Moderator:vijayjohn
dEhiN wrote:księżycowy wrote:dEhiN wrote: If the materials on the left-hand side, then we could possibly skip "Tamil Alphabet", unless a few others join the group who don't know the script.vijayjohn wrote:We don't know if or when anyone else will join; it could take a week, it could take months, maybe it could even take years if this thread lasts that long! So I think it's fine to just go ahead and start working through it and/or figuring out where you'd like to start, as long as you're fine with potentially helping people catch up later.
All of which would apply to me, once I do eventually join.
That's ok; we can help you catch up. And depending on when you finally join, if Vijay, rmanoj and I are good enough in Tamil, we could have full on conversations in script about you all the while we help you (in English) to catch up!
vijayjohn wrote:Now I'm imagining you, rmanoj, and me standing around on Marina Beach in Chennai while watching księżycowy struggle to write இ in the sand.
dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Now I'm imagining you, rmanoj, and me standing around on Marina Beach in Chennai while watching księżycowy struggle to write இ in the sand.
"Now remember księżycowy, it's 3 small circles folowed by a loop, and looks like a person sitting cross-legged under an archway*"
*Ok, so not exactly since that would be a pretty fucked up archway that starts on the person's lap!
dEhiN wrote:I haven't done the dialogues nor exercises yet, though I'm hopefully going to get through them today. I got pretty busy last week toward the end of the week, and so wasn't able to check UniLang, and in turn forgot about the Tamil study group!
I have a couple of questions about the exercises. Mainly just vocab questions: what do பழனி, முருகன் and வள்ளி mean?
Can I assume by the fact that the answer for exercise 2, number 6 is முருகன் ஊர், முருகன் is a place name?
Also, a few notes about the exercise 1 vocabulary:
1) மாணவி is a female student. மாணவன் is a male student.
2) அவர்/இவர் technically are just the 3rd singular masculine/feminine* polite nominative pronoun, so in other words they can also mean "she" when you need to speak with respect. And as far as I understand it, they don't actually mean "that/this" in the sense of 3rd singular inanimate nominative pronoun; you would use அது/இது for that. Also, அவர்/இவர் have a far/near distinction. So அவர் is used for someone who is far from you and இவர் for someone near. The same applies for அது/இது (hence "that/this"), அவர்கள்/இவர்கள் ("they"), அப்படி/இப்படி ("like that/this"), அங்கே/இங்கே ("there/here"), and அப்பொழுது/இப்பொழுது ("then/now").
3) ரொம்ப can also mean "many" or "a lot" if I'm not mistaken. It's an adverb whereas மிக்க, which means "much" or "great", is an adjective.
4) I learned that ஊர் can also mean "a specific place/area", so I suppose not just referring to a town or village, but a word generally used for a specific place?
rmanoj wrote:I will go through it tomorrow but let me just briefly explain the cultural references they've sneaked in there. Murugan (முருகன்) is a major deity in Tamil Nadu and to a lesser extent the rest of south India. His Sanskrit names are Subrahmanya, Kartikeya and Kumara (as in Kalidasa's Kumara Sambhavam 'the birth of Kumara'). This is probably a case of a major Dravidian god being syncretized with a minor Hindu deity. Murugan's consorts are Valli (வள்ளி) and Devasena, hence the Carnatic composition 'Shri Valli Devasenapate' (O lord of Valli and Devasena). Devasena also means 'army of the gods', of which Murugan is the commander-in-chief. His greatest shrine is Palani or Pazhani (பழனி), a major pilgrimage site.
dEhiN wrote:மிக்க நன்றி ர் மனொஜ்.
I also noticed that they use the more common Indian Tamil word for doctor, டாக்டர். In Sri Lanka, I believe it's much more common to hear வைத்தியர்.
vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, that sounds good enough to me.
I completely ignored the grammar notes until now btw. I'll try to go through them, too, but at this point in the course, I'm not sure it has any information that any of us don't already know.
Return to “South Asian Languages”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests