Goosebumps and pronunciation

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Dec 2009, 04:47

srkris: I do not know. I asked a couple of people to listen to that song, they say they hear the 'dra'. I am not convinced if there is really a difference in what you and I ( and bilaharii ) consider to be correct.

( I know you are only joking about vALaipaLam, but just to be sure, I do not want this and the kARRu to be combined with other obviously wrong tamil pronounciations involving 'zha', 'l' 'L' etc. )

It is not just youtube titles, check out this tamil association web sites... ( to be fair, I did find a lot that had manram )

http://www.gptm.org/gw/home.htm ( Greater Portland Tamil Madram )

http://www.sactamil.org/ ( Sacramento Tamil Mandrum - written in tamil also properly )

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 28 Dec 2009, 04:51

Govindaswamy, thanks for replying. Could you please make your post a bit more easier to read by using the quote tags where you are quoting?

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 28 Dec 2009, 04:55

VK, I support democracy, but not for science. Phonetics is a science.

So it does not matter if someone decides to spell themselves as a "tamil mandram" or teach it to others that way. The idea of putting a d in the spelling is misconceived. It does not matter how popular a misconceived idea is. I go back to vALaipaLam to point out the same trend.

The difference between mandram and vALaipaLam is only the level of confidence with which we both disagree about the pronunciation. I disagree equally with both, but to you one seems to be obvious and the other no so much.

What is interesting is we are hearing the same song but apparently hear different sounds in the same word. Probably its because you are expecting a dRa there, so you hear it everytime anyone says it??? I don't expect a dRa, I only expect a Ra, and when I find a dRa, I object, otherwise I don't. Ranjani & Gayatri should come to the rescue now with their kandRin kural.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Dec 2009, 05:39

srkris: just to clarify, my posting about tamil mandram is not for any evidence, but just for fun... And also when I asked others to listen to the youtube link, that is to get what they hear and not their opinions on how it shoule be said

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 28 Dec 2009, 05:56

True VK. Probably I should put a lot more smileys in my posts.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 28 Dec 2009, 06:42

Thank you Govindaswamy sir. Your comment
[quote]ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 28 Dec 2009, 06:47

I get an error when I try to edit my post if I have some Tamil letters in that post. Do others have this issue? I use Firefox.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 28 Dec 2009, 09:11

e_s, I get the same error too.

Ranjani & Gayatri should come to the rescue now with their kandRin kural.

I found the CD and listened to it. Yes, R&G say it as 'kaNDrin' which is not correct. As you both said, the root cause is the N instead of the n which brings in the retroflex D.

Here is an interesting thing. In the same CD, there is a Thodi song which starts with Kunram and also contains the word manram which they pronounce correctly. Correctly in the sense of kundram and mandram ( no retroflex D but just that sandhi introduced 'd' ).

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 28 Dec 2009, 09:28

cool, I wasn't tilting at windmills.

erode14 · Post by **erode14** » 28 Dec 2009, 17:51

certainly there lies a great difference while saying kanRu and kanDRu...

viRRu vittAn and viTRu.. [leave it] vittAn... also..

one more thing is singing puLNiyam oru kOti instaed of puNNiyam, kizhNam for kiNNam and all...

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 29 Dec 2009, 00:27

I am so impressed by the demand (may be that is too strong a word) to make clear differences that are subtle at best (for instance, I have no idea how to differentiate the 'r' sound from 'R', let alone the 'nR' sound) when blatant mispronunciations occur with sounds that should be obvious to even the deaf (:P) - e.g., difference between k and kh, k and g, k and gh, kh and g, g and gh, and so on and so forth...., and when the 'L' sound replaces the uniquely elegant (not my words, but Sri LGJ's) 'z' sound (the latter seems to be the norm for many of the 'newer' tamizh news readers - a very far cry from the Shobhana Ravis and the Ramakrishnans).

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 29 Dec 2009, 01:06

Ravi, I hear your exasperation. The ones you refer to are different but significant issues with different origins for the troubles. ( CM krithis with a mixture of tamil and sanskrit bring their own issues which is yet another separate matter ). Of course 'L' for 'zha' is just plain wrong and so is using 'l' for 'L' and vice versa, I do not think it is even a matter for debate. As I mentioned to srkris, mixing these well known issues into the same pot takes the focus away from subtle things, at least for me. ( and subtlety may be in ear of the beholder ).

