#��ஞச

[tamblr]

Tamil lesson 2: Hard Consonants

Consonants are called (மெய் எழுத்துக்கள்) (Mei ezhuthukkal) [body letters]. There are 24 (18 + 6) consonants, where the 18 consonants are called Tolkappiyam consonants and the 6 are of Sanskrit origin and are called Grantha consonants. All the consonants have an inherent “a” sound. Consonants with a dot on top are used to denote vowel less consonants. Eg: க (ka), க் (k) [we normally learn this sound as ik].

The 18 consonants are further divided into 6 hard consonants, 6 soft consonants and 6 middle consonants. In this lesson we’ll focus on the 6 hard consonants [vallinam ezhuthukkal (வல்லினம் எழுதுக்கல்) ]

க் (k/g) - cup

ச் (ch/j) - chalk

ட் (t/d) - dad (pronounced with the tongue rolled back) [retroflex consonant]

த் (th/dh) - thermal

ப் (p/b) - palm

ற் (tr/r(R)) / (t) - tree / (acetone)

These hard consonants are allophonic between their voiceless and voiced pairs, which means they can shift between being voiceless (k) and voiced (g) depending on the position of the letter in a word. We can use the same symbol for both these sounds because they occur in complementary distribution and follow some rules but they are really simple. First we’ll just focus on the first column i.e voiceless. If a letter is in the beginning of a word or occurs as a pair in the middle or when it is in a consonant cluster with another hard consonant it is voiceless. When a consonant occurs as a pair i.e க்க it’s called a germinated consonant which means you have to pronounce the consonant just for a little bit longer.

Eg:

கடல் (kadal) [ocean]

பக்கம் (pakkam) [beside/near]

When these letters come in the middle without a pair or occur in the middle with their homo organic nasal they are voiced. A homo organic nasal is basically every one of these 6 consonants has their own nasal pair and when this consonant comes after its nasal pair it becomes voiced. We’ll deal with nasals (i.e the soft consonants) in the next lesson.

தங்கம் (thangam) [gold]

நகம் (nagam) [fingernail]

The letters க், ட், த், ப் all follow this rule nicely, but ச் and ற் are both a little weird.

Let’s look at ச். This letter shifts from being ch and s and can be quite annoying for beginners.  In the initial position it can occur as either s or ch, in the middle it occurs as s when written individually ச் and as j when followed by its nasal ஞச (nja).

Lastly we’ll see this very weird letter ற். Basically this used to be a soft t sound (acetone) but then later it became a tr (tree) ற்ற் when written as a pair and became an r (a trilled/rolled r) sound when written in the middle as one ற். This is written in brackets as R because you have to press the shift key and type r in the keyboard. Lastly when followed by its nasal it occurs as dr (dragon), ன்ற்.

Ok so here’s a handy table summarising all these rules and the recording summarises the pronunciation of each consonant from left to right.

Lol this is a lot of info, good news is these are the only “hard” consonants you’ll have to learn (pun intended!). Don’t worry too much if you can’t hear the difference or about memorising any of it cos as you play with the language more and more you’ll automatically get it.