A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil
A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil

Author: Harold F. Schiffman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-10-14

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780521640749

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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.

Caste, Catholic Christianity, and the Language of Conversion
Caste, Catholic Christianity, and the Language of Conversion

Author: S. Jeyaseela Stephen

Publisher: Gyan Publishing House

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 9788178356860

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Based on a wide range of published sources, archival material and field data, this book is an in-depth study of the Portuguese Christian, missions and missionaries in the Tamil coast and hinterland between 1519 and 1774. It presents a fresh analysis on the theme of the Portuguese contribution to Tamil language and printing press. The book presents the best socio-historical and missionary study of Christianity for understanding the history of the Tamil Society.

Tamil Language for Europeans
Tamil Language for Europeans

Author: Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg

Publisher: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 9783447062367

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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.

Languages and Nations
Languages and Nations

Author: Thomas R. Trautmann

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006-11-04

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0520931904

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British rule of India brought together two very different traditions of scholarship about language, whose conjuncture led to several intellectual breakthroughs of lasting value. Two of these were especially important: the conceptualization of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones at Calcutta in 1786—proposing that Sanskrit is related to Persian and languages of Europe—and the conceptualization of the Dravidian language family of South India by F.W. Ellis at Madras in 1816—the "Dravidian proof," showing that the languages of South India are related to one another but are not derived from Sanskrit. These concepts are valid still today, centuries later. This book continues the examination Thomas R. Trautmann began in Aryans and British India (1997). While the previous book focused on Calcutta and Jones, the current volume examines these developments from the vantage of Madras, focusing on Ellis, Collector of Madras, and the Indian scholars with whom he worked at the College of Fort St. George, making use of the rich colonial record. Trautmann concludes by showing how elements of the Indian analysis of language have been folded into historical linguistics and continue in the present as unseen but nevertheless living elements of the modern.