Our current discussion is subtle indeed within tamil words themselves. We all agree, I think, that kaNDRin sounds odd and wrong. The unresolved item is very narrow and specific. Is there a non-retroflex 'd' sound in kanRin, manram etc? Quite interestingly, there are two samples, we agree on both of them, the one that is not right ( we hear them the same way ) and the one that is right (though we seem to hear them differently).

Once this 'kanRin' is resolved or set-aside, let us talk kARRu. What srkris says as the right way is so astonishing that I am currently hanging it on I not understanding srkris's point.

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 29 Dec 2009, 06:30

srkris wrote :
VK, I support democracy, but not for science. Phonetics is a science.

srikris, An uneducated Tamil woman, who has not studied ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¤ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã…Â ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â²ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 29 Dec 2009, 13:58

erode14 wrote:one more thing is singing puLNiyam oru kOti instaed of puNNiyam, kizhNam for kiNNam and all...

Obviously your association with Tamil is larger than mine coz I have not heard of these mispronunciations at all. One needs to listen a lot to spot such things.

But it is easy to explain these.

L, N, Zh are all retroflexes. Hence one retroflex gets easily replaced by another.

puLNiyam rather than puNNiyam (in Sanskrit puNya has only one medial retroflex N, but tamil stresses on the N and ends up with two).

Regardless, it is not possible to express all the sounds that are produced in their minutest detail in written expression. Hence it may not be puLNiyam or puNNiyam but something between the two.

By the way the zh (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â´) is not an l (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â²) sound, contrary to popular opinion, it is a retroflexed r (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â°) sound. The retroflex of l is L (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â³). So zha should logically be written as R.

We need a more logical system for Tamil transliteration in the roman script, we are using harvard-kyoto and IAST both of which were developed for sanskrit and are not very suitable for tamil.

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 29 Dec 2009, 14:18

Govindaswamy,

English script has only the dental n, but in its spoken form has the alveolar n too. In places like India, spoken English has all the three forms (including retroflexes).

I fail to understand your logic about the uneducated Tamil woman. Just because she can pronounce certain things properly (which itself is doubtful in the first place), is all her pronunciation perfect? Many uneducated tamil women pronounce zha as La. Uneducated people are the most prone to mistake (that's why we have education

). So let us not hold uneducated people as beacons of knowledge.

Wouldn't it be simpler if people accepted that they pronounce differently for whatever reason rather than argue that what they pronounce is correct just because they found others who also mispronounce the same way.

Each written akshara has only one correct way of enunciation. All others are either allophonic variants or pure and simple mistakes.

Allophonic variants are those accepted by everyone concerned to be an alternative but acceptable pronounciation (for example ka and ga in modern tamil).

Some people think that pronouncing zha as La is wrong just because they know La is already available in the script as a separate phoneme. This is a simplistic way of seeing things. Availability or otherwise of a phoneme in the script is a primary but not a sufficient standard to determine whether pronunciation is proper.

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 30 Dec 2009, 11:29

Srikris,
I am afraid that you are putting words into my mouth, nay, finger tips and keyboard, by mentioning "So let us not hold uneducated people as beacons of knowledge."

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 30 Dec 2009, 14:10

Sorry for putting words in your fingers

It appears to me you have an emotional socio-political bondage with Tamil. So my words may not matter much to you, but I believe I have a wider readership, so here goes.

>>Only easy sounds exist in Tamiz.<<

That is an (if I may add, misinformed) opinion, not a fact. There are no easy or hard sounds. Sounds are sounds, and they have a particular pronunciation. Zha may be a hard sound for those who are used to saying it as La, but you get the drift. Else you need to prove to me that easy and difficult are absolute determinants for all people. Mandarin is easy for the Chinese, so it should be easy to all of us. Likewise Sanskrit was easy to Panini, so it must be so for us too. Vedic was easy for Vasishta and Brihaspati. Welcome back from lala land to reality.

>>the common woman/man has no such problem.<<

They dont care a damn, and they are obviously wrong. They prefer the free-flowing madras tamil, rather than split hairs in learning and pronouncing pure tamil as it should be, and it seems you prefer it too.

