the terminal r indicates honorific gender-neutral plural, although use of aasiriyai for feminine gender (even in honorific sense) is not uncommon, part of speech peyarchol (roughly noun).
vakuppaRaiyuL : an agglutination (puNarchi) of vakuppu (class), aRai (room) and uL or uLLE (inside), part of speech - adverb (urichol, which includes adjective also)
nuzhainthaar : meaning entered, part of speech verb, the terminal r indicates honorific gender-neutral plural, and usually the feminine equivalent of nuzhainthaaL is seldom used in a honorific sense (unlike the subject), past tense

The second sentence can be translated to: As soon as he entered, the students got up.

avar (he) : pronoun, honorific plural, the feminine equivalent avaL is not used in a honorific sense.
uLLE (inside)
nuzhainthavudan : agglutination of nuzhaintha (nuzhaithal means the act of entering, the substitution of ntha in the place of the terminal thal is common during agglutination and the terminal indicates past tense; this category of words are called echam words, the words which are incomplete without the following word which can be a verb (in which case the current word would function as an adverb) or a noun (in which case the current word would function as an adjective)) and udan (roughly means soon after or simply after)
maanavarkaL (students) : plural, masculine, the feminine equivalent maanaviyarkaL or simply maanaviyar is used only sometimes to emphasise on gender, otherwise this word is more-or-less gender-neutral.
ezhunthanar (got up) : verb, past tense, plural.

Note: The article the is a mere artifact of translation as Tamil doesn't have articles.

The third sentence means, Valavan alone was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him.

Valavan : proper noun, the terminal an usually indicates masculine gender.
mattum : alone
avan (he, but used as his in this context) : pronoun, masculine, singular, the terminal an.
arukil (next to or near)
ninRu (standing) : niRRal is the verb for the act of standing, the change for agglutination indicates a notion of continuous tense along with the following word kondu (having), the kondu becomes kond for agglutination
iruntha (remaining), it gives an incomplete and hence adjectival function to ninRukondiruntha
maaNavi - female student as indicated by the terminal i
kanimozhiyudan (with a girl called Kanimozhi), udan is the postposition (vERRumai urubu, literally meaning the differentiating unit) equivalent of with.
pesikkondirunthaan (was talking) : agglutination of pesi + kondu + irunthaan - pesi indicating talking, kondu indicating continuousness, irunthaan indicating masculine, singular and past tense.

The fourth sentence means, "I cautioned him".

naan (I) - first person singular, gender-neutral of course (naam is the plural first person that includes the listener also and naangaL is the first person plural that doesn't include the listener!)
avan ai (him) : pronoun, masculine, singualr, third person with the postposition ai that changes he to him.
echcharithEn (cautioned) : first person, past tense, singular verb

Think, if formatted and reworded properly, this could go into Tamil language#Examples.

-- Sundar 07:23, Jan 27, 2005 (UTC)

This would be a brilliant thing to have under Examples. The purpose of that section should be to illustrate the way the language works, and this piece and your glosses on it do that wonderfully. I would very strongly favour replacing the current section in its entirety with this. Arvind 15:10, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Before that, we should bring it to a standard format, which is more readable and comprehensive. How about a table? -- Sundar 06:52, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Stuff that can go into the examples section

This section has been moved to Tamil language#Examples in the article itself. Please make any changes there and not here because the version in the article is the latest one. -- Sundar 06:37, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Note: Please read the gloss that I've given in the section above and try to incorporate that in the table format given below. Feel free to add to/correct my version.

A sample passage in romanised Tamil:

aasiriyar vakuppaRaiyuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum than arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyudan pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn.

English translation of the passage given above:

The teacher entered the classroom.
As soon as he entered, the students got up.
Valavan alone was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him.
I cautioned him.

Note: Tamil does not have articles. The article the used above is merely an artefact | of translation.

Could we insert the following literal translation here:

Literal translation:

Teacher classroom-into enter-(past-honorific suffix)
He inside enter-with students rose-(past-plural suffix).
Valavan alone self nearness-in stood-beginning-was female-student Kanimozhi-with spoke-beginning-was.
I him caution-(past-singular suffix).

