Colloquial Tamil: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)

322 Pages·2002·3.07 MB·English

by  E. Annamalai

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Colloquial
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Tamil
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1 The Colloquial Series
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Series Adviser: Gary King
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4 The following languages are available in the Colloquial series:
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Afrikaans Korean
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Albanian Latvian
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Amharic Lithuanian
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Arabic (Levantine) Malay
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Arabic of Egypt Mongolian
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Arabic of the Gulf and Norwegian
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Saudi Arabia Panjabi
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Basque Persian
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Bulgarian Polish
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* Cambodian Portuguese
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* Cantonese Portuguese of Brazil
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* Chinese Romanian
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Croatian and Serbian * Russian
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Czech Scottish Gaelic
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Danish Slovak
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Dutch Slovene
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Estonian Somali
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Finnish * Spanish
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French Spanish of Latin America
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German Swedish
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Greek Tamil
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Gujarati * Thai
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Hindi Turkish
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Hungarian Ukrainian
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Icelandic Urdu
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Indonesian * Vietnamese
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Italian Welsh
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Japanese
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Accompanying cassette(s) (*and CDs) are available for the above
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titles. They can be ordered through your bookseller, or send
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payment with order to Taylor & Francis/Routledge Ltd, ITPS,
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Cheriton House, North Way, Andover, Hants SP10 5BE, UK, or to
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Routledge Inc, 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001, USA.
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40 COLLOQUIALCD-ROMs
41 Multimedia Language Courses
42 Available in: Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish
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5 Colloquial
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Tamil
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14 The Complete Course
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16 for Beginners
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R.E. Asher and E. Annamalai
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36 U T LE
O D
37 R G
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40 Taylor&Francis Group
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42 London and New York
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10 First published 2002
11 by Routledge
12 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
14 by Routledge
15 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
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18 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2002 R. E. Asher and E. Annamalai
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24 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
25 reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
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including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
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the publishers.
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30 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
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the British Library
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33 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
34 TO FOLLOW
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36 ISBN 0-203-99424-8 Master e-book ISBN
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40 ISBN 0–415–18788–5 (book)
41 ISBN 0–415–18789–3 (tape)
ISBN 0–415–27677–2 (CD)
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ISBN 0–415–18790–7 (pack)
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1 Contents
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10 Introduction
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13 1 en peeru Murugan 9
14 My name is Murugan
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2 naan vii ukku pooreen 25
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I’m going home
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18 3 enna vee=um? 39
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What would you like?
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21 4 haloo, naan Smith peesureen 52
22 Hello, this is Smith
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24 5 mannikka um, taamadamaa
25 varradukku 66
26 I am sorry that I am late.
27 (Lit: Excuse me for coming late)
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6 Mahaabalipuram poovamaa? 85
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30 Shall we go to Mahabalipuram?
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7 niinga enge pooriinga? 100
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Where are you going?
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34 8 niinga eppa Indiyaavukku vandiinga? 117
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When did you come to India?
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TT ∂
37 9 niinga poo urukkira ras 133
38 The clothes you are wearing
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10 neettu oru kalyaa attukku pooyirundeen 145
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41 Yesterday I went to a wedding
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1 11 nii enne paakka varakkuu aadaa 156
2 Shouldn’t you come to see me?
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2 2 Ω =
12 ende uuru Yaa ppaa am 166
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5 I’m from Jaffna
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13 inda e attukku ep i pooradu? 177
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How do I get to this place?
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9 14 enna sirikkiree? 190
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What are you laughing at?
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Ω TT =∂ Ò
12 15 naan Tami naa ule re u naa daan 200
13 irukka mu∂iyum
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I can be in Tamil Nadu for just a couple of days
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16 16 Tami le oru siranda nuulu 216
17 A famous book in Tamil
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19 The Tamil alphabet 225
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Grammatical summary 227
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Key to exercises 236
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Tamil–English glossary 275
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24 English–Tamil glossary 295
25 Index of grammatical terms 312
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ANDHRA
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KARNATAKA PRADESH
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8 Bangalore Chennai (Madras)
9 Vandalur
10 Mahabalipuram
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Mysore Triuvannamalai
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Pondicherry
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14 Mudumalai
15 Ooty Chidambaram
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TAMIL
Kumbakonam
17 NADU Trichy
18 KERALA Thanjavur
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21 Madurai
22 Jaffna
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26 Trincomalee
27 Trivandrum
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29 Kanya Kumari
Batticaloa
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Colombo
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1111 Introduction
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Where Tamil is spoken
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12 The number of speakers of Tamil worldwide is in excess of 65
13 million. The two principal homelands of the language are India,
14 where it is the mother tongue of 87 per cent of the population of
15 the state of Tamil Nadu in the south-east of the country, and Sri
16 Lanka, where a quarter of the inhabitants are Tamil speakers. In
17 the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka, Tamil speakers
18 are in the majority. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
19 considerable numbers of Tamilians migrated from both India and
20 Sri Lanka to other countries. These countries include Malaysia,
21 Singapore, Mauritius, Fiji, South Africa, the United Kingdom,
22 Germany, the United States, and Canada.
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The history of the language
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27 Tamil has a very long recorded history. Inscriptions in the language
28 date back to the middle of the third century BC, and the earliest
29 Tamil poetry – some of the finest poetry ever written – is thought
30 to have been produced not less than two millennia ago. Good
31 modern translations of the lyrical and bardic poetry of this so-called
32 Sangam age are available in English.
33 The hundreds of languages spoken in India belong to four
34 distinct language families, of which the two with the largest
35 numbers of speakers are Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. The former
36 are related to the languages of western Europe as members of the
37 larger Indo-European family. The thirty or more Dravidian
38 languages of which Tamil is one are not so related. There has,
39 however, been mutual influence, particularly through the borrowing
40 of words. Modern Tamil, especially the spoken variety, also makes
41 use of a number of English words, as you will see as you progress
4211 through this book.