Tamil Lesson 1: Language Difficulty

Using Lonely Planet's India Phrasebook, we go through the pronunciation of the phrases.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Tamil language
• learn Tamil
• languages of India

[Glossika]

You can check Starling's database of Nostratic reconstructions, but I doubt it. Like Mbabaran's word for dog is dog, but it originated from *gudaga, the English did not (and is neither a Pama-Nyungan language), this is just a linguistic coincidence. "Nadu" has a retroflex d.

[DESTINEDTOLIVE123]

chennai tamil is a horrible tamil.....pure tamil and people from the southern districts of tamil nadu speak very good tamil language and even sri lankan tamil language is awesome...tamil is really a beautiful language..i love tamil language..

[mallithemadman]

wow! this guy indeed is eager in learning the language! hats off!!

[avanwell]

Your pronunciation is not bad. You have a good feeling for sounds.

But I don't understand why the Tamilians want to teach the written version of the language. No one uses it, except in radio and television broadcastings and in public lecture.

He had to teach you standard colloquial Tamil.

For exemple : you speak is "pesuringa" in stead of the standard written "pesukirirgal"

Standard colloquial Tamil is not incorrect Tamil. It has its own grammar.

[anithank1]

Sorry... the book whichever they are referring to appears to have wrong choices of words. For eg. for the phrase 'do you understand/understood' - 'viLangu-gi-radha' is used here instead of 'puri-gi-radha' which is much simpler. And the Indian man's Tamil diction is incorrect. 'koorukeer-gala?' is wrong. It kooru-veergala? or kooru-gi-reergala?

[sonofthedestroyer]

@Jeffrey1Canada,

ROFL!!!

[BRITISHALQAIDA]

I hate Tamils from Srilanka but south Indians are fine.

[anantha92]

The tamil used here is kinda strange, well to a malaysian speaking tamil anyway...

[samveda]

@Jeffrey1Canada  :D

[jedraj]

this is grammatically correct and chaste tamil...

spoken tamil (which is spoken in chennai and rest of tamil nadu) is significantly different and much easier...

and lot english words are easily understood and used with tamil

for eg: say again: 'repeat pannu'

speak slowly: 'slowa paesu'. where repeat is the english word and slowa is from english slow.. here implying slowly..

and also most in chennai understand atleast a bit of english.. all certainly use a lot of english words..

[Germania9]

@Glossika

Do you know any books or audio courses on learning Tamil that you can recommend? And can be found on Amazon?