#tamil vocab

[survivetoread]

Heyo! Longtime fan of your blog.

I'm considering starting a blog to document my learning Tamil, you got any tips for learning a new script and / or maintaining vocab lists?

Hey! So good to see this ask! 😊 I look forward to your Tamil blog so much!!

Learning a new script:

In general, learning a new script is easy when you know what you're reading. When you don't know the content you're reading is when it gets difficult.

So for scripts, maximise reading things that you know, whether that's simple stories and poems, or ultra-basic vocab lists.

My personal favourite is to read proper nouns, which usually don't change from language-to-language (although they certainly can!). Wikipedia's list of countries for example, or a list of presidents/prime ministers, or your favourite sports team, is a great way to pick up a script fast, especially as you have the flag or portrait as a hint.

One example:

With some careful observation, even I can guess some of these glyphs by dint of knowing what the countries are.

Maintaining vocab lists:

I don't personally like vocab lists for study myself, I mostly use them to show what words are like in a particular language on the blog.

So I don't have any specific tips there, but as a general bit of advice - the prettier and more aesthetic you make your vocab list, the greater the chances you'll come back to it, thereby strengthening your vocabulary. So make it pretty!

-

Once again, I really look forward to your Tamil blog, so ping me when you make it!

[lanzhans]

OUHHH I'LL CHECK IT OUT!! i think roshan also recc'd when i fly towards you to me and both of your judgements combined?? i trust!! also. REAL OF YOU. hilariously i learned the most chinese vocabulary from watching a thai drama??? bc one of the main leads was tutoring the other in mandarin which was SOOOO cool? although i cannot remember them well now. anyway YES lai lai or just lai or lai ah (ah being just. a little thing native speakers add, idk, like the canadian thing where they add 'ey at the end of sentences! i also can only gather little bits but i think that my comprehension is getting like. slightly slightly better over all this time lmao

HI HELLO I AM BACK AND ALIVE FROM THE DEAD the last month ish has been hell on earth sorry for not having a march check in but i will send my april one shortly !!!! i have not finished wifty i have a few other dramas i will watch before returning to that one i think. rn i am watching the untamed and if u watch any cdrama pleaaaaaaase let it be that one . it is so deeply everything rec'd to me by my beloved grace @juliettecai but also thank u for the vocab !!!! i have not picked up much chinese at all tbh but i will watch more dramas later and expand my knowledge on the language (i think i have narrowed down my list of languages to korean, mandarin, japanese, italian, and tamil i think for this lifetime)

[kathai-kavithai-kadhal]

Kaatru Veliyidai Kannamma - Romance With God

If you were looking for a Tamil poem for that greeting card to that pretty girl in your class, you’re welcome. Firstly, this is the poem in Tamil for those of you who know how to read the language:

காற்று வெளியிடைக் கண்ணம்மா, – நின்றன் காதலை யெண்ணிக் களிக்கின்றேன் – அமு தூற்றினை யொத்த இதழ்களும் – நில வூறித் ததும்பும் விழிகளும் – பத்து மாற்றுப்பொன் னொத்தநின் மேனியும் – இந்த வையத்தில் யானுள்ள மட்டிலும் – எனை வேற்று நினைவின்றித் தேற்றியே – இங்கோர் விண்ணவ னாகப் புரியுமே! இந்தக் (காற்று)

நீயென தின்னுயிர் கண்ணம்மா! – எந்த நேரமும் நின்றனைப் போற்றுவேன் – துயர் போயின, போயின துன்பங்கள் நினைப் பொன்னெனக் கொண்ட பொழுதிலே – என்றன் வாயினி லேயமு தூறுதே – கண்ணம் மாவென்ற பேர்சொல்லும் போழ்திலே – உயிர்த் தீயினி லேவளர் சோதியே – என்றன் சிந்தனையே, என்றன் சித்தமே! – இந்தக் (காற்று)

Now for those of you who don’t know Tamil, here’s the meaning of the poem in English:

In this vast expanse Kannamma - I feel happy thinking of your love- lips like a fountain of honey - Moon soaked serene eyes - skin that is like gold - as long as I live in this world - I will not think of anything else - you make me feel like a celestial being. You are my life, Kannamma - I will sing you praises all the time All my sorrow and suffering vanishes - in your radiant (gold-like) presence I feel nectar in my mouth - when I speak the name Kannamma You're the light from the fire in my soul You're what occupies my thoughts and my will.