>>This is because Tamiz has been an old natural language, without any harsh sounds which came into other younger languages.<<

All languages are old natural languages, since all languages derive from older speech. Like tamil, all of them experience changes to varying levels in pronunciation, grammar, vocab, etc. Tamil is no exception to it.

Besides Tamil is just a label for a continuously changing dialect. Tolkappiyar would jump in the well hearing your uneducated tamil men and women speak their free-flowing madras tamil instead of splitting hairs over his hard grammatical pure tamil. People of the 10th century would not agree that the uneducated tamil people of today speak tamil at all. People of the 1st century would not agree with the speech of the people of the 10th century. Anything else is political brainwashing.

>>As compred to these uneducated people the educated ones like us trying to split hairs with each word can not speak one sentence in Tamiz without using English words.<<

The uneducated people are speaking pure free-flowing tamil according to you coz they dont know, and we are the ones having the most difficulty speaking it because we "know better". Right?

>>Probably because of this easy and smooth flow, Tamiz has been a living language for more than 2000 years.<<

Tamil is just a label for a continuously changing set of dialects, nothing more nothing less. I could as well rename Hindi, Vedic and Proto-Indo-European as Sanskrit and say that Sanskrit has been living for more than 5000 years. Or I could rename French as Latin and say that Latin has been living for 3000 years. Today's Tamil is poles apart from the tamil of 2000 years back. The name of these languages is the only thing that has remained constant. Oh no, even that has become tamiL. It is not even the same language that was spoken 2000 years back, it is a different language altogether, as much as Vedic was to Sanskrit and Sanskrit was to Prakrits and Prakrits to modern Indian languages. It needs education to tell apart the differences, and if you believe tamil now is the same language as the language which was called tamil 2000 years back, then you may find your place among your pet uneducated tamil men and women that you so adore. They are totally different in all respects, so much so that one needs explanations to understand tiruvalluvar and tolkappiyam. And I dont even think Tiruvalluvar & Tolkappiyar lived 2000 years back to start with (if you go by Iravatham Mahadevan's research). He says the pulli (dot) which tolkappiyam mentions did not exist in the tamil brahmi (earliest tamil script) until the 7th century. This agrees well with the evidence of other dravidian grammatical literature starting from the 7th century onwards (i.e telugu and kannada).

>>As compred to these uneducated people the educated ones like us trying to split hairs with each word can not speak one sentence in Tamiz without using English words.<<

Again you are reversing the roles. It needs education to speak pure tamil. It is easy to remain uneducated and have a don't care a damn attitude.

>>I wonder if your Tamiz teacher taught you and your class mates the following two kuRaLs without Da and Ta.<<

Yes she did.

>>You have been empnatically maintaing that the soft sounds like ga, ja, da, Da,& ba were not existing in old Tamiz.<<

I have revised my opinion on that. They perhaps did exist in old tamil (50-50 chance), but certainly did not exist in proto-tamil (which was some form of Dravidian). They may have started being used newly by the time the tamil alphabet system was devised, which is perhaps why they were not included in the alphabet system as they were considered to be mistakes in pronounciation. They gained wider acceptability later but did not find the need to change the script since they were included as allophones of the same sound.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 30 Dec 2009, 21:17

>>I wonder if your Tamiz teacher taught you and your class mates the following two kuRaLs without Da and Ta.<<

>Yes she did.

srkris, I am now really curious how you say that second kuraL that Govindaswamy posted. Transliteration adds only to the confusion. Can you recite it and post an audio link? If you do not want to do that, then try another method like find a youtube or esnips link where you can find people saying similar words wrongly or correctly.

Along the same lines, listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCiqqFVY4Xw Is the first word correctly pronounced? If not, what should it be?

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 31 Dec 2009, 03:08

It is correctly pronounced.

However it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking we are listening to something we are not. There is (and should be) a difference in pronunciation between RR and tR/TR, however subtle that may be.

I give attention to detail here and therefore object to your general claim that it is a 't' sound that comes with -RR-. It may be very close to a t sound, but it is not a t sound. Perhaps I'm being too unnecessarily detail oriented.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Dec 2009, 04:23

srkris: Now we are in sync. btw, I do not claim that RR is same as tR, that is just some silly transliteration difficulties.

