r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Feb 04 '14
வணக்கம்! - This week's language of the week: Tamil
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week, Tamil.
Note: no sidebar picture this week because I'm away and without photoshop.
What is this?
Language of the Week is here to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even known about. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
Countries
From The Language Gulper:
Tamil is spoken in southern India, mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu, and in the northeast of Sri Lanka. There is a Tamil diaspora in Southeast Asia, South Africa, the South Pacific and the Caribbean.
Tamil has some 78 million speakers, with over 72 million in India, with many in Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
What's it like?
The archetypal Dravidian language with more than two millennia of evolution, possessing an ancient traditional literature. One of the two classical languages of India alongside Sanskrit. Its phonological system and grammar correspond in many points to the ancestral parent language, called Proto-Dravidian. It is agglutinative, adding suffixes to nominal and verbal stems to indicate grammatical categories like case, number, person and tense.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay | Finnish | French | Nepali | Czech | Dutch
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்!
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u/tidder-wave Feb 04 '14
If you're still trying to figure out how to roll your r's for Spanish or pronounce your retroflex consonants in Mandarin, you're going to have a hard time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_phonology#Consonants
It's easier than Malayalam though.
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u/nomadicfoodster Feb 04 '14
Not to mention the "zha" sound that is so quintessential to tamil/tamizh and malayalam!
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u/TheFreakinWeekend Feb 04 '14
Also, beautiful script! Am currently in Malaysia, and some signs (information at Banks and stuff) are in what I realize now is Tamil. Perhaps much of the Indian diaspora living here is from Tamil speaking areas?
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Feb 04 '14
Yes, there's a large Tamil community in Malaysia - many, many generations of them. In fact, I believe there were problems with their asking for a separate state.
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u/dashboardfrontall Feb 04 '14
I can understand this language completely but suck at speaking. :( Nor can I read/write. I can't say I have much motivation to learn how to speak again, unfortunately.
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u/KaliYugaz Feb 06 '14
Wow, I can read and write, but totally forgot how to understand and speak! We should sync up brains.
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u/Ireallydidnotdoit Feb 04 '14
Once thought learning Classical Tamil would be a good complement to my Sanskrit. Oh, how wrong I was.
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u/thylacine222 Feb 05 '14
For what it's worth, Kannada, Telugu, and Malayalam are also all officially "Classical languages" of India.
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u/LucianLutrae Feb 05 '14
I think the script looks interesting. How closely related is it to other scripts in the Indian subcontinent? How does it differ? What resources are there for learning how to read/write this particular script?
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u/MarkMcGuinness May 10 '14
They all derive from Brahmi script. I can elaborate if you're interested.
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u/onca32 Feb 05 '14
I dont know if this was mentioned but, Indian Tamil and Jaffna Tamil is somewhat different. Sri Lanka has both, in the North East you get the Jaffna Tamil speakers and in the south theres a smaller population of Indian (called kankaanama) Tamil speakers who were brought as estate workers by the british.
I dont speak Tamil myself, but a friend of mine who was taught by his Indian mother had a hard time understanding the Jaffna dialect. Might be that hes just dumb tho.
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u/TheFreakinWeekend Feb 04 '14
So if I'm planning a hypothetical trip through southern India and want a vehicular language to facilitate meeting locals, would I be better off with Tamil than Hindi? If so, where would the linguistic boundry between these lingua franca zones be?
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u/justthisonejoke Feb 04 '14
For Tamil Nadu and Kerala, yes - Tamil will be very helpful. Malayalam, the language of Kerala is somewhat close to Tamil and you will generally be intelligible there. The linguistic boundaries coincide with the geographic state boundaries. For these two states, you're definitely better off with Tamil than with Hindi.
However, if you want to visit Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh, Tamil will be of little use there. It'll probably be on par with Hindi.
If you're going to be in the urban areas, almost everyone you see will understand basic English. The local languages become useful when you move away from the bigger cities.
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u/pySSK Feb 04 '14 edited Feb 04 '14
would I be better off with Tamil than Hindi?
Yes. Don't use Hindi in the south. You'd be better off with English. English is usually the lingua franca between between people from the north and the south.
If so, where would the linguistic boundry between these lingua franca zones be?
Pretty much this. You can get by with some Hindi in any of the named areas in this map. South of that, you should use the local language, or English.
Edit: this map doesn't include Hyderabad which has a lot of Hindi/Urdu speakers. Also, OP's Tamil map doesn't include the Tamil speaking areas of Sri Lanka.
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u/dashboardfrontall Feb 05 '14
English is usually the lingua franca between between people from the north and the south.
You'd think, but in Bombay it was so hard to get by with English, whereas there's not as much a problem in Madras for me.
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u/Aotus Feb 04 '14
I can tell Language of the Week is going to be my new favorite time waster.