Goosebumps and pronunciation

Languages used in Carnatic Music & Literature
Enna_Solven
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Post by Enna_Solven »

thanks srkris.

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

Srikris wrote :
> It appears to me you have an emotional socio-political bondage with Tamil. So my words may not matter much to you, but I believe I have a wider readership, so here goes.<
I notice that you have carried out an assessment about me and ‘branded’ me.
I deserve this because I have digressed from the topic under discussion, namely the correct pronunciation of கனà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Govindaswamy,

It is my experience elsewhere too that many telugu's who know tamil find pride in "batting for the tamil team" (to use a cricket analogy), and therefore one does not need to have tamil as a mother tongue either to talk about it or be wrong about it. I have seen many telugus have larger than life notions of tamil based on simplistic notions rather than more thorough historical research, and this is more or less influenced both inside and outside TN by a big well-diversified propaganda machinery that masquerades as an R&D dept. People think they are not influenced by it, and would severely deny any affiliation with the establishment, but even avowed anti-establishmentarians most often fall into the same trap, again severely denying the same. This is all old story, it happens with most of the people I talk with.

You dont have to be an establishmentarian to have glorified less-than-factual views. I always get these quizzical stares when I say this from people (who assume there are only two groups of people) from whom I get replies like நானà¯ÂÂ

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

srkris
I have come across some excellent articles regarding Tamiz phonetics by one இராம.கி in Google group விகà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Govindaswamy,

நானà¯ÂÂ

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

:lol: Good one... Good to have some humor in this thread..

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

[quote]
>>it is unfortunate that none of the learned members has been able to find and post any rule from any Tamiz grammar book regarding the pronunciation of the words கனà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

RR is not the same as R....R...., the first R is not allowed to end normally like the second R therefore giving rise to the half R sound which sounds like an alveolar t (which btw does not exist in the tamil alphabet). Indeed in spoken malayalam, the alveolar R changes to alveolar t in some form of prakritization (i.e simplification of a complex sound that commonly happens when sanskrit words are simplified to result in their prakrit equivalents, eg. maudgalya becomes moggalla). Malayalam finds the R sound hard and similarly converts alveolar Rs here to alveolar Ts.

But we the R speakers, cannot afford to take the easy way out. We should take the pains to pronounce R as R to prevent ourselves from getting prakritized... or should I say, malayalized. Having said that, the alveolar R and alveolar t have the same start, and before we can identify whether it is a t or an R, the second R comes into the picture. The same happens to kunRam where an alveolar d seems to sound at the start of the R (colored by the preceding alveolar n which is a mei and is not therefore allowed to end fully like an uyirmei) even though there is no new d that comes in the word. This is probably why you read the alveolar t/d where I read the alveolar R. I can justify why I read R by pointing out that it is literally an R sound else we should be able to replace it with t/d willy nilly without bothering whether it is preceeded by the alveolar n or alveolar R. Since we cant do such a context-free replacement, it can only be a half R sound although it sounds the same as an alveolar half t/d.

It appears to me that despite their separation over a millenium ago, malayalam more or less follows the same path that spoken tamil traverses (just as prakrit closely followed sanskrit, and still the Indic languages take up sanskrit stereotypes).

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

RR is not the same as R....R...., the first R is not allowed to end normally like the second R therefore giving rise to the half R sound which sounds like an alveolar t
Thanks srkris. That helps to understand some fundamentals.

Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .

Consider this word: மேறà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

It seems obvious that I was wrong with the "101% literal thing" :D

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

srikris
If the second kuRaL, which I have quoted, is written in the respective scripts and shown to our three neighbours, who are not much knowlegeable about Tamiz, the following will be the likely pronunciations..
Telugu and KannaDa people will read without bringing in a touch of ‘Ta’. One small example in Telugu will suffice. guRRamu is horse. It may be noted that in Telugu ‘Ra,RA. Ri etc were coming in the beginning of words as well, unlike in Tamiz. In Telugu and KannaDa Ra has been almost totally replaced by ra, except that old people like me still pronounce Ra. We do not find
I am not sure how our MalayaLam friends will read this. Do they read this with with more of Ta, an vey little Ra sound. (പറàµÂÂ

Enna_Solven
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Post by Enna_Solven »

Following the 'Arwi' language link from the top 10 pronunciations thread, I found this very interesting article. How little that I know :(

http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/TheTa ... ndhras.htm

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris wrote:It seems obvious that I was wrong with the "101% literal thing" :D
OK, that takes away some confusion.