( side bar : As I wrote before this is not about any arguments, I am just trying my darnedest to clearly understand what you are characterizing as the right way and the wrong way. The reason it is taking these many posts is the natural difficulties in talking about sound related issues with text. I want you to go into the details but at the same time see if any seeming differences are just due to transliteration difficulties. What you wrote above made sense to me and helped to see where the difference is )

But then, what I fail to understand is why you did not give any significance to what I was saying in the kan(d)Rin context regarding the extra/different sound that gets introduced. I think, if you had done that but pointed out that the disagreement is in the different characterization of what that extra sound is, that would have focused the issue more clearly. Reason I am stating that here is to see if you do acknowledge that extra/different sound ( no matter how we write about it here ) or there is a disagreement there.

Btw, I do not think phonologists would disagree that extra sound is produced. I remember reading Harold Schiffman when we discussed these kinds of issues before and I recall him notating those extra sounds. I am not saying you will necessarily disagree with this but stating it here for reference.

In a related matter, let me get to a very specific thing you wrote

>Each written akshara has only one correct way of enunciation. All others are either allophonic variants or pure and simple mistakes.

How literal is that rule? Does that really hold in the case of RR? Meaning, the so called extra/different sound that gets introduced between two letters seems to violate the above rule, if the above rule is to be understood as 'very strictly phonetic'. We do not say kARRu with the first short R sound same as the short R sound in mERku and the second R same as payaRu. If you did not mean it that strictly and literally, that is fine. In either case, please clarify so we can decide if we are in violent agreement or there is really some worthwhile differences. Again, these are all for proper understanding and learning.

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 31 Dec 2009, 05:03

But then, what I fail to understand is why you did not give any significance to what I was saying in the kan(d)Rin context regarding the extra/different sound that gets introduced.

There is no extra sound introduced anywhere. There is a kan+Rin, and nothing else between them.

Btw, I do not think phonologists would disagree that extra sound is produced

Of course they will. If you want, ask any of them.

How literal is that rule?

101% literal.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 31 Dec 2009, 05:34

srkris wrote: understand tiruvalluvar and tolkappiyam. And I dont even think Tiruvalluvar & Tolkappiyar lived 2000 years back to start with (if you go by Iravatham Mahadevan's research). He says the pulli (dot) which tolkappiyam mentions did not exist in the tamil brahmi (earliest tamil script) until the 7th century. This agrees well with the evidence of other dravidian grammatical literature starting from the 7th century onwards (i.e telugu and kannada).

srkris,

Do you have any online reference for this research that you mention? I am curious. I read a book long ago by Dr. N. Mahalingam (? I think) of Madras University, "tamizh mozhi varalAru. " He called the old root language as tol drAvida mozhi. He says kannadA and telugu branched of around 6/7th centuries. Malayalam much later, around ninth century. I do no remember him saying anything about tolkAppiyar's time being so much later. Otherwise, it would have struck me odd as it does now.

I have to get at least a B.A. in Tamil when I retire. I have an emotional socio-political bondage with Tamil, starting from day minus 10 months

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Dec 2009, 06:35

srkris:

In this link : http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/pub ... iquids.pdf ( the article is not about our current issue but happens to mention this in passing)

Harold Schiffnan ( in 1980 ) quotes ( bottom of page 8 ) the British Phonetician Firth (1934 ) :

"..... with no phonetic contrast between / r / and /R/ ,
although some reflex of geminate / rR / and / nR / occur in the
sample. The former, he states , are often realized as [ t t R ] ( b u t
also [ t t ] ) , while / nR / usually is realized as ndR, a more literary pronunciation."

( I changed his notation to R here since his notation did not display properly here )

Is this the same thing we are talking about?

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 31 Dec 2009, 14:46

VK,

There are things called descriptive grammars and prescriptive grammars. A descriptive grammar describes the grammar/usage of the day. A prescriptive grammar prescribes what is right. Over time descriptive grammars gain prescriptive authority. It is likely that tolkappiyar was just describing what he heard in his time, but those became prescriptions as time went by.

I have no problem accepting that some/many people pronounce nR as nDR/ndR, just as how many pronounce zh as L. That is the descriptive part of it. When we reach the prescriptive part (how it should be pronounced), I definitely would disagree with the way many sounds are being pronounced.