No issues. Feel free to do so if it helps understanding word order in Tamil. By the way, your latest edits to the article is appreciated. Did you have a look at the objections and comments at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Tamil language ?-- Sundar 14:17, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if it helps, which is why I put it here to see what you think. I'm looking at the objections and comments - I've cleaned up the list of countries for a start. How are we supposed to add references - are we supposed to specifically reference key facts, or are we just supposed to add a general list of references for the whole article? -- Arvind 14:44, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think the table below with literal translations makes it clear to an extent, so this may not be necessary. Usually references need to be cited inside the article, or else they can only be stated in a "Further reading" section. Wikipedia:Cite sources talks about the style. -- Sundar 14:56, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)

Word (romanised)	Translation	Morphemes	Part of speech	Person	Gender	Number	Tense	Remarks
aasiriyar	Teacher	aasiriyar	noun	n/a	gender-neutral	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	n/a
vakuppaRaiyuL	inside the class room	vakuppu+aRai+uL	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
nuzhainthaar	entered	nuzhainthaar	verb	third	gender-neutral	honorific plural	past
avar	He	avar	pronoun	third	gender-neutral	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	n/a
uLLE	inside	uLLE	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
nuzhainthavudan	upon entering	nuzhaintha + udan	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
maaNavarkaL	students	maaNavarkaL	collective noun		masculine, often used with gender-neutral connotation	plural indicated by suffix aL	n/a
ezhunthanar	got up	ezhunthanar	verb	third	gender-neutral	plural	past
VaLavan	VaLavan (name)	VaLavan	Proper noun	n/a	masculine, usually indicated by suffix n	singular	n/a
mattum	alone	mattum	adjective	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
than	his (self) own	than	pronoun		gender-neutral	singular	n/a
arukil	near	arukil	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
ninRu kondiruntha	standing	ninRu + kondu + iruntha	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	the adverb has been morphed from a verb because of the incompleteness brought by the terminal a
maaNavi	student	maaNavi	pronoun		feminine	singular	n/a
kanimozhiyudan	along with Kanimozhi (name of a person)	kanimozhi + udan	adverb	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	the name Kanimozhi literally means sweet language, there are rules that define what (here y) should come in the junction during agglutination
pEsik kondirunthaan	had been chatting	pEsi + kondu +irunthaan	verb	third	masculine	singular	past perfect tense	continuousness indicated by the incompleteness brought by kondu
naan	I	naan	pronoun	first person	gender-neutral	singular	n/a
avanai	him	avanai	pronoun	third	masculine	singular	n/a	the postposition ai indicates accusative case
echarithEn	cautioned	echarithEn	verb	first, indicated by suffix En	gender-neutral	singular, plural would be indicated by substituting En with Om	past

Official status

Basically, I've just cleaned up the terminology a little. Inclusion in the eighth schedule to the Indian constitution doesn't make a language an "official" language (See article 343 for the meaning of the term "official language"[7] (http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/fullact1.asp?tfnm=00%20440)). I've called it a "nationally recognised language" instead. Also, it is more correct to call Tamil the official language of Tamil Nadu (see Article 345[8] (http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/fullact1.asp?tfnm=00%20443)), so I've changed that. Isn't law fun? - Arvind 15:51, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, Arvind. Continue with your good work. Law is definitely fun and politics more! -- Sundar 04:23, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

ழ in Malayalam and Tamil

ழ pronunciation is unique to Tamil--though Malayalam got the script. Needs discussion or fix. --Rrjanbiah 05:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

To establish this point, we need references. -- Sundar 05:57, Jan 25, 2005 (UTC)

എന്ത?? മലയളത്തില് ഴ ശബ്ദം ഉണ്ടു! Malayalam certainly has the ழ, and the pronunciation is pretty much the same as in Tamil. In any event, it is not uncommon for languages to have sounds unique to them, so does this really need to be given so much prominence, especially given the tendency of Tamil dialects to simplify it to a ல, ள, or ய? It may be best to just give the IPA pronunciation, using the retroflex approximant, and mention in the body of the article that, for historic reasons, ழ is transliterated as 'l' or 'zh'. I'm happy to make the changes, but I thought it would be more polite to ask first! -- Arvind 14:02, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"മലയാളത്തില് 'ഴ'ഉണ്ടു!" --Agreed. But, the point is about Tamil's own "ழ" in "தமிழ்" and it's pronunciation--which non of the Malayalis--even prominent singers like Jesudas, Unni Menon, Chitra didn't/couldn't pronounce it. --17:39, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I really don't hear a significant difference in the pronunciation, but let's leave this question for the linguists. I've revised the introductory portion a bit to give it more oomph (I hope), and I've let this stand for the moment. Arvind 23:57, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Even AFIK, there is only a slight difference if any and given the evolutionary link with Malayalam, this is expected. And we have too many other things to write about Tamil. For eg, Tamil grammar can be a complete article in itself and Tamil literature is in a bad shape. Instead of squibbling over antiquity and trivial facts, we should establish the real greatness of the grammar and the literature. -- Sundar 03:53, Jan 28, 2005 (UTC)