1) I assume then that you grant that it is indeed possible to form a mei R that does not introduce the 't' sound, which is the case in the first mei R of மேறà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

>>I checked if the two Mei R sounds are in the same place ( tongue fold differences and trill differences notwithstanding ). It does not seem to be so.<<

The second mei R is a alveolar t in disguise. All alveolars are articulated from the same position on the top of the mouth, that's why they are grouped together.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

>The second mei R is a alveolar t in disguise.

No disagreement there. I am referring to the following.

Say these two: மேறà¯ÂÂ

srkris
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Post by srkris »

If its an alveolar t and Firth is quoted as saying that, then there is nothing to disagree with in the prescriptive sense.

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

Srikris
You wrote -
1 > Sridhar, valid points there. Malayalam is credited with preserving the alveolars well. While kARRu (air) of old tamil (i.e standard tamil) becomes kAttu (காதà¯ÂÂ

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

VKV - You have said "Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .
Consider this word: மேறà¯ÂÂ

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

>It is my firm opinion that only when R is followed by Ra ,RA, Ri etc the pronunciation of first Ra changes.

Govindasamy: You and I are essentially saying the same thing. Such changes are called by linguists/phonologists/phoneticians as Reflexes of Gemination.

All my laborious efforts with Mei R was just to convey that tamil does experience such reflex of gemination and that every aksharam has one and only pronounciation irrespective of context is not true. So Tamil is not a 100% context free phonetic language. I think srkris now agrees with that, atleast in the case of the geminate RR.

Beyond that, whether we three are all saying the same thing or not is very hard to tell using this written medium. But I have a feeling we are all saying the same thing, the apparent differences are in how we are characterizing/transliterating/phoneme-izing the various sounds. I am more convinced of that when srkris and I heard three samples and we agreed 100% on whether each one sounded correct or not. There are still open issues which I had raised to make sure we are on the same wavelength, which had not been addressed but it is hard to do so using a written medium. That is the frustrating part which we have to accept and move on.

Enna_Solven
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Post by Enna_Solven »

Couple of quotes from the book "History of the Tamils, From the earliest times to 600A.D." by P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar, written during 1928-29, reprinted 1989; it might help reduce the anxiety in this thread :)
If chronology is the eye of History, Ancient Indian History will have to be always blind."
Transcription:
I have not used a special symbol for னà¯ÂÂ

S.Govindaswamy
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Post by S.Govindaswamy »

VKV - You have said "Now, let us focus very narrowly and specifically on that mei R .
Consider this word: மேறà¯ÂÂ

sridhar_ranga
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Post by sridhar_ranga »

Interesting to see the Srilankan Tamils usage of RR! To me it appears not very different from the usage in Malayalam.

Picture this. Two editors are locked in a fierce argument over the phonetically correct spelling for 'metre' in the Tamil script. While one editor insists 'meattar' is the correct transliteration, the other, who speaks Jaffna Tamil, insists that 'meeRRar' is the way to go. Tamil Wikipedia editors know exactly what this behind-the-pages war is about; as the Tamil Wikipedia has as many - if not more - serious contributors from Sri Lanka. Hence the point of conflict, as they say in wikispeak.
Link to the article in the Hindu:

http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/inter ... epage=true
Last edited by sridhar_ranga on 17 Jan 2010, 10:17, edited 1 time in total.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Goosebumps and pronunciation

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Check out the Thangam Online tamil magazine, march edition: http://ebook.thangamonline.com/mar10/
Starting at page 24, there is an article about tamil pronounciation written by a very good acquaintance of mine, Sundar, a retired tamil professor. It is along the lines of this topic, lament with a bit of humor.

Also, I am quite impressed with the magazine layout.. This is the first time I visited thangam online magazine. I have not read enough to comment about the rest of the contents.

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