Harold Schiffman quoting Firth, is a case of description of the contemporary language of Firth's time, not prescription. So I don't disagree with them.

Enna solven,

The South-Dravidian (Tamil-Kannada-Tulu family) tree http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-me ... 57BC29.gif

The Central Dravidian (Telugu family) tree http://www.institutespiritualsciences.o ... hart_1.jpg

The Telugu family (central and south-central dravidian) was one of the first major dravidian languages to split off from Proto-Dravidian. When this split happened there was no Tamil, Tulu or Kannada yet (their common ancestor was however there, called by linguists as Proto-South-Dravidian).

It is not factual to say therefore that Telugu and Kannada branched off in 7th century... such an opinion is blatantly against whatever we know about Dravidian. The split off of the telugu family happened sometime in the middle of the 1st millenium BCE (i.e 500 BCE or thereabouts), and this is evidenced by the existence of the Bhattiprolu script dated to 100BCE. The split of Tamil/Kannada happened about 300-500 years from the telugu split and are both therefore equally old. I am not saying that Tamil did not exist for 2000 years. I am saying the tolkappiyam and thirukkural may not be that old, and the language we call old tamil today may be based around the 7th century. Before that we have only terse inscriptions on rocks, not much literature. So Mr. Mahalingam, whoever he may be, does not have his facts in line with current mainstream scholarship.

From wikipedia article on Tolkappiyam:
PuLLi - Pulli concept is one of the distinguishing feature among the Tamil characters. Although it is not unique and brahmi also has pulli. It is distinguished by placement . According to tolkappiam which talks about pulli and its position, that is on top of the alphabet instead of side as in Brahmi. This is also one of the characteristics of Tamil brahmi according to Mr. Mahadevan. The first inscription of this type of pulli is in vallam by pallvas dated 7-8th century AD by Mahendra varman pallava.

So we have a terminus post quem for the Tolkappiyam's date as the 7-8th centuries. It could have been anytime around or after the first inscription, not centuries before, considering the thousands of old inscriptions the ASI have unearthed in tamil, the pulli does not figure at all before the 7-8th centuries, and came into widespread use even later.

These are not a disjointed set of data, there was a significant "push" of Buddhism and Jainism to down south as North & Central India fell to Muslim hands. It is commonly the Pallavas whose time is credited with the spread of literacy (writing) in the South, they later introduced the pallava ezhuthu (pallava writing) that became standard in the Chola period that followed. This was a period of resurgence for local literature all over south India, not just TN. Most of the old tamil literature belongs to the period between the 5th and 10th centuries, but some of them (like Silappathikaram) talk of history i.e events that happened much before their time but were romanticized and made larger than life when they were put to writing (like Kannaki reducing Madurai to ashes).

Iravatham Mahadevan (in case you didnt know) is the foremost scholar of Tamil Brahmi, it is he who first discovered and explained that brahmi was used to write tamil (in addition to sanskrit and prakrit). It was called tamil brahmi since it was a slightly modified form of brahmi to suit tamil's phonemes.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 31 Dec 2009, 22:58

Srkris: OK, I understand. That is Firth's description of what he heard. But let me state it in passing that he also says "while / nR / usually is realized as ndR, a more literary pronunciation..". So he heard that extra 'd' sound even in literary circles..

I am still confused. We both heard "kARRinilE varum geetham", both of us say it is pronounced right. You say I am fooling myself in hearing stuff that I should not be hearing. That may be so, the problem may be in describing what we hear. That is where my confusion is. Can you work a little bit more to make me understand by shedding some light on this one?

"We do not say kARRu with the first short R sound same as the short R sound in mERku and the second R same as payaRu"

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 01 Jan 2010, 00:59

thanks srkris.

