Topic suggested by K.Balasubramanian on Wed Apr 28 06:36:49 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
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It is obvious that tamil lacks a large number of sounds present in other languages. While every language suffers from this problem to some extent there is no one to advocate increasing the number of letters in tamil. Tamil people pronounce many foreign words wrongly because of this defect as their knowledge is through WRITTEN tamil. Tamil purists will not agree to the introduction of new letters and they may be quite justified. I feel there is a need for Scientific Tamil meant ONLY for writing scientific works in tamil. This can coexist with the accepted tamil. Even in magazines written in accepted tamil new scientific words can be given in brackets so that proper pronunciation can be propagated. But I don't think new SYMBOLS are needed. With the existing letters some new method must be devised to impart proper pronunciation. This is quite challenging. But remember some half-hearted attempts were made by using "Aida" ezhuththu. I suggest some sort of solution like TeX used for typesetting mathematics. Who will take the challenge of developing Scientific Tamil?
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Responses:
- Old responses
- From: vanchi (@ isdn1.pppmad.vsnl.net.in)
on: Mon Jun 28 01:08:06
Pasupathy:
Thanks for quoting nannUl cUththiram.
So I haven't said anything new.
Still I'd appreciate some kOnar urai for varuda,
uRamuRai etc. Chandra,can you help?
Without an audio these things would be imperfect.
Ok here is one more class of examples where spoken Thamizh systematically avoids pronouncing vallina R:
Most vallina R following mellina (iraNdu suzhi) n as in:
nanRAka ---> nallA
panRi ---> panni
inRaikku ---> innaikku
appadienRu --> appadinnu
ninRu koNdu --> ninnnukittu
konRu vidu --> konnudu
Chandra: DId you notice our learned friend ANnathanarayanan interchanging vallina and idaiyina rakaram in the spelling of the word,
uRinju/urinju thAL (blotting paper) in vvv.
I'd very much love to hear from linguists, if there is really a difference betwenn two r's why vallina R gets this shabby treatment
in spoken version and is often misspelt by learned people?
Pasupathy: about MAdras autorikshaw driver's language problems I'll post a detailed reply later
- From: vanchi (@ isdn1.pppmad.vsnl.net.in)
on: Mon Jun 28 01:15:29
Chandra: Did you notice that two more people have participated in this thread in the past 3 days after I started this "contraversy" about vallina
R? Looks like they have preferred to be neutral.
I'd appreciate if they can say they anything on this: even neutrality better be explicit.
- From: K.Balasubramanian (@ 202.54.102.200)
on: Mon Jun 28 05:26:29
I am glad to see a lot of response to the need I felt for having more sounds in tamil. Vanchi makes a good case for dropping vallina Ra. But he is trying to ruffle the feelings of tamil purists who "obviously" see the difference between vallina Ra and idaiyina ra. Let me make my position very clear. I don't want to meddle with literary tamil. That will be opposed tooth and nail by "rational" tamil purists. I see the importance of viewpoints of purists, the traditionalists. My aim is quite mundane. What I suggest is evolving a tamil to be used ONLY for reading and writing science. A student studying science in tamil is ignorant of the actual pronunciation of scientific terms. Consequently he cuts a sorry figure when he is not within tamil group. The tamil I am suggesting can be used even in magazines where a lot of scientific information is presented.
Let me make some suggestions. These are only primitive suggestions. People with more knowledge in tamil publishing and sciences may be able to suggest better solutions.
Tamil cannot distinguish pa and Ba. People use their own idiosyncracy in messing up with the sounds. I have heard poori pronounced boori. Moreover if pa occurs in the middle it is traditionally pronounced ba. I don't have quarrel with these things. But a scientific term should be properly introduced with correct pronunciation.
To represent ba we can use /pa, an extra / before our usual pa. If we want to stress pa (particularly if it occurs in the middle) we can use *pa. For example we may write *ka*pam; it is commonly pronounced *ka/pam (*kabam). You can now read the following.
/ka*tam, /pen/seen, *pen/sil, /sia/kra//pi (geography).
We can do away with the letters in vadamozhi; but the sounds can be retained with the extra symbols / and *. These extra symbols are available in keyboards and will not cause any printing problems. The vada ezhuththu sa which is nowadays mostly replaced by cha can be revived through /cha
Ja will be //cha. Fa will be //pa, as ba will be /pa. I will even go the extent of using *la, /la and //la for la, La, and zha.
I want these changes ONLY for scientific writing and some popular writing in magazines. I will not arrogate myself to suggest changes in literary tamil written for literary purposes. For such purposes grammarians and literateurs have to take initiative. But my mind is NOT in it. I will be satisfied with a sort of scientific tamil.
I invite the widespread tamil diaspora to react to my suggestions.
Frankly I was motivated by Knuth's TeX, a typesetting language for science.
K.Balasubramanian
28-6-1999.
- From: vanchi (@ isdn1.pppmad.vsnl.net.in)
on: Mon Jun 28 08:14:39
Chandra:
About your conclusion that Thamizh has made vast advances in the computer field without the crutches of Samskritham I've a comment:
I do not have any statistics about the proportions of various linguist groups of Indians abroad. But still it seems to me that the presence of large number of Thamizh people in Malaysia, SIngapore and Srilanka has made them feel more nostalgic about Thamizh (Aside:Venkataramanan's inverse Square Law: Affinity to one's language is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from one's home)
We should remember that Malysian Thamizh people (Muthu NedumaRan, Late Govindasamy)
have made so much contributions to making Thamizh
to reach this level in this internet era, and the
attempt of Thamzh nadu govt to match the progress made by Chandra babu naidu and Bangalore city
in attracting large number of IT investors was definitely behind the TN govt's support for Thamizh standardization for electronic communication which has resulted in such a higher state for Thamizh in computer era. I don't think Samaskritham has much of a role in this.
