Learning Tamil, My experiences: continued

Skan,

Colloquial tamizh of various parts differ in sound.

The way madurai tamizh sounds, u cant find the same in elongated rinign of kovai tamizh, or the dialect of thirunelveli.

Chennai thamizh is extremely cosmopolitan with mixture of almost all languages under the sun.

So I dont think we feel tamizh sounds esp colloquial tamizh sounds like malyalam.

malyalam is more nasal
tamizh is crisp

I aint sure of tamils of fiji though :)

Shakthi,

Fiji Tamils speak a dialect of Tamil which is spoken in Chennapattinam. Their Tamil is very similar to colloquial Tamil as commonly spoken by Tamil from India and Sri Lanka.

ie: For "I want water" they will say, "naan thaNNIr vENNum"

For "I don't want..." they say, "naan...vENNaa"

I have heard people say that Malayalam is spoken in Fiji which kind of suprised me as though there are people of Malayalam descent in Fiji, no body really speaks Malayalam as opposed to Tamil and Telugu which are spoken spoken by large numbers of people there. Out of the 5000 people in Fiji who have knowledge of Tamil, 1000 can fluenly read, write and speak fluenly in Tamil.

Before, I have had people, Tamil speakers themselves, tell me that Tamil is not a sweet language. This really shocked me as on Tamil websites throughout the the internet, Tamil is praised as being as a sweet language by its speakers. Why did this one Tamil speaker, from Chennai, tell me that Tamil is not sweet?

hi Skanthan

long time no c?, y dont u actively participate like b4?

vaNakkam, Raghu! eppadi irukkiReenga?

I am participating off and on here. When Shanthi, my old Tamil teacher starts teaching me Tamil again, from where she left off over 2 years ago, :lol: you'll be seeing me more often on this forum, esp. on this thread. :wink: One question, are there still discussions going on in forum about the similarities between Malayalam and Tamil? Because it appears to me that Malayalam very closely resembles Tamil in it's colloquial form. ie: The numbers in colloquial Tamil and the numbers in Malayalam. I would like to explore a little on these topics and bring them to discussion in this thread amidst my Tamil learning. :D

skanthan,

This topic discusses the malayalam,tamil similarities: http://www.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=1903

Thank you, RR.

I visited that thread and posted some of my observances and queries there. I found that discussion qute interesting.

Shakthi, Lambretta, Rajraj and all,

I have very great news to tell all of you!

Hello? Shekthi? Rajraj? Lambretta? Is anyone there?

Anyways.. Here is my good news. A few days ago, I met Shanthi at the Ganesh temple. We had been talking about how we had not met for Tamil lessons for over 2 years. During the discussion, I expressed to Shanthi that I would like to start taking Tamil lesson from her again. She said to me that from next month, we will meet every second week for tamil lessons. :wink: This is so great. I am so happy and excited that Shanthi will be teaching me Tamil again! :D This is so good that I am going to start learning Tamil again!

All the best, Skanthan... :thumbsup:

Thanks Dev! :D

I know it will be great! :thumbsup: