Dravidian Languages

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-05, 21:29

OldBoring wrote:Why don't you guys do what every Indian does on the Internet? Type Indian languages in Latin script...

It's ugly and imprecise unless we use diacritics, and doing that takes about as much effort as typing in actual Indian scripts (and there is no single universally accepted system anyway).

Most Indians on the internet aren't linguists or language enthusiasts and got used to typing in Latin script because there weren't many easy options for typing in Indian scripts, or they weren't aware of such. This has started to change over the past few years, especially among Indians who aren't literate in English and now have easy access to tools for typing in their native scripts.

However, these tools still need to be fine-tuned, which is what we are discussing.

And I'm pretty sure only two of us here are Indian.

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-05, 21:34

Also, not everyone is equally accustomed to transliteration, and it gets really counterintuitive really quickly. Recently, I had the experience of introducing my mom to a certain old Malayalam movie on YouTube. She saw its title written out in Roman script - Nokketha Doorathu Kannum Nattu - and had no idea what to make of it. I guarantee she wouldn't have had that problem with the exact same thing written in Malayalam script: നോക്കെത്താ ദൂരത്ത് കണ്ണും നട്ട്.

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby dEhiN » 2018-02-05, 21:47

Oh yeah, don't get me started on transliteration schemes of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages! I recall when I first started learning Tamil, how confusing it was seeing resources that didn't use script. Even now, it's still confusing for when you see something like "veedu" (வீடு /ʋiːɖɯ/), unless you know the word, you don't know if the double e means long /i/, like how one would read it in English (i.e., "been"), or long /e/, because some people use double consonants to indicate long ones. I'm not sure if Malayalam differentiates aspiration, but in Tamil, because there is no differentiation, <th/dh> is usually used for dental t/d and <t/d> for the retroflex versions. Except there are people who will use <t/d> for both, and also mix and match in the same sentence! So again, if you don't know the word, you're screwed.

At least with pinyin, from what I understand, if you see it, you know how to pronounce it. It can actually be used for learning new words.
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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-05, 21:54

dEhiN wrote:I'm not sure if Malayalam differentiates aspiration

Yes and no.

The writing system does have different symbols for aspirated vs. unaspirated consonants. To what extent this corresponds to how people actually talk depends on a whole bunch of factors. It might even vary from one word to another sometimes.

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby Saim » 2018-02-05, 22:20

I completely agree with rmanoj. Recently I had to transliterate Urdu for an assignment and it was actually hard to unlearn the weird ad-hoc internet Romanisation (there was some "ka", "hain", etc. before I corrected it). :lol:

OldBoring wrote:Why don't you guys do what every Indian does on the Internet? Type Indian languages in Latin script...


آًئیِ پْرَفَرْ ٹُو رَائیٍٹْ اِنْگْلِشْ اِنْ ایَرَبِکْ سْکْرِپْٹْ۔

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby OldBoring » 2018-02-06, 20:28

Saim wrote:آًئیِ پْرَفَرْ ٹُو رَائیٍٹْ اِنْگْلِشْ اِنْ ایَرَبِکْ سْکْرِپْٹْ۔

安德 米 因 拆尼斯。

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Re: A Dravidian Lingua Franca

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-07, 5:23

Perhaps we should start a general Dravidian Languages thread (in the South Asian languages forum?). Or shall we just continue here?

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby Yasna » 2018-02-07, 6:14

I changed the thread title to "Dravidian Languages".
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-07, 7:03

Yasna wrote:I changed the thread title to "Dravidian Languages".

Thanks!

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-07, 13:09

In the DEDR (as cited by Krishnamurti), the Proto-Dravidian word for 'metal pot' is reconstructed as *kiṇṭ-V

In Malayalam I guess we know this as കിണ്ടി, Tamil கிண்டி (both have the vowel i— kiṇṭi), although the meaning has become somewhat more specialised over the years (small metal vessel with a nozzle for drinking).
What makes this word inherently funny to modern Malayalis is the കിണ്ടി-based comedy in the film Manichithrathazhu.

The Tamil lexicon, however, says that கிண்டி (and thus കിണ്ടി) comes from a Maharashtri Prakrit giṇḍī. So maybe the Proto-Dravidian pot thing is unrelated. But I prefer the first explanation. It's just funnier.