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 01 Jan 2010, 02:46

Srikris wrote :
> It appears to me you have an emotional socio-political bondage with Tamil. So my words may not matter much to you, but I believe I have a wider readership, so here goes.<
I notice that you have carried out an assessment about me and ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“brandedÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢ me.
I deserve this because I have digressed from the topic under discussion, namely the correct pronunciation of ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 01 Jan 2010, 15:49

Govindaswamy,

It is my experience elsewhere too that many telugu's who know tamil find pride in "batting for the tamil team" (to use a cricket analogy), and therefore one does not need to have tamil as a mother tongue either to talk about it or be wrong about it. I have seen many telugus have larger than life notions of tamil based on simplistic notions rather than more thorough historical research, and this is more or less influenced both inside and outside TN by a big well-diversified propaganda machinery that masquerades as an R&D dept. People think they are not influenced by it, and would severely deny any affiliation with the establishment, but even avowed anti-establishmentarians most often fall into the same trap, again severely denying the same. This is all old story, it happens with most of the people I talk with.

You dont have to be an establishmentarian to have glorified less-than-factual views. I always get these quizzical stares when I say this from people (who assume there are only two groups of people) from whom I get replies like ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¨ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¾ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 01 Jan 2010, 23:22

srkris
I have come across some excellent articles regarding Tamiz phonetics by one ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â°ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¾ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®.ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¿ in Google group ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚ÂµÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¿ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 02 Jan 2010, 01:23

Govindaswamy,

ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¨ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¾ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 02 Jan 2010, 01:28

Good one... Good to have some humor in this thread..

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 02 Jan 2010, 04:00

[quote]
>>it is unfortunate that none of the learned members has been able to find and post any rule from any Tamiz grammar book regarding the pronunciation of the words ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 02 Jan 2010, 04:46

RR is not the same as R....R...., the first R is not allowed to end normally like the second R therefore giving rise to the half R sound which sounds like an alveolar t (which btw does not exist in the tamil alphabet). Indeed in spoken malayalam, the alveolar R changes to alveolar t in some form of prakritization (i.e simplification of a complex sound that commonly happens when sanskrit words are simplified to result in their prakrit equivalents, eg. maudgalya becomes moggalla). Malayalam finds the R sound hard and similarly converts alveolar Rs here to alveolar Ts.

But we the R speakers, cannot afford to take the easy way out. We should take the pains to pronounce R as R to prevent ourselves from getting prakritized... or should I say, malayalized. Having said that, the alveolar R and alveolar t have the same start, and before we can identify whether it is a t or an R, the second R comes into the picture. The same happens to kunRam where an alveolar d seems to sound at the start of the R (colored by the preceding alveolar n which is a mei and is not therefore allowed to end fully like an uyirmei) even though there is no new d that comes in the word. This is probably why you read the alveolar t/d where I read the alveolar R. I can justify why I read R by pointing out that it is literally an R sound else we should be able to replace it with t/d willy nilly without bothering whether it is preceeded by the alveolar n or alveolar R. Since we cant do such a context-free replacement, it can only be a half R sound although it sounds the same as an alveolar half t/d.

It appears to me that despite their separation over a millenium ago, malayalam more or less follows the same path that spoken tamil traverses (just as prakrit closely followed sanskrit, and still the Indic languages take up sanskrit stereotypes).

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 02 Jan 2010, 07:17

RR is not the same as R....R...., the first R is not allowed to end normally like the second R therefore giving rise to the half R sound which sounds like an alveolar t

Thanks srkris. That helps to understand some fundamentals.

Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .

Consider this word: ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 02 Jan 2010, 16:54

It seems obvious that I was wrong with the "101% literal thing"

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 03 Jan 2010, 04:45

srikris
If the second kuRaL, which I have quoted, is written in the respective scripts and shown to our three neighbours, who are not much knowlegeable about Tamiz, the following will be the likely pronunciations..
Telugu and KannaDa people will read without bringing in a touch of ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“TaÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢. One small example in Telugu will suffice. guRRamu is horse. It may be noted that in Telugu ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‹Å“Ra,RA. Ri etc were coming in the beginning of words as well, unlike in Tamiz. In Telugu and KannaDa Ra has been almost totally replaced by ra, except that old people like me still pronounce Ra. We do not find
I am not sure how our MalayaLam friends will read this. Do they read this with with more of Ta, an vey little Ra sound. (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â´Ã‚ÂªÃƒÂ Ã‚Â´Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚ÂµÃ‚Â

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 03 Jan 2010, 05:00

Following the 'Arwi' language link from the top 10 pronunciations thread, I found this very interesting article. How little that I know

http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/TheTa ... ndhras.htm

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 03 Jan 2010, 22:03

srkris wrote:It seems obvious that I was wrong with the "101% literal thing"

OK, that takes away some confusion.

