Talk:Tamil language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Tamil language article.
Article policies
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Peer review This Langlit article has been selected for Version 0.5 and subsequent release versions of Wikipedia. It has been rated FA-Class on the assessment scale (comments).
Featured article star Tamil language is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do.
Main Page trophy This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on April 14, 2005.

Contents

[edit] TAMIL, THE BEST REPRESENTATIVE OF THE DRAVIDIAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES

"The traditional account of the Three Tamil Academies, the references to the river PahŠu˜i (in Silappadikaram and Puram), the enumeration by Adiyƒrkkunallƒr of the 49 regions forming a great part of the submerged Pandiyanadu, short notices of some Pandiyas of the First Academy found in Tamil literature and the like, are, in the absence of a regular history, valuable materials for reconstructing the ancient history of the Dravidians, at least in very broad outlines, whereas there is nothing of the kind in all the literatures of the other Dravidian languages." Read more in "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/THE_PRIMARY_CLASSICAL_LANGUAGE_OF_THE_WORLD/Tamil_the_Best_Representative_of_the_Dravidian_Family_of_Languages

[edit] Consonants section incorrect on phonemes

The consonants section states "A chart of the Tamil consonant phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet follows...". Well the inventory shown is phonetic not phonemic. First of by directly listing the IPA symbols it makes it very difficult to identify it with the typical Indic inventory and also to trace it to the Proto-Dravidian inventory where diacriticals are used.

And more importantly, it is well known that for the stops/plosives or vallinam there are many phones in Dravidian, and Tamil is no exception. So it is better to list the phonemes and then add in a separate table list the multiple phones for the phonemes. It is going to be incomplete for some difficult ones like the intervocalic -k- but that will be the correct thing to do. It is misleading as it is now. perichandra1 19:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I want to ask .Are there aspirated sounds in Tamil or other Dravidian languages like Hindi e.g Bh'Ph 'Th'etc Rasoolpuri 04:23, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Need romanization at Rice vermicelli

Greetings, can someone add the romanization for சேவை in the box at Rice vermicelli? Badagnani 23:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] The Range of centuries given as a period is wrong

The following statement is not in accordance with historical facts: "External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably compiled sometime between the 2nd century BC and the 10th century AD". The period given is so long. 3rd Century BC to 2 nd century AD is the widely accepted period.

Yes, "3rd Century BC to 2 nd century AD" is the period found in most native reference works. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.47.249.251 (talk) 21:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inscriptions in Karnataka-Andhra

Can someone explain what this has to do with Tamil language. I have removed it because it made no sense keeping it in the article.Dineshkannambadi (talk) 12:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

If you read any RS academic books on the evolution of Tamil language as well as any of the languages of India, none fails to mention that Tamil language was written down earlier than any other (does not mean the other languages were not writable or did not develop enough or any of that nature) neighboring languages (which happens to be Telugu and Kannda but not Sinhala) although the cultural experience all South Indians at the time seem to be similar. So it boils down to the language of the elite or the language preferred by the elite. Elite north of central Tamil Nadu preferred Prakrits (not Sanskrit at that early period) where as the elite in the Southern tip of Peninsular India (that includes portions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala) preferred Tamil and the reasons are not very clearly explained as to why because the earliest inscription in Tamil Nadu does show Prakrit or Prakrit influence but it fadaed way unlike in Andhra and Karnataka where the Prakrit domination of the language preferred by the elite continued a little longer but it eventually did fade way (but not in Sri Lanka where a Prakrit became the language of the people due to language replacement) . This is germane to any discussion about Tamil language under its history and it is fascinating for linguist and historians no matter whether a wikipedia article displays a sentence about it or not. If we dont bring it out in a proper context under history, we simply arent telling the whole story about Tamil language.Thanks Taprobanus (talk) 21:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deleting this section

Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world like latin, greek etc. Tamil means sweetness. (In ancient literatures they quoted tht Thanmai means chillness. The word 'Tamil'derived from the word 'Thanmai'. Thus Tamil means Chillness(cold), Sweetness...! - After the long struggles and efforts of tamil scholors and progressive movements of tamilnadu now Tamil is declared as a Classical Language in the Nation. In Tamil classical language is called "semmoli".

This section does not say anything new and looks to be out of place.

[edit] non-encyclopedic claim

The last sentence of the first para curreently reads: With more than 77 million speakers, Tamil is one of the widely spoken languages in the world. This claim appears to be completely absurd. The website that the info is drawn from is either incorrect or is being misquoted. To state that a language with only 77 million speakers is one of the most widely spoken makes no sense. If you review the info on the website itself, it also claims that only about 500 million people in the world speak english which is also patently incorrect. I am removing the sentence and I don't think that site should be used as a source since it is obviously unreliable. Doc Tropics 17:17, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Your point is quite valid. I think the author of that statement means something like 'one of the languages spoken in significant numbers in a most widely spread out area'. Tamil is spoken in significant numbers in Canada, Australia, Europe and USA, and of course in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore etc. The meaning is not that 77 million is a large number by itself. The sentence may have to be modified. --Aadal (talk) 03:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if my initial post seemed excessively negative. You raise an interesting point about the original intent, one that I hadn't considered. I've rewritten several portions in what I hope will be a clearer fasion. Thanks for your input  : ) Doc Tropics 03:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question about dates

The last sentence of the second paragraph currently reads: "...Sangam literature, is dated to between the 2nd century CE and 10th century CE." However, if you follow the link to the article about Sangam, the dates given there vary significantly from the dates given here. There are 5 refs total (2 here, 3 at Sangam) but only 1 is an internet source, and it doesn't actually specify Sangam lit, only ancient lit. I don't have access to any of the other refs myself. Can someone help determine which range of dates is more accurate? Doc Tropics 05:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

The bulk of modern authors date the Sangam poems of the "eight anthologies" to the first few centuries CE, following Kamil Zvelebil's 1973 dating. Older authorities - and those who follow them - prefer dates around the 5th-6th centuries (Vaiyapuri Pillai's 1956 dating) or 8th-12th centuries CE (Robert Caldwell's 1875 dating). Some - such as Marr - simply give a lower limit of 200-400 CE, on the basis that it's a hopeless task to attempt to fix an exact date given how little there is to go by. More recently, Tieken argues that the eight anthologies are a 10th century forgery (every single review has criticised his dating). I can provide quotes if you like, but in my view, the issues with the lead can simply be fixed by removing most of the discussion of dating. It's well beyond excessive to have one-third of the lead focused on dating - a simple sentence on the earliest historical attestation of the language (the inscriptions already referenced in the second sentence of the second paragraph) should be enough for the lead, I think.
Perhaps there would also be some merit in combining the "History" section with the section on "Origin and development", and rewriting them to focus a bit more on the history of the language, and a little less on literature? -- Arvind (talk) 10:31, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Need Tamil

Need Tamil script for the cooking term "thalchi" at the article Chaunk#Name_in_various_languages. Badagnani (talk) 17:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm assuming you meant தாளித்து or தாளித்தல். If not let me know. Cheers Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 17:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest Language

I have deleted that claim that Tamil is one of the world's oldest languages. In the literal meaning, this statement is meaningless. With the limited exception of a few signed languages that have arisen spontaneously, all human languages are equally old in that they all go back into the mists of time. If what is intended is the claim that Tamil is attested at an early date, that is true in comparison to most other languages, but the first attestation of Tamil is nonetheless much later than quite a few other languages, such as Sumerian, Elamite, Hittite, and Chinese.Bill (talk) 04:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)