Clarification of sahitya of Meenakshi Me Mudam Dehi.

[Srikant Elassery]

I have a question regarding the first word in the charanam of the song: why is it 'madhurApuri' and not 'madurApuri'?
I'm curious because it obviously refers to Madurai, and I was wondering why the Sanskrit version of 'Madurai' wasn't 'madurApuri'.

[Rajani]

Tamil does not have harsh/aspirated sounds, so all words from other languages when they come in to Tamil are converted to their softer variants. This is also true of conjunct consonants, which acquire an extra vowel in between, in accordance to the idiom of Tamil.

These , with many examples have been discussed in earlier threads. Please go through.

[rshankar]

In other words, Srikant, it should be madhurai (derived from madhurApuri) - but became madurai in tamizh (as explained by Rajani above). Hence the caraNam of mInAkshi mE mudam dEhi

[Srikant Elassery]

I see. Thank you!