This is a reference grammar of the standard spoken variety of Tamil, a language with 65 million speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. The spoken variety is radically different from the standard literary variety, last standardized in the thirteenth century. The standard spoken language is used by educated people in their interactions with people from different regions and different social groups, and is also the dialect used in films, plays and the media. This book, a much expanded version of the author s Grammar of Spoken Tamil (1979), is the first such grammar to contain examples both in Tamil script and in transliteration, and the first to be written so as to be accessible to students studying the modern spoken language as well as to linguists and other specialists. The book has benefitted from extensive native-speaker input and the author s own long experience of teaching Tamil to English-speakers.
Colloquial Tamil is easy to use and completely up to date! Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study or class use, the course offers a step-by-step approach to spoken Tamil. While emphasis is placed on colloquial spoken Tamil, you are given a useful introduction to formal speech and the written language as well. What makes Colloquial Tamil your best choice in personal language learning? Emphasis on authentic conversational language Clear explanations on how to pronounce and write the language Helpful grammar notes and reference grammar Comprehensive vocabulary lists (Tamil-English and English-Tamil) Lively illustrations and fascinating cultural insights throughout By the end of this rewarding course, you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Tamil in a broad range of everyday situations. Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.
Spoken Tamil for Absolute Beginners is the most comprehensive English guide for Tamil Language on the market for Absolute beginners: This book is a structured and systematic approach to teach yourself spoken Tamil. Written by a well-experienced teacher specialized in teaching Tamil to foreigners. What is unique about this book? What makes it better than other Tamil language learning books? This book is the best in the market because it contains: - Fun and essential vocabulary and phrases. - Speaking, listening and reading practice. - Pronunciation, Cultural notes and Grammar explanation in very detailed manner. - 30 plus audio tracks can be downloaded from google drive to listen to. Details are given inside - Provided vocabulary, verbs and verb conjugation in memrise application to make the learning experience more fun and intuitive. - Support from the author will be provided at all times, and you can even take lessons from the author. - Built using simple, easy to understand English with an elaborate explanation. At the end of the book, you will be able to speak in Tamil, by making sentences using 3 - 6 words. This is the main and only goal of this book. Whether you are a foreigner visiting places where Tamil is the main spoken language or you want to interact with a Tamil native speaker in your place or you want to learn a language which is centuries old with lots of cultural values. This book is for you.
Spoken by eighty million people in South Asia and a diaspora that stretches across the globe, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue for so many speakers. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil—language, literature, and civilization—emphasizing how Tamil speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history. Impetuous, musical, whimsical, in constant flux, Tamil is a living entity, and this is its biography. Two stories animate Shulman’s narrative. The first concerns the evolution of Tamil’s distinctive modes of speaking, thinking, and singing. The second describes Tamil’s major expressive themes, the stunning poems of love and war known as Sangam poetry, and Tamil’s influence as a shaping force within Hinduism. Shulman tracks Tamil from its earliest traces at the end of the first millennium BCE through the classical period, 850 to 1200 CE, when Tamil-speaking rulers held sway over southern India, and into late-medieval and modern times, including the deeply contentious politics that overshadow Tamil today. Tamil is more than a language, Shulman says. It is a body of knowledge, much of it intrinsic to an ancient culture and sensibility. “Tamil” can mean both “knowing how to love”—in the manner of classical love poetry—and “being a civilized person.” It is thus a kind of grammar, not merely of the language in its spoken and written forms but of the creative potential of its speakers.
This book introduces the syntactic process of auxiliary formation and applies it to the grammatical analysis of the indicative, or non-modal, auxiliary verbs of Modern Tamil. Using data from spoken and written registers gathered over several years, the book demonstrates for the first time the systematic nature of auxiliary verb phenomena, and how they are integrated into the grammar of the language. Including fresh information on new verb constructions, verbal categories and tenses, this book will be a welcome addition to the current general linguistics literature, in particular the study of verbal categories and the morphosyntactic processes that instantiate them.