The Tamil poet, Subramanya Bharathi, is known for the poems he’s written about Krishna, imagining him as his friend, his son, his lover, and so on. And in this poem, he imagines Krishna as a woman – Kannamma – whom he is in love with. The poem is called Kaatru Veliyidai Kannamma, which literally translates to “In this vast (breezy) expanse, Kannamma.” And if you’re a Tamil cinema geek like me, you’d also immediately guess that it inspired the title of the Mani Ratnam film, Kaatru Veliyidai. But that’s beside the point!

This poem is pretty romantic, as you can see, but it’s also a very creative outpouring of Bharathiyar’s devotion to Krishna (which is actually why my mom likes all the Kannamma poems). I mean, the genius of this man! Anyway, so in this poem, the narrator is probably away from his beloved, and he’s thinking of her and sort of talking to her, although she isn’t in this scene. I’m quite sure there’s a fancy English word for that but my fancy vocab words flew out of the window after my English exam, so forgive me he he.

That’s it for now, guys. Thanks for reading, and if Romeo over there is actually planning on putting this in a greeting card for your crush, all the best!

[indiejones]

19TH C.'S POLITICS..LANGUAGE .

A shocking & eye-opening discussion on the huge ill-effects that Ram Mohan Roy (rightly lauded for his pioneering activism in helping rid Indian society of the hugely regressive dastardly age-old 'sati'/ widow self-immolation practice in Hindu culture), allegedly had on Indian civilization & culture, vis a vis his propagation of the replacement of Indian Sanskrit with British English, in early 1800s, which paved the way for the English language takeover of India, a decade later.

Was aghast that someone as visionary as Roy, could opine that Sanskrit, or any language, especially as ancient as that, from a land, famed for millennia on end, as being a intellectual-spiritual powerhouse, could 'stunt growth of scientific temperament' as apparently argued by Roy.

Most thoughtful people would agree, that the barometer for the self-sufficiency of a language, scientifically speaking, in sustaining a people, is it's vastness of emotion-to-word vehicle construct, in short, vocabulary. And there is nothing in history, that, all personal affinities & prejudices & general talent in it, aside, points to such inadequacy in the Sanskrit language perse.

The dangers of such abrupt singeing of India's oldest roots, that perhaps contributed to an extra century or so of 'easy' British colonization & re-indoctrination of India, especially with its basic & otherwise powerful vehicular foundations, taken away from under their feet, & so soiled in inferiority & mediocrity, being, the snatching away of, the 'ancient spiritual Indian ethos', created millennia back with the potential to absorb & digest more & more good & grow in sync with it's external surroundings WHILST NOT COMPROMISING ITS MOST FUNDAMENTAL DIVINE PRINCIPLE, in essence dismantling the bedrock for its oldest sustained existence & civilization.

To give more tangible success stories, from the 2 ancient lands, that contrary to India, didn't succumb to the colonial influence, whilst growing with the times, being China & Japan, who never allowed their own languages to be taken away in exchange for scientific vision, & in fact creatively used their ancient languages, modified & expanded them, to become even bigger scientific powers than the colonizers.

I challenge any language scholar, to prove that, Sanskrit,as an exception, didn't hold the vocab power, to allow for development of Scientific thot, within its aegis.