On the retroflex approximant page, is said to be found not only in Tamil and Malayalam, but also American English and Mandarin Chinese. (I might add that the same sound is found in other English dialects as well, especially Irish English, and it has a borderline presence in Swedish.) Since I haven't heard spoken Tamil, I can't say if the Tamil sound is the same as the others, but if Tamil and Malayalam are not the only languages with this rare sound, perhaps it would be better to change that part of the page. Squidley 22:00, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

May be we should get sound samples to verify if there is any difference. If I can describe how we utter the sound, it is by rolling the tongue to the maximum extent possible and touching the velar region (not sure), while the sides of the tongue touch the sides of the teeth. Don't take my word as the final on this as I'm particularly bad in enunciation. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 04:54, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Certainly this letter is present in both taml and malayalam and from the malayalam I have heard, I can say for sure that it is pronounced pretty much the same as it is in tamil. Tamils have for a long time maintained that this letter is unique to tamil because of two reasons: One there is no other language in India, with the exception of malayalam that has this sound. And secondly, malayalam as a separata language is a recent event and the idea of zha being a unique sound predates the orgin of malayalam. Kartheeque 03:35, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tamil literature?

"Tamil has the longest unbroken literary tradition amongst the Dravidian languages. Tamil tradition dates the oldest works to several millennia ago, but the earliest examples of Tamil writing we have today are in inscriptions from the third century BC, which are written in an adapted form of the Brahmi script."

Is it really fair to include these works as "Tamil literature"? One might as well call it Malayalam literature, as both modern Tamil and Malayalam descended from the language these inscriptions were written in, and would both have an equal claim to being its heir. --Xiaopo ℑ 12:38, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This issue was discussed to death in the section "A few paragraphs" above, but it keeps coming up because people keep applying the "Latin, French, Italian" analogy to Tamil and Malayalam. This is completely wrong. Here're a few reasons to call the language Tamil:

The people who used the language called it "Tamil", as evidenced by the use of the word in the texts themselves. So what else would you call literature written in it if not "Tamil literature"?
The distance between Malayalam and classical Tamil is approximately the same as that between Latin and French. Modern written Tamil, however, is much closer to classical Tamil. They're much closer than classical Greek and modern Greek, and a little further apart than Old Norse and modern Icelandic. As I said in the article, the Tamil alphabet rhyme was written in the 1st century AD, and is similar enough to modern Tamil to be intelligible to children. In the 1960s, a singer by the name of MS Subbulakshmi sang a song from the classical Tamil epic Cilappathikáram (which, by the way, was composed by a poet from the area where Malayalam is spoken today). The original sleeve notes did not cite the origin of the song, and many assumed it to be an 18th century composition. Yes, the classical and modern written languages are that similar. This makes it impossible to draw a line anywhere and say: "Right, before this point the language isn't Tamil." By your logic, it's unfair to call old Dutch literature "Dutch" because both modern Dutch and Afrikaans have evolved it.
The emergence of Malayalam as a language distinct from Tamil is as much the result of political and aesthetic factors as it is of linguistic factors. Modern Sri Lankan Tamil is largely descended from the ancient Cera dialect, which was the form of Tamil spoken in the areas where Malayalam is now used. It presents an excellent picture of how Malayalam is likely to have developed in the absence of these factors (so, to a lesser extent, do Kongu Tamil and Kumari Tamil, which also derive from the Cera dialect, and Palakkad Tamil, whose origin is less certain, but which has at the least been heavily influenced by the Cera dialect). Note also that most Malayalees themselves - whilst rightly proud of the fact that Cera poets wrote many of the classical Tamil works - do not consider classical Tamil to be a form of Malayalam - Malayalam (not modern Malayalam as opposed to old Malayalam, but Malayalam itself) is described as having been born in the 9th century AD. ---- Arvind 15:15, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Derived languages

Malayalam, spoken by the people of Kerala state - which borders Tamil Nadu - closely resembles Tamil in vocabulary, syntax and script. Hence it is hypothesised to have been evolved arund 800 AD from a dialect of Tamil called Malaithamil (meaning Tamil of the mountains).

