Tamil Dept.
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Tamil Dept.
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What's Tamil? Tamil is one of the 20 most-spoken languages in the world. It is the mother tongue of some 50 to 60 million people in southern India, in Sri Lanka, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, parts of East and South Africa, as well as islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It is a member of the Dravidian family of languages--a group of about 20 languages of uncertain origin. Early inscriptions in Tamil date from the third century B.C., and the literary tradition begins around the first century A.D. There are two main varieties of the language, and there are also two different alphabets! Tamil often co-exists with another language in a given country, in a relationship called "diglossia" ("two languages"). One of the unusual features of Tamil, along with other Dravidian languages, is that it
uses "retroflex consonants". What on earth is that? It means that
the tip of your tongue is curled back to touch the ridge behind your upper teeth.
Sounds acrobatic, but Americans are actually quite accustomed to this movement:
it's how most of us produce our letter "r". How To Use these Pages On the pages following, you'll find a series of mini-lessons, intended to be a practice tool rather than a learning tool. (If you want to know what our interactive, dynamic instructional programs are like, read about our Comfort Zone Learning™.) When you pass your mouse cursor over an icon, the sound files will play right here. No long waits for extended downloads; they play immediately, as soon as the gray square turns into an image! Listen to each sound as often as you like; then try closing your eyes and clicking on an icon chosen at random, and see if you can picture the object or the action. When you can do that, you've added a new word to your vocabulary! And when you feel totally confident at recognizing the word when you hear it--even if you are not looking at it--then try looking at the picture and saying the word. Then play the sound to check yourself. Now try some Tamil! |
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