Sad, that such supposed greats(& in some context genuine heroes) of Indian history, could be now thot of, as a potential mass negative turning point for Indian life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRd0gngmFds

(On other allegation herein, namely, the mysterious superior "We are more Bengali(or Tamil) over Indians" attitude alleged to exist in West Bengalis-Bangladeshis & Tamilians-SriLankans, not allegedly the case btwn Ind & Pak Punjabis, that is a continually existing divisive force..a sufficient counter-argument is- Bangladesh was birthed with Indian support as good friend, & SL always India's oldest good neighbor, so that bond is most definitely not a divisive 'anti-nation' rather a 'beyond nation' bond. Moreover, Pakistan was birthed with Ind as enemy. And despite it, that they can keep their natural apparent cultural similarities with enuf respect as glue till today, further proves these bonds to be a positive life force for all) .

[currylangs]

colours in tamil

hi y’all

here are the colours u can use when describing things in tamil! i left the romanisations off bc by now u should know tamil script (if u don’t pls go check our script lessons)

colours - நிறங்கள்

dark colour - இருண்ட நிறம்

light colour - வெளிர் நிறம்

blue - நீலம்

black - கருப்பு

brown - மழுப்பு

grey - சாம்பல்

green - பச்சை

red சிவப்பு

yellow - மஞ்சள்

dark blue - கருநீலம்

violet - ஊதா

pink - இளஞ்சிவப்பு

orange - செம்மஞ்சள்

khaki - காக்கி

gold - தங்கம்

silver - வெள்ளி

feel free to reblog with more!

- aryan

[loveletter2you]

general language learning resources

dictionaries:

wordreference - has spanish, french, italian, portuguese, catalan, german, swedish, dutch, russian, polish, romanian, czech, greek, turkish, chinese, japanese, korean, & arabic

reverso translation - has arabic, chinese, dutch, french, german, hebrew, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, spanish & turkish

bab.la - has spanish, arabic, chinese, czech, danish, dutch, finnish, french, german, greek, hindi, hungarian, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, norwegian, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, swedish, swahili, thai, turkish, vietnamese, & esperanto

digital dictionaries of south asia - has dictionaries for assamese, baluchi, bengali, divehi, hindi, kashmiri, khowar, lushai, malayalam, marathi, nepali, oriya, pali, panjabi, pashto, persian, prakrit, rajasthani, sanskrit, sindhi, sinhala, tamil, telugu & urdu

resources for learning words in context:

reverso context  - has arabic, chinese (in beta), dutch, french, german, hebrew, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, spanish & turkish (in beta)

linguee - has german, spanish, portuguese, french, italian, russian, japanese, chinese, polish, dutch, swedish, danish, finnish, greek, czech, romanian, hungarian, slovak, bulgarian, slovene, lithuanian, latvian, maltese, & estonian

for learning different writing systems

omniglot - an encyclopedia with literally any language you could think of including ancient languages

scripts - an app for learning other writing systems with a limited amount for free (you can do 5 minutes a day for free) - has the ASL alphabet, Russian cyrillic, devanagari, Japanese kana, Chinese hanzi, & Korean hangul

Wikipedia is also helpful for learning different writing systems honestly!

pronunciation

forvo - a pronunciation dictionary with MANY languages (literally an underrated resource i use it all the time)

a really helpful video by luca lampariello with tips on how to get better pronunciation in any language

ipachart.com - an interactive chart with almost every sound!! literally such an amazing resource for learning the IPA (however does not include tones)

another interactive IPA chart (this one does have tones) 

language tutoring

italki - there’s many websites for language tutoring but i think italki has the most languages (i have a referral link & if you use it we can both get $10 toward tutoring lol) - they say they support 130 languages!

there’s also preply and verbling which are also good but there aren’t as many options for languages - preply has 27 and verbling has 43

(obviously these are not free but if you have the money i think tutoring is a great way to learn a language!)

getting corrections/input from native speakers

hellotalk - an app for language exchanges with native speakers & they also have functions where you can put up a piece of writing and ask for corrections - honestly this app is great

tandem - language exchange app but unlike hellotalk you can choose multiple languages (although i think hellotalk is a little bit better)

LangCorrect - supports 170 languages!