PREFACE. THE Author of this very practical treatise on Scotch Loch - Fishing desires clearly that it may be of use to all who had it. He does not pretend to have written anything new, but to have attempted to put what he has to say in as readable a form as possible. Everything in the way of the history and habits of fish has been studiously avoided, and technicalities have been used as sparingly as possible. The writing of this book has afforded him pleasure in his leisure moments, and that pleasure would be much increased if he knew that the perusal of it would create any bond of sympathy between himself and the angling community in general. This section is interleaved with blank shects for the readers notes. The Author need hardly say that any suggestions addressed to the case of the publishers, will meet with consideration in a future edition. We do not pretend to write or enlarge upon a new subject. Much has been said and written-and well said and written too on the art of fishing but loch-fishing has been rather looked upon as a second-rate performance, and to dispel this idea is one of the objects for which this present treatise has been written. Far be it from us to say anything against fishing, lawfully practised in any form but many pent up in our large towns will bear us out when me say that, on the whole, a days loch-fishing is the most convenient. One great matter is, that the loch-fisher is depend- ent on nothing but enough wind to curl the water, -and on a large loch it is very seldom that a dead calm prevails all day, -and can make his arrangements for a day, weeks beforehand whereas the stream- fisher is dependent for a good take on the state of the water and however pleasant and easy it may be for one living near the banks of a good trout stream or river, it is quite another matter to arrange for a days river-fishing, if one is looking forward to a holiday at a date some weeks ahead. Providence may favour the expectant angler with a good day, and the water in order but experience has taught most of us that the good days are in the minority, and that, as is the case with our rapid running streams, -such as many of our northern streams are, -the water is either too large or too small, unless, as previously remarked, you live near at hand, and can catch it at its best. A common belief in regard to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing, -the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes give him a cast of ally flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a crack may be using and if he catches one for every three the other has, he may consider himself very lucky. Of course there are lochs where the fish are not abundant, and a beginner may come across as many as an older fisher but we speak of lochs where there are fish to be caught, and where each has a fair chance. Again, it is said that the boatman has as much to do with catching trout in a loch as the angler. Well, we dont deny that. In an untried loch it is necessary to have the guidance of a good boatman but the same argument holds good as to stream-fishing...
The study by Daniel Jeyarai recovers a forgotten aspect of the Tamil cultural heritage within the ongoing Indo-European intellectual discourse from early eighteenth century. It provides an English version of the Latin-Tamil Grammar that was printed in Germany in 1716. Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg (1682-1719), a pioneer in many fields of intercultural study, compiled it with the help of other Tamil grammars written by European and Tamil scholars. It illuminates his Lutheran piety, his acquaintance with the Tamil people in Tranquebar on the Coromandel Coast in south eastern India, and his deep understanding of the colloquial form of Tamil as spoken by ordinary people. It elevates his pioneer work as a decisive translator and printer of the New Testament, Systematic Theology and Lutheran Catechism in Tamil. Additionally, this grammar helps us to gain penetrating insights into the socio-cultural, religious, and linguistic fabric of the Tamil people and the newly emerging Tamil Protestant congregation in Tranquebar. Thus, Jeyarai's survey Tamil Language for Europeans provides an excellent case study for historians, students, and practitioners of mission and ecumenism, Indologists and scholars of related Indo-European studies, and translators of intercultural texts to explore the transcontinental role of a grammar in communicating, and simultaneously preserving Tamil language, culture and memories beyond its borders.
Spatial language - that is, the way languages structure the spatial domain – is an important area of research, offering insights into one of the most central areas of human cognition. In this collection, a team of leading scholars review the spatial domain across a wide variety of languages. Contrary to existing assumptions, they show that there is great variation in the way space is conceptually structured across languages, thus substantiating the controversial question of how far the foundations of human cognition are innate. Grammars of Space is a supplement to the psychological information provided in its companion volume, Space in Language and Cognition. It represents a new kind of work in linguistics, 'Semantic Typology', which asks what are the semantic parameters used to structure particular semantic fields. Comprehensive and informative, it will be essential reading for those working on comparative linguistics, spatial cognition, and the interface between them.