Other Indian languages, perhaps, did not have the advantage of such large groups away from home.
I think it would be futile to go for a systematic demolition of words from vadamozhi that have found a permanent place in Thamizh.
The Hindi (i am not sure if it is in samaskritham)
word "moti" for pearl has origin in "muthu" which was a big business in paandiya kingdom.
There has been lot of interactions between Thamizh and samaskritham and there is no need to "cleanse" thamizh.
English considered a germanic language, has been enriched by words from French s) (most words ending in -tion are French)
and they don't have anything against it despites all the contempt English speaking people have french (french leave and french window)
(Strangely most Indians want to believe that English is rich because it has accommodated words like catamaran, pukka, saheb that have gone from India. You find therm mostly in Agatha Christie, not in today's writings. My feeling is that English would be still be a powerful language even if words from asian and african languages were removed from it. I think French and German are also very powerful languages with far less impact from non-european languages. The one reason English (as aginst other european languages)is popular is that it is spoken in USA not because it has mullagataNNi (i can never remember that monstrous spelling) as a word.
- From: Pas (@ pas.dialup.cs.toronto.edu)
on: Mon Jun 28 20:56:05
Vanchi,
A few quick points.
1. About "r" vs "R". I agree that the difference is less than between other pairs such as "n" and "N" etc... but unlike purists who do not like words starting with la, ra etc, I feel that these are O.K. And hence "r" can be used to denote words starting in "r". Since there are too many words which mean different things when you interchange 'r" with "R", one can't get rid of one. As I hear in Chennai TV, already most such letters have disappeared and perhaps "r" R etc will remain only in print and not in pronounciation.
2. Generally, I am all for expansion and increase. Why not? It is just common-will which is in the way. If one needs new letters for new sounds, obviously they won't harm present letters!
3. I don't think that it requires a lot of science/intellect to create computing in different Indian languages. You have given good reasons why Tamil succeeded so far.
4. Vocabulary is a very important thing and any effort to increase it will increase Tamil innovation and clarity in thought. Again I am frustrated about Tamil pundits and politicians... In my opiniuon we do not have even a good dictionary which shows the words and their first occurrence. OTL is often quoted in these forums. But can OTL
say when a particular word has been used in a particular sense for the first time in Tamil literature... To me efforts like Oxford and Cambridge are great institutions ... with continuing efforts in such directions... Where are such efforts in Tamil... We need concordances of all past Tamil works.. There is a lot of talk of past glory, but little of action. .
If "benzene" can be written in Tamil with same pronounciation, why not? Adding at least a few Tamil letters like b,g,d will go a long way to create more words... We have gone thru a change in writing ..perhaps we will see a change in Tamil letters too... I do believe that the ability of English to absorb other lianguage-words is am important reason for its success...
- From: vanchi (@ isdn1.pppmad.vsnl.net.in)
on: Wed Jun 30 08:00:37
Back to the main theme of the thread:
The British and AMericans have happily twisted
Nippon to Japan
Roma to Rome
Jagannath to Juggernaut
Wien to Vienna
Moskva to Moscow
m'aidez to Mayday (the French phrase that means help me)
It is hard to believe that the original names are difficult to pronounce for the English-speaking person. It is just the way sounds in English occur, or simply there is no reason.
So a person from uLunthUrpEttai who studied only in Thamizh medium (and stopped his studies after SSLC) saying "Laransu" for Lawrence", "Ambattan bridge" for "hamilton bridge" and "guthupminar" for that wonderful piece of moghul architecture in New Delhi should be accepted as natural.
(During my stay in Delhi I was amazed
how the Thamizh people there happily referred to malik kovil as Malaay mandir even when talking among themselves)
Ridiculing a person for his mistakes in pronounciation (English and Samaskritham)is one of the most important pastimes in Madras for many
people. ( I have done that many times, I admit)
- From: vanchi (@ isdn1.pppmad.vsnl.net.in)
on: Wed Jun 30 08:25:44
Pasupathy:
About autodrivers in madras not understanding valathu and idathu for right and left, the problem was created by the english-educated persons.
I am sure the word "Super market" was not in the vocabulary of autodrivers in madras 10 years ago.
But when such a thing comes up we don't think twice about referring to it by the english word when we want to direct him. (Until that day market perhaps meant to him a place where vegetables are sold)
Recently my english vocabulary was enriched by another word "Atrium" which has come up in madras. I am sure a clerk working in AGS office in Theynampettai will inflict that word to a rikshaakkaaran when he has to direct him.
If a Thamizh word was suggested for Atrium we will laugh at it, or at best feel embarraassed about uttering it. But we are ready to change our pronounciation from "shedule" to "skedule", "sichuation" to "situation", or start pronouncinng the 't' in "often" even if we were trained in those unfashionable ways during our education (I don't want to be ridiculed by my recently-returned cousin from USA who definitely knows the right thing)
Why don't we give the same respect to our Thamizhnadu govt when it suggests "suRRulA porutkAtchi" for exhibition/trade fair.
No we will happily inflict the difficult english words to the autorikshaw driver than to be heard uttering those Thamizh words.
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