HiNative - supports 113 languages!

Lang-8 - supports 90 languages!

verb conjugation

verbix - supports a ton of languages

Reverso conjugation - only has english, french, spanish, german, italian, portuguese, hebrew russian, arabic, & japanese

apps

duolingo - obviously everybody knows about duolingo but i’m still going to put it here - i will say i think duolingo is a lot more useful for languages that use the latin alphabet than languages with another writing system however they do have a lot of languages and add more all the time - currently they have 19 languages but you can see what languages they’re going to add on the incubator

memrise - great for vocab! personally i prefer the app to the desktop website

drops - you can only do 5 minutes a day for free but i still recommend it because it’s fun and has 42 languages! 

LingoDeer - specifically geared towards asian languages - includes korean, japanese, chinese & vietnamese (as well as spanish, french, german, portuguese and russian), however only a limited amount is available for free

busuu - has arabic, chinese, french, german, italian, japanese, polish, portuguese, spanish, russian, spanish, & turkish, 

Mondly - has 33 languages including spanish, french, german, italian, russian, japanese, korean, chinese, turkish, arabic, persian, hebrew, portuguese (both brazilian & european), catalan, latin, dutch, swedish, norwegian, danish, finnish, latvian, lithuanian, greek, romanian, afrikaans, croatian, polish, bulgarian, czech, slovak, hungarian, ukrainian, vietnamese, hindi, bengali, urdu, indonesian, tagalog & thai

misc

a video by the polyglot Lýdia Machová about how different polyglots learn languages - this video is great especially if you don’t know where to start in terms of self study

LangFocus - a youtube channel of this guy who talks about different languages which is always a good place to start to understand how a specific language works also his videos are fun

Polyglot: How I Learn Languages by Kató Lomb - this book is great and available online completely for free! 

Fluent Forever by Gabriel Wyner (on pdfdrive) - another great book about language learning

Anki - a flashcard app (free on desktop for any system & free on android mobile - not free on ios mobile) that specifically uses spaced repetition to help you learn vocabulary, it’s got a slightly ugly design but it’s beloved by many language learners & is honestly so helpful

YouTube - literally utilize youtube it is so good.

Easy Languages - a youtube channel with several languages (basically they go around asking people on the street stuff so the language in the videos is really natural) & they also have breakaway channels for german, french, spanish, polish, italian, greek, turkish, russian, catalan & english

there’s also the LanguagePod101 youtube channels (e.g. FrenchPod101, JapanesePod101, HebrewPod101) which are super great for listening practice & language lessons as well as learning writing systems!

[asspiratedconsonant]

honestly i’m so torn between “don’t use english ever and preserve the Pure Tamil Language!!!” and “HECK YES ALL THE ENGLISH NO MORE HELLISH LONG WORDS” at this point

[dsm7]

sometimes iwant to make more art w indian or drav themes and then im like what a faker... <speaks tamil with the vocab of a 9 yrold

[tamblr]

Supplement 2: Conversations and some reading notes

The last two lessons had way too many tables and since I said that once pronouns and question words are learnt you’re good to go conversing, let’s see a simple conversation.

Noun vocab:

பேர் - name

வீடு - house

நன்பன் - male friend

All of the bolded words are the ones that we have come across in the last two lessons, the red ones, the noun vocab introduced above and the purple ones were introduced in the previous lessons. The green ones are the names you can substitute with your own.