1) I assume then that you grant that it is indeed possible to form a mei R that does not introduce the 't' sound, which is the case in the first mei R of ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 03 Jan 2010, 22:37

>>I checked if the two Mei R sounds are in the same place ( tongue fold differences and trill differences notwithstanding ). It does not seem to be so.<<

The second mei R is a alveolar t in disguise. All alveolars are articulated from the same position on the top of the mouth, that's why they are grouped together.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 03 Jan 2010, 23:00

>The second mei R is a alveolar t in disguise.

No disagreement there. I am referring to the following.

Say these two: ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

srkris · Post by **srkris** » 04 Jan 2010, 21:38

If its an alveolar t and Firth is quoted as saying that, then there is nothing to disagree with in the prescriptive sense.

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 05 Jan 2010, 05:14

Srikris
You wrote -
1 > Sridhar, valid points there. Malayalam is credited with preserving the alveolars well. While kARRu (air) of old tamil (i.e standard tamil) becomes kAttu (ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã¢â‚¬Â¢ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¾ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â¤ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 05 Jan 2010, 05:15

VKV - You have said "Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .
Consider this word: ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 05 Jan 2010, 06:11

>It is my firm opinion that only when R is followed by Ra ,RA, Ri etc the pronunciation of first Ra changes.

Govindasamy: You and I are essentially saying the same thing. Such changes are called by linguists/phonologists/phoneticians as Reflexes of Gemination.

All my laborious efforts with Mei R was just to convey that tamil does experience such reflex of gemination and that every aksharam has one and only pronounciation irrespective of context is not true. So Tamil is not a 100% context free phonetic language. I think srkris now agrees with that, atleast in the case of the geminate RR.

Beyond that, whether we three are all saying the same thing or not is very hard to tell using this written medium. But I have a feeling we are all saying the same thing, the apparent differences are in how we are characterizing/transliterating/phoneme-izing the various sounds. I am more convinced of that when srkris and I heard three samples and we agreed 100% on whether each one sounded correct or not. There are still open issues which I had raised to make sure we are on the same wavelength, which had not been addressed but it is hard to do so using a written medium. That is the frustrating part which we have to accept and move on.

Enna_Solven · Post by **Enna_Solven** » 05 Jan 2010, 08:31

Couple of quotes from the book "History of the Tamils, From the earliest times to 600A.D." by P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar, written during 1928-29, reprinted 1989; it might help reduce the anxiety in this thread

If chronology is the eye of History, Ancient Indian History will have to be always blind."

Transcription:
I have not used a special symbol for ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â©ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

S.Govindaswamy · Post by **S.Govindaswamy** » 07 Jan 2010, 06:38

VKV - You have said "Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .
Consider this word: ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â®ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã¢â‚¬Â¡ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â®Ã‚Â±ÃƒÂ Ã‚Â¯Ã‚Â

sridhar_ranga · Post by **sridhar_ranga** » 17 Jan 2010, 10:16

Interesting to see the Srilankan Tamils usage of RR! To me it appears not very different from the usage in Malayalam.

Picture this. Two editors are locked in a fierce argument over the phonetically correct spelling for 'metre' in the Tamil script. While one editor insists 'meattar' is the correct transliteration, the other, who speaks Jaffna Tamil, insists that 'meeRRar' is the way to go. Tamil Wikipedia editors know exactly what this behind-the-pages war is about; as the Tamil Wikipedia has as many - if not more - serious contributors from Sri Lanka. Hence the point of conflict, as they say in wikispeak.

Link to the article in the Hindu:

http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/inter ... epage=true

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 03 Mar 2010, 21:31

Check out the Thangam Online tamil magazine, march edition: http://ebook.thangamonline.com/mar10/
Starting at page 24, there is an article about tamil pronounciation written by a very good acquaintance of mine, Sundar, a retired tamil professor. It is along the lines of this topic, lament with a bit of humor.

Also, I am quite impressed with the magazine layout.. This is the first time I visited thangam online magazine. I have not read enough to comment about the rest of the contents.

rasikas.org

Goosebumps and pronunciation

Re: Goosebumps and pronunciation