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-08, 6:40

The one thing I always associate കിണ്ടി with is a story my parents told me about a friend of theirs(?) who grew up hearing a song in English at school with the words "kindle a fire in my heart" and misunderstanding this as "കിണ്ടിയിലെ പയറ് in my heart." :P

FWIW Hobson-Jobson considers കിണ്ടി/கிண்டி to be a purely Dravidian word from kiṇu (so I guess "கிணு"?), which it says means 'to be hollow' (in Tamil). However, it also says that [ˈgɪɳɖi] in Bambaiyya Hindi and gindy in English as spoken by some Anglo-Indians refer to a basin for washing the hands commonly used for washing the hands. Other Anglo-Indians called this basin a chillumchee, which comes from Hindi/Urdu, and possibly my favorite quote from Hobson-Jobson is:
it is told of a gallant veteran of the old Bengal Artillery, who was full of "Presidential" prejudices, that on hearing the Bombay army commended by a brother officer, he broke out in just wrath: "The Bombay Army! Don't talk to me of the Bombay Army! They call a chillumchee a gindy! THE BEASTS!"

Also, any activity on the South Asian languages forum is always welcome! :whistle:

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby OldBoring » 2018-02-08, 6:42

Shouldn't this thread belong to the South Asian languages forum? :hmm:
Unilangers use the General Language Forum too much, even for threads about languages or group of languages that have their own forums.

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-08, 7:03

vijayjohn wrote:The one thing I always associate കിണ്ടി with is a story my parents told me about a friend of theirs(?) who grew up hearing a song in English at school with the words "kindle a fire in my heart" and misunderstanding this as "കിണ്ടിയിലെ പയറ് in my heart." :P

FWIW Hobson-Jobson considers കിണ്ടി/கிண்டி to be a purely Dravidian word from kiṇu (so I guess "கிணு"?), which it says means 'to be hollow' (in Tamil). However, it also says that [ˈgɪɳɖi] in Bambaiyya Hindi and gindy in English as spoken by some Anglo-Indians refer to a basin for washing the hands commonly used for washing the hands. Other Anglo-Indians called this basin a chillumchee, which comes from Hindi/Urdu, and possibly my favorite quote from Hobson-Jobson is:
it is told of a gallant veteran of the old Bengal Artillery, who was full of "Presidential" prejudices, that on hearing the Bombay army commended by a brother officer, he broke out in just wrath: "The Bombay Army! Don't talk to me of the Bombay Army! They call a chillumchee a gindy! THE BEASTS!"

Also, any activity on the South Asian languages forum is always welcome! :whistle:

Hahaha
I do sometimes make കിണ്ടി / (Amazon) Kindle puns. :)
I guess the etymology must remain contested for now.

I will probably start a Sanskrit thread in the South Asian languages forum this weekend. But what would you like to do about the general Dravidian discussion? Move this thread there perhaps?

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby dEhiN » 2018-02-08, 17:09

If you guys want to move this thread, let me know.
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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-09, 4:29

rmanoj wrote:I will probably start a Sanskrit thread in the South Asian languages forum this weekend.

There already is one. It's in the Ancient, Classical, and Extinct Languages forum.
But what would you like to do about the general Dravidian discussion? Move this thread there perhaps?

To be honest, I'm fine either way. I tend not to post in the South Asian languages forum (or any other language-specific forum) nearly as often as I do in the General Languages forum, but I can make an exception for this thread. :)

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby dEhiN » 2018-02-09, 4:39

Ok, done.
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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby rmanoj » 2018-02-09, 4:51

Oh, nice. I hope we can make this subforum a little more active.
I will do my best to help if you post in your Tamil thread, dEhiN.
vijayjohn wrote:
rmanoj wrote:I will probably start a Sanskrit thread in the South Asian languages forum this weekend.

There already is one. It's in the Ancient, Classical, and Extinct Languages forum.

I meant more as a log of my own learning. Maybe I'll start one there then (if that's the done thing).

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-02-09, 4:53

Aw, thanks, guys! :mrgreen: (And yes, you could definitely start a thread there :)).

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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby dEhiN » 2018-02-09, 7:12

rmanoj wrote:I will do my best to help if you post in your Tamil thread, dEhiN.

மிக்க நன்றி! I'm never sure what to write there, but maybe I'll start with listing new vocabulary as I learn it. I want to learn how Tamil does ordinate and subordinate clauses. I can make very simple sentences in Tamil, but I need to start figuring out how to make more complicated ones.
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Re: Dravidian Languages

Postby OldBoring » 2018-02-09, 7:16

vijayjohn wrote:I tend not to post in the South Asian languages forum (or any other language-specific forum)

If Unilang was a company and I was the CEO I would fire you! :twisted:
The moderator doesn't post in his own forum.


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