வணக்கம், என் பேர் முருகன். ( hi, my name (is) Murugan)

உங்கள் பேர் என்னது? (What is your name)

என் பேர் ப்ரியா (my name (is) Priya)

இது யார்? (Who is this? *points to a person nearby)

இது குமார், இவன் என் நன்பன் (this (is) Kumar, he is my friend)

ஆ, சரி (oh ok) (*this can come of as quite rude, but for the sake of simplicity let’s keep it this way)

உங்கள் வீடு எங்க இருகிறது (இருக்கு)? (Where is your house?)

அங்க தான் இருக்கிறது (இருக்கு) (it is there only *points to a far off location)

போகலாமா? ( shall we go?)

ஆம், போகலாம் (yes, let’s go)

As you can see from the conversation above you can pretty much have a basic conversation with a native speaker if you understand the pronoun lessons because after that all you have to do is insert the nouns and verbs and at the beginning you can just use English words as substitutes as you build up vocabulary. Secondly, notice how the words that aren’t mentioned highlighted in the conversation above always come at the end, this is because it is an SOV language so verbs always come at the end and being able to identify that when listening will help when trying to understand what a speaker is saying.

Below is an example by a speaker who came to Tamil Nadu and their way of acquiring the language.

My first interaction with a Tamilian.

Me: Uncle, half litre milk please.

15 days later.

Me: Anna, half litre paal. ( Paal - Milk)

1 month later.

Me: Anna, ara litre paal. ( Ara- Half)

2 months later.

Me: Anna, ara litre paal kudunga. ( Bro, please give me half litre milk)

6 months later.

Me: Anow, ara litre paal eduthu vekka sonnene, vachingala? ( Bro, I asked you to keep aside half litre milk. Did you do it?)

Reading Tamil can be quite difficult because of the allophonic nature of the stop consonants i.e (க், ச், ட், த், ப், ற்) [see lesson 2]. Let’s see an English example: cat, car; in these two examples the a is pronounced differently. Tamil follows the same concept but the script gives a clue: க்க், க்__ are both pronounced [k] and _க்_, _ங்க்_ are pronounced [g]. The repetition of the same letter twice is called gemination i.e க்க் means that க் has been geminated. Examples with these consonants are given below.

பாட்டு [pāttu] song, பாடு [pādu] sing

திரும்பு [thirumbu] return, திருப்பு [thiruppu] turning

The gemination of consonants is important even for other consonants. Geminated consonants are pronounced a bit longer and can change the meaning of a word significantly.

1. பயன் [payan] usefulness, பய்யன் [payyan] boy

2. கன்னம் [kannam] cheek, கனம் [kanam] thickness

3. பணம் [paNam] money , பண்ணு [paNNu] make/do

4. புளி [puLi] tamarind , புள்ளி [puLLi] dot

5. புலி [puli] tiger, புல்லி [pulli] calyx

6. ஆமா [āma] yes , அம்மா [ammā] mother

[sambarvadai]

#6: the curious art of crunchtime creativity (2/2): aha

posted on 14 nov 2019

exams happened yesterday, and also i wrote this blog post yesterday, but now it’s all gone and i’m rewriting it. c’est la vie! edit before posting: it is one week later and another exam has happened and now i have more material to write about. c’est la vie pt2!

so. there’s a second type of creativity – calling it creativity isn’t accurate; most would consider it to be going down the rabbit’s hole that is the internet. we’ve all done it before, somehow finding ourselves staring at something in horrified fascination with no clue as to how we ended up there. in my case – or at least, in this context, it is mostly subject-related, specifically to the subject on which i am about to write the exam. (future me: the exam is over) please note: this has only applied to tamil and chinese, the two languages i take (english doesn’t count. you can’t study for english), because those have scopes so wide that they might as well not exist at all. hence, it’s not me, it’s the subject. we move on.

chinese is a lovely, lovely subject ((please forget the fact that my exam is in two days and i’ve barely started studying) <– this exam is now over i hate it) and my love for it came from this book i found when i was starting out. it taught the story of each character by broke it down into radicals and connected these radicals into a coherent plot that told its meaning. that was a long sentence. so this made learning chinese, which is, primarily, a pictoral language, quite manageable.