Unfortuantely, I don't agree with this sentence and I'll be happy to look at the references if any. IMHO, it is better to leave all dravidian languages as sister languages than to call Malayalam as "Derived languages". For me, it is too vague to see Malaithamil->Malayalam. Also, I don't see such close resemblance of script either; say for example try writing the word Sangamam in Tamil and Malayalam. Usually people in borders picking up other languages easier--someone in South may find some resemblance of Tamil in Malayalam and in north may found some resemblance of Tamil in Telugu/Kannada. This doesn't proves this theory. If you look at Ethnologue report (http://www.ethnologue.org/show_lang_family.asp?code=TCV) it explains different theory. Also, look at this link (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/vipin/www/mal.html) --Rrjanbiah 19:06, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree very strongly that "Malaitamil" sounds rather unconvincing. Cera Tamil was once spoken in the areas where Malayalam is spoken today, but the relationship between Cera Tamil, Centamil, Manipravalam, and Malayalam is a rather complicated one. So, basically, I think we should drop the section on derived languages altogether, and just say (in the "Classification" section) that Malayalam is very closely related to Tamil. --Arvind 19:22, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Am sorry about that bit. I was, in part, responsible for that. In a overzealous attempt to 'fill' all sections in the template, and also not to irk other users by dropping a section that was in the article before, I retained that. We should definitely drop that. -- Sundar 04:54, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Inclusive v. Exclusive

Tamil also has two different sub-types of the plural form of the third person, one of which does not include the listener and the other does.

In modern linguistics, these are called inclusive if they include the listener, and exclusive if they do not. Australian languages, and Pidgins often have this distinction. I think also Papuan languages and some Polynesian languages. — Hippietrail 03:10, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, Hippietrail. Will incorporate this into the article. -- Sundar 04:43, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)

I was always under the impression that malayalam derived from "maNipravALam" - A mix of tamil and sanskrit introduced for poetry by literateurs... It then evolved into what we call malayalam... - ninja

Tamil in Malaysia

An anonymous user has stated that Tamil is an official language in Malaysia. Article 152(1) of the constitution of Malaysia[9] (http://confinder.richmond.edu/local_malaysia.html) provides that "the national language shall be the Malay language." I see no mention of Tamil in the constitution. Unless there is some other law that gives Tamil official status, the reference should be removed. Arvind 15:51, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sound system and alphabet

The article currently mixes the Tamil sound system with its alphabet, as if they were the same thing. I believe they should be treated in different sections, since the study of sounds doesn't regard the writing system used to convey those sounds. Since I'm not a professional linguist, I am posting this here instead of making the change myself. What do others think? JoaoRicardo 23:12, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is so perhaps because of the fact that Tamil writing system is an abugida. I'm not a professional linguist either, but as a native speaker I may be able to help you in improving the article. -- Sundar 06:20, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Traditional Tamil grammars link its phonology and writing system, which is why the article treats them together. It makes sense to me as a native speaker and my instinct is just to clarify why they're treated together, but I'd be interested in hearing your ideas - exactly what changes would you suggest? -- Arvind 23:12, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A few comments

It has been mentioned in the "Dialects" section that the word inge had evolved to unga in some dialects of Jaffna. It is not correct. In fact inge has become inga or ingai. unga is also used in Jaffna, as a varient of word unge, which is a word used in old Tamil together with inge and ange.

Regarding the Tamil technical terminology I feel it would be appropriate to mention the work of the Government of Sri Lanka. As the medium of education in Sri Lankan schools had been mother tongue for a long time, one of the earliest and systematic work on creating and publishing technical terminology was undertaken by the Department of Education in Sri Lanka as early as mid 1950s. We can see part of this work related to science in Tamil Virtual University web site.

The reason given for the name Aayutha Ezhuththu not convincing. - Mayooranathan 19:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

mikka nanri. Please feel free to change the unge -> ingai. It would actually be very nice if you could add a little bit about yalpanatamil and its special features in the section on dialects. Also add anything about the work of the Govt of Sri Lanka on technical terminology you think appropriate. And if you have any ideas on how the section on aayutha ezhutthu could be improved (and, for that matter, any other part of the article), please carry them out. I'm not too happy with that particular section either. -- Arvind 22:19, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your valuable inputs, Mayooranathan. I've made a couple of changes. Please see if it's fine. I was the one who added the section on Aayutha ezhuthu (desperate to add an image for Featured article criterion!). If we feel that it is not proper, we can remove the section as a whole. What do you both say? -- Sundar 04:04, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Writing System

Sorry for giving comments in installments. Regarding vattezhuththu, it has been mentioned that it evolved around 15th century. I do not have much knowledge on this matter. However I came across a web page a few hours ago which states, vattezhuththu was in use between 6th to 10th centuries in Pandya and Chera countries. It seems that it went out of use during Raja Raja Chola's time following standardization if Tamil script. See this site which gives an image of vattezhuththu table. http://www.geocities.com/jaybee2741/anaimalai_vattelzuththu_inscription1.html

