The night before yesterday was an eye-opener for me.
As I was a part of a Sanskrit recital, I was led into thinking about origin of Tamil. Right from how most Tamilians cannot articulate aspirated sounds, whether voiced or voiceless set me wondering about how only Tamil missed the aspirated letters. In comparison to the Sanskrit Varnamala, the entire 'kavarga' is represented only by 'ka' in tamil. And there are no counterparts for the aspirated 'kha', unaspirated but voiced 'ga' nor for the aspirated and voiced 'gha'.
And so to speak, Tamil seemed to be the one left out. As far as my knowledge runs, the other dravidian languages have their aspirated sounds too.
On posing the question to my dad, he matter-of-fact-ly says, "Yes, so Tamil isn't derived from Sanskrit." That kind of took me by surprise. I exclaimed and went on to question about the origin of Tamil. And so it seems that Tamil is older than Sanskrit. What also was a revelation to me was the fact that Tamil grammar is so elaborate that the voiced and aspirated sounds are also included in its rules. That it is said in grammar, that if x is flanked by k, and b on either sides, pronounce it as 'something else'. And owing to its antiquity, the rules of grammar are hardly known to people today, and letters in Tamil are pronounced literally. And, so the infamous pronouciations.
Also, Tamil is the only language to have a 'zha' (the letter does not have an english counterpart).
Vaazhga Tamizh
Yours
The shell has broken, the sun has risen!
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it is hard to buy your deduction, that tamil is older than sanskrit. when the loop at the right side of 'ka' in tamil is extended to go all the way to the bottom, and then to the the left side, like the loop in the bottom of 'j' or 'y', doesn't that make a 'ka' into a 'ga'?
ReplyDeleteall languages boast of a few exclusive alphabets, and tamil, it seems is no exception.
i did not know about these grammar rules, i would like to know more about them!
btw, a very nice "revival of sorts", and [i]now[/i] the theme looks very good, don't change it!
ReplyDeleteThe revival was not for the theme, but either way!
ReplyDeleteThere is no explicit 'ga' in Tamil, what you are talking about is 'tha' or 'ta' like the 'ta' for parrot in Hindi (tota).
Like how there is a latent 'lru' in Sanskrit.
In fact, the earliest of Tamil literatures available for us is somewhere from the 4th century BC.. the "sanga kaalam" or the sangam literature.. but i have nevertheless heard of claims that Tamil is as old as Sanskrit, if not older. No wonder it was given the classical language status by our government. And it can boast of being the first language in India to be given the status(2004). Even Sanskrit was given the status quite later(2005).
ReplyDeleteActually Krits, I've seen you say "krushnah" and not "krishnah", which stems from your saying "lru" instead of "lri" for the sanskrit alphabet. I thought mainly Gujaratis said "lru". If you want to be consistent, you should say your name as "Kruthika" and I as "Kruts".
ReplyDeleteok so actually, the syllable is neither lru nor lri, it's in between. rishi is not rushi, it's that weird ru ish in between but not a full ru.
ReplyDeleteplease stick to krits