Moderator:vijayjohn
Malayalam shows affinity to Tamil, Kota, Toda,
Irula, Badaga, Kodagu, Kannada, and Tulu, all of
which belong to the South Dravidian branch of the
Dravidian family. However, the affinity with Tamil is
greater, since Malayalam emerged from Proto-Tamil–
Malayalam; divergence occurred over a period of
four or five centuries, from the 8th century onward,
and distinct languages, separate from Tamil, were
established.
Three distinctive features of Proto-Tamil–
Malayalam include (1) k->c- before front vowels,
whether followed by a retroflex or not, (2) *e, *o>i,
u before a derivative suffix beginning with a, and
(3) the presence of the accusative suffix -ai.
The features that distinguish Malayalam from Tamil are
(1) progressive assimilation of nasal stop > nasal
nasal except in retroflexes and labials, (2) loss of
person–number–gender in finite verbs, (3) negative
periphrastic construction with illa, and (4) prohibitive
construction with infinitiveþarutu.
I understood 10% of that *I don't mean the English, I understood all of that* Malayalam sounds like Tamil but not like a Tamil dialect as many say. Like, if I were given two dialogs to listen to, I could make distinctions between the two languages. Malayalam sounds like Tamil but much softer and with way lesser retroflexes, but I think that's because Malayalam along with its cousins Telugu and Kannada all have aspirates, something Tamil lacks luckily for me!TeneReef wrote:A lovely dialog for those who wonder how Malayalam may sound like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dQJ1k23sRo
Well then again it's not like Dravidian aspiration is like the aspiration of Hindi and Urdu up North: In those two languages per say the aspiration is much more apparent.TeneReef wrote:But aspirates are observed only in a very formal READING. Not in spontaneous speech.
For example, there's an actress called BHAVANA (famous in Tamil Nadu too).
And she pronounces here name as [bavn@] in Malayalam inteviews and not as expected [bhav@n@].
Furthermore, there is a famous Delhi-based Malayali playback singer: KK
(who sings in almost every Bollywood movie, but in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu movies too)...
And when he sings in Telugu, you can clearly hear the aspiration BH,
but when he sings in Malayalam, it's just a normal B.
So, aspiration in Malayalam is similar to HW pronunciation of WH in English, it's formal and a kind of a spelling pronunciation.
I think you're intent on learning Malayalam to a fluent level! I'm not intent in getting that far with Tamil at least this year: I'd be satisfied with a decent intermediate level. I'm very interested in Urdu and Kannada thoughTeneReef wrote:Oh, I order 3 books from German Amazon, in case you're interested:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5 ... _OU03_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/6 ... AA300_.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5 ... AA300_.jpg
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