Further related to the changes made to Tamil Script, some major changes have been made in early 18th century by Veeramaamunivar (Constantine Beschi). He introduced "iraddaik kombu", "dots" above pure consonets and the horizontal under stroke for short vowel 'e' to represent long 'E' vowel, which were not available in Tamil script those days. Mayooranathan 09:52, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've made some changes in a hurry. Please look over and modify it in any way you think is right. Thanks. -- Sundar 13:13, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Falafel

Could someone who knows Tamil please tell me if the Tamil etymology given for falafel on that page is possible? "Fa ("worked of, made of"), La (many, lots), Fel (bread crumbs)." I am suspicious of it because the person who first added it thought it was ancient Egyptian, and I have found another etymology that traces it through Arabic to Sanskrit. Thanks. Lesgles 15:48, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Certainly doesn't sound like Tamil to me. In the first place Tamil does not have a native "f" sound. The "p" character does double duty to represent "f" from other languages, and this was introduced mostly to deal with Farsi and English phonemes. On a side note, Sanskrit too did not have a "f" sound until the Persians arrived in India. Most speakers now pronounce the Devanagari character for "ph" (aspirated "p") as "f" (especially in Hindi and to a lesser extent in Marathi), but purists generally deprecate this practice when it comes to Sanskrit. "Falafel" almost certainly came from a non-Indian language. -- Brhaspati (^talk_contribs) 10:36, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

Oh yes, the other reason is that Tamil cuisine did not use wheat in any notable amount until maybe the 19th when North Indian influences became sufficiently strong. I personally would be surprised if there was a native Tamil word for "bread", leave alone "bread crumbs". ("Roti", "chapati" etc were imported from Hindi). I may be wrong, so please correct me if I am. -- Brhaspati (^talk_contribs) 10:49, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! That sounds logical, so I'll go ahead and remove it. Lesgles 11:16, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)

If any of you watching this page is interested please have a look at Talk:Tamil people#Important proposal. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 05:37, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Gender (etc.)

Grammatical gender states that Tamil does not use genders. How many of the people here agree with that?
- Oops! That's a blunder. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 05:05, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
And what is the source of translating "aḵṟiṇai" as irrational?
- I think User:Vadakkan added it. He can be reached in his nn wiki talk page. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 05:05, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
- GU Pope interprets them as meaning "rational" and "irrational" on the strength of the nannul. Try his "Tamil Handbook" (cited in the references to the main article as Pope 1868). --Arvind 00:21, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
And BTW what is this "ḵa"? I've never heard of it.
- Where is it mentioned? Am currently not able to the Unicode as I'm in Unix. I'll reply later here. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 05:05, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
- It's the ahenam, also known as the aytam. You know, the ஃ character. It is normally transliterated either as ḵ or ḥ, but ḵ is probably better since it is not the same character as the visarga. --Arvind 00:21, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. -- Paddu 10:40, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

New Year Greetings!

Puthiya aandil en pon vaazhthukkal to every Tamil lover! So many interesting things are being discussed here. I have added this to my Watchlist. Swami Vimokshananda 10:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Tamil Grammar - Subject Object Verb section

Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order.

Quote:

"Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order."

I am confused regarding the description of the Tamil translation of "that is my house" including no Verb, as the English phrase DOES have a verb - the word "is". Would I be right in assuming that the Tamil phrase "atu eṉ vīṭu" does not include an equivalent of the English word "is"? If so, the section in brackets would be more accurately put as a more literal translation - ("That my house") - with a brief explanation following this. I will not edit the section myself as I do not know Tamil, so cannot be sure my assumptions are correct, but leave it to someone more knowledgable.

You are right. The Tamil translation of "that is my house" does not include an equivalent of the word "is". For that matter, the Tamil language doesn't have an equivalent for "is"! -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 04:48, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

Images used in the article

I wonder why the images of the book material in the article reflect christianity? Why not put images of the famous tamil literary works? -- RC 18:16, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

It so happened that the copyright-free images that we got for old scripts were related to christianity. If you can give one such image for any other scripture, we can replace one of these images with that. I remember Rrjanbiah asking for permission from a website for adding an image of a old plam-leaf manuscript. But, no one responded :-( -- Sundar (talk • contribs)

Yes, I tried contacting a few as well with no luck. The photo of the palm leaves with the christian prayers is PD as a US Government work, and the Tranquebar bible was the oldest book I had a photo of. If someone has an older or equally old book, or can manage to take photos at a museum in Tamil Nadu, please do upload them. --Arvind 16:53, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Missing image
GandhijiTamilWriting.jpg

I'm reminded of this photograph (see right) taken by me of a writing by Gandhi in the monument built in memory of Subramanya Bharathy at Ettayapuram. But it is not as old as the featured images are. -- Sundar (talk • contribs) 07:32, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

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