My mother recently read out some Tamil poetry she had written which glorifies and beautifully describes the five cosmic elements. Tonight I wrote it down (in Tamil!) for my record. I have learnt up to what may be considered lower than pre-kindergarten level, how to read and write Tamil. Having been brought up in Bangalore where the regional language is Kannada (well I didn't have to learn to read and write that either since I was in a school that was affiliated to a system that only required us to learn Hindi, the national language and Sanskrit), it was never a mandatory exercise for me. But my mom managed to squeeze some Tamil alphabet into my head, with "you *must* know to read and write your mother tongue!"... Well mom, sorry that I suck at it! Man, she also made me take Kannada lessons with "you *must* know to read and write your regional language", so I have that alphabet squeezed into my brain too! I have all kindsa patterns up there - lines at various angles and curves and circles and dots!
Anyhow, tonight I wrote in Tamil after nearly 15 years or so. I had a great time arguing about why there had to be two Na's when both were said identically, which led us into a discussion about Phonetics and nuances in pronunciations. It turned out that one is more alveolar and the other more dental (phonetics anyone?) . All in all, I had a good time with her!
Since I don't know 95% of the words here (I appreciated the poetry because she translated it to me + because it had a great meter and sounded truly rhythmic and poetic + I could feel the impact of some words even when they were relatively unfamiliar to me, since I at least have a feel for the language), I have requested her to provide me a word to word translation before she heads back to India. I hope to translate it to English some day. I wish I knew Tamil better! In the meanwhile, my above hand written copy is for anyone who is interested and knows to read Tamil. If you are one such, please excuse me for spelling mistakes and those wishy-washy strokes wherever I didn't know how to write something and wanted to create enough pattern in the haze so the informed reader might get a clue!
5 comments:
i cant read them. Its not very clear.If it is a scanned image it would be better.
And about two 'na'in tamil:
1. Here the tip of the tongue should touch the upper part of mouth. ex: 'annam'(swan)
2.Here the centre part of the tongue should touch the upper part of the mouth. ex: 'annan'
elamparuthy
Very nice.
Can u put up high resolution picture so that we can zoom in and read the letters
Hi Vizhuthugal,
thanks for your comment. I will try to put up a better picture.
I wasn't confusing between the two Na's you mention, I was talking of the two different Na's in the word "Naan" ("I"). I thought I had arrived at a conclusion - and that the pronunication was indeed different (alveolar/dental) but as per this wiki resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_script (scroll down to Basic Consonants) they are indeed pronounced the same - they have the same IPA symbol [n] but they are differentiated purely based on lexical rules rather than pronunciation.
-Sumi
What a shame I can't read Tamizh. I'd like to, given that there are a few old folk songs my mom wrote down once.
What a shame I can't read Tamizh. I'd like to, given that there are a few old folk songs my mom wrote down once.
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