a tangent here: simplified chinese is harder to understand pictorally as compared to traditional chinese, because in the name of simplification, many radicals have been bastardised to mean completely different things from what they were actually intended to be. for example, the character for listen (听, 聽), as you can see, has been grossly simplified from including the radicals for ear and heart to just including the radical for mouth. kinda sad, isn’t it

anyway back to story so i have amazing friends who kick my ass into studying and will absolutely scream at me for browsing taobao two days before the exam (which i did haha) and it’s great learning chinese in a chinese-speaking country because you have so many somewhat-native-chinese-speakers who will correct your chinese but still encourage you to strive on and not make (too much) fun of you. it’s lovely because my friends have similar pop culture exposure compared to me, so if i drop in a random korean reference or whatnot they get it. it’s really, really great and cool, especially when i want to write fanfic in chinese and they get it B)

speaking of fanfic, i recently discovered twosetviolin (why recently, you ask? i’ve been seeing their thumbnails in my recommended for ages but never clicked; sorry) and i was hooked. so naturally, i turned to fanfiction (idk if i actually ship them but the stories are cute). surprisingly, there was a large amount of chinese fanfiction about them, which led me to lofter (chinese tumblr)! and i learnt so much vocab from that and it was so so fun to read, because it was seeing familiar tropes in a slightly-less-familiar language. i do want to continue learning chinese, so hopefully this will prove to be a good gateway into the language.

the tamil section’s going to be shorter because it’s been a while since the exam, but anyway, i shall try my best.

tamil has been my pride and joy for the last four years, in no small part thanks to my peers and teacher who made me love the language and love myself for inheriting the language. i once regarded tamil as a burden and hated speaking it because of how i stumbled and had a funny accent. now, though, my accent is a lot better, and i speak it much more naturally. it’s still a work in progress, but i love the language so much more and that has translated directly into (or has affected) how i interact with my peers and family. i’m a lot more confident expressing myself in the language, and i like speaking it and making a connection to other people who have chosen the language.

because that’s what it is, isn’t it, you choose a language. you can choose to reject the language you were born with, or you can choose to cultivate it and respect it. you can choose to learn a language that was not yours to begin with, but has grown to become close to you in a different but equally inexplicable manner. you choose the language, and you give it the acknowledgement it rightly deserves.

anyway. the love for the language stayed largely within class, where our teacher showed us ancient tamil poems and translated them for us, showing us that themes of love, kindness, filial piety, and so many more have not changed one bit in the last 2000 years. recently, however, i found oldtamilpoetry.com, in which the blog-writer translates tamil poetry into bite-sized pieces. as i stayed up late reading the archives, i felt the language settling into my bones, draped over me as comfortingly as a childhood blanket. it was reassuring. calming. lovely.

this, i now realise, is just a really long love letter to my languages. these are my languages now, and i’ve made them my own by finding the beauty in them. that beauty was best discovered in the moments before exams, when pressure drives you to look for alternate ways to make learning bearable. this was when i discovered why i actually love the language – and love learning, really. yeah.

i don’t know where i was going with this but YES. tldr, during exam periods, i find how beautiful subjects – languages – are. it’s really cool, and i recommend you do it too. just go down a rabbit hole and find what makes you click. find that pull factor that makes you realise that yeah, this was worth it. this is probably kind of incoherent but hey. hopefully a bit of you resonated with this!

please watch out for part 3. idk when ill post it, but yeah! it’ll be a wrap-up to this academic year, or maybe just exams in particular. important! because i have quite a bit of reflection to do about that too. hope you enjoyed reading this haha thanks for reading so far !!!!!!!!!!! legitimately bless you owo (pls check out twosetviolin theyre amAzing) stay tuned for more !11!1!!

anbudan, noon xoxo

[burtuqaala]

For 2020 I’ll be following @amillionlanguages ‘s Year of Languages Challenge! I love learning about different languages, and this seemed like a focused & disciplined way to gain a basic understanding of a language without committing to years of study. My main resolution for the new year is to maximise my productivity by breaking the months up into short study routines, so this challenge is a perfect starting point!

The languages I will be studying for this challenge are:

January: Egyptian Arabic dialect

February: Egyptian Arabic dialect

March: Polish

April: Estonian

May: Moroccan Arabic dialect

June: ‘Levantine’ Arabic dialect

July:   Maltese

August:  Turkish

September:  Welsh

October:  Thai

November: Tamil

December:  Spanish

I will very likely be visiting Egypt in February, so I didn’t want to study another language while visiting and forget the Arabic I learnt when I needed it most!!! Other than that, I will be following the original language-a-month formula.

I’m studying Modern Standard Arabic, so I thought this challenge would be a good opportunity to familiarise myself with some of the spoken dialects! I limited myself to 3 dialects so they wouldn’t take over the challenge, but I’ve yet to choose between either the Lebanese, Palestinian or Syrian dialects. I’m going to see what resources I can compile for each and decide closer to June.

I also would love to study some Maltese because a Romance-influenced descendent of Sicilian Arabic sounds fascinating! The little bits I’ve seen of the written language look stunning and I want to learn how the phonology & grammar of a Semitic language adapted to the Latin alphabet.

Estonian and Polish are the first languages of two of my close friends and although they are lovely languages in their own right, I want to learn these to be able to speak a little with them. Hopefully they get a good laugh out of my pronunciation!!!

Welsh is an important language for me, it was my Taid’s native language (he didn’t speak a word of English until he was 12), so I’d love to learn it to keep my family history alive. I live very close to the northern Welsh border, so I’ve always visited and had opportunities to experience the language first-hand, which I can’t say for any other language.

My favourite thing about language learning are the beautiful scripts. Tamil & Thai have drop-dead GORGEOUS scripts, so I will be focusing more on writing in their respective months. I am excited (& intimidated) for these because they are both from language families I have never studied before!!!

I’ve studied a teen tiny bit of Turkish in the past, so I’d like to revisit it. I remember loving the vowel harmony systems and the aesthetic of the written language (I think it’s interesting how a script/writing system fits the language, maybe in this month I will also look into Ottoman Turkish to see how the Arabic abjad fit the language in comparison to the Latin alphabet!).

I have a basic (re: Tourist) knowledge of Spanish, but it has a lovely phonology, is spoken in many countries and has loads of resources for study, so it looks amazing to learn! My dream is to visit Andalusia and see the beautiful Islamic architecture. One day I WILL see the Court of Lions!!!!  I’m interested in seeing the extent of Arabic’s influence on the language, even if it’s limited to arcane vocab.

I am 99% sure I’ll stick to these languages, but I might rearrange which months they correspond to if need be.

Tbh it was hard narrowing it down to 12 languages (and then 11, RIP Nahuatl), but a concise, focused month of study will not only teach me more of a language than looking into one as fancy strikes me, but also how to structure short-term, effective study plans/projects, which is a life skill I NEED to learn this year!

Good luck to everyone else participating in this challenge, I wish you all the best in your language studies and 2020! Happy new year!

[thespianmemoirs]

Mudiyala

The writers/directors whose hearts have clearly migrated to the west, yet want to pander to the local audience, quite simply because they wouldn’t want to be labelled peter. Any local watching these films will share my sense of unrelatedness, and those familiar with the west would find this marriage forced and unconvincing, leaving a sour taste on a film that could’ve been vastly more enjoyable than cringe-y at times. This rant was sponsored by my recent viewing of Sillu karupatti.

If you follow Kollywood, peter filmmaker immediately evokes one name - Gautam Vasudev Menon. His movies brought in that western mix into Kollywood. It was fresh, modern, enjoyable, yet minimal peter in his early films thereby topping the charts. Same can’t be said about his recent endeavors. In Vaaranam Aayiram the protagonist’s family is supposedly in quite some debt according to the protagonist’s father - yet we clearly see the same father reading an English novel of sorts. Poor local dads can’t afford leisure English literature, Menon. In his recent, Ennai Nokki Paayum Thota dialogues like ‘Beast Mode’ along with various others didn’t sit quite well with the viewers, especially when it’s Dhanush mouthing those words - who works fantastic with Vetrimaaran quite simply because Vetrimaaran’s ideology of ‘local-first’ - evident from his films - work wonders with the locals.

Back to Sillu Karupatti - which means god knows what. You name a film after some fancy Tamil term that makes you seem like you’re really connected to the culture, but then half an hour into the film your actors’ use of words from the English vocab are words I’ve rarely heard anyone from Chennai use them in a casual conversation. I have no qualms with the west, but don’t pretend that you’re all this local girl/guy and then brandish words like taboo or sentences like This is insane - especially if your actors aren’t fleshed out as characters who seem to use them on a regular basis.

Do it convincingly. Don’t make me cringe multiple times resulting in me pausing the movie/show to rant about it on a blog on the internet no one reads, okay? summa kadupethitu irukeenga

[currylangs]

diseases in tamil

hi

so i know it’s been ages since we posted and this isn’t really the greatest topic for our return but!! it is useful!! so if u are sick or u know someone who is sick then u can use this vocab to talk about it and hopefully it gets better !!

anyway here we goooo

நோய் - disease

புற்று நோய் - cancer

வாந்திபேதி - cholera 

சளி - phlegm

ஜொரம் - fever

இருமல் - cough

நீரிழிவு - diabetes

சீதபேதி - dysentery

வரிப்பு - fit

தலைவலி - headache

மாரடைப்பு - heart attack

விக்கல் - hiccough

சொறி - itches

காமாலை - jaundice

மூலம் - haemorrhoids

வாதம் - rheumatism

பெரிய அம்மை - smallpox

சுளுக்கு - sprain

get well soon :)

[congdao-rep]

Too many languages, too little time

There’s just so many languages I want to learn ;-;

Right now I’m learning Mandarin (For CEFR I’d say I’m around A2, going into B1, generously) and starting Spanish basically next week (finally taking my Spanish class!!! After years of wanting to.) I’m in the midst of an actual attempt at beginning my self-study of Norwegian, after learning a few words and phrases over the last 2 years. I have books, online resources, and a buttload of motivation, but struggle with memorizing vocab and actually practicing the language. Dutch is also on my radar. I’d like to study at a Norwegian or Dutch university eventually, though you need a B2 level in either in order to study at a university of either country in their language. 

So here we are.

My main focuses:

Mandarin 

Spanish

Norwegian

But of course there’s so many more I’m interested in! I just keep learning about the world, and everything becomes more and more appealing to me. 

Hindi (Or another Indian language; Bengali, Tamil, etc.)

Dutch

Farsi/Persian

Korean

Malay or Indonesian

French

German

I found myself just the other day looking up how to learn the Bengali alphabet on Youtube. But nevertheless, curiosity is always a fun thing. I just kind of need to put it into motion

[asspiratedconsonant]

tamil vocab // pronouns

நான் [naan] - I

நாங்கள் [naangal] - we, usually excluding the person being addressed

நாம் [naam] - we, usually including the person being addressed. can also be used in a wider context like “on” in french 

நீ [nee] - you, singular 

நீங்கள் [neengal] - you, plural or formal 

அவன் [avan] - he

அவள் [aval] - she 

அவர் [avar] - they, singular gender neutral or respectful. used when referring to one’s elders/superiors. 

அவர்கள் [avarkal] - they, plural. used when referring to people

அது [athu] - it

அவை [avai] - they, plural. used when referring to inanimate objects