Talk:Tamil language/Archive 4

message: It is wise to be conservative.  But, that should not translate to downplaying the ancient origins of Tamil language.  A helpful article:   http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/17/stories/2005021704471300.htm 
--Natkeeran 17:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See this.  Sarvagnya 20:16, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I can provide scholarly background information about ancient Tamil works.  However, most of the materials are in Tamil.  You can get a sense of the scholarly work if you review the newsletter:  http://www.ciil-classicaltamil.org/newsletter/Chemmozhi_Oct-Dec_2K6.pdf (It's in English.).  It contains summary articles.  In Tamil scholarly circles, the conservative estimates place early Tamil Literature to 3 BCE.  It is not possible to place one source, that provides a definite date.  The dating is based on a general agreement based on wide area of research.  --Natkeeran 21:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dating Early Tamil Literature and/or Writing 

message: Tamil is #15, according to the following paper:
http://www.frenchteachers.org/bulletin/articles/promote/top%20languages.pdf
Tamil is #18, according to Ethnologue.  
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-100-languages-by-population.html
Another source:
http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html
--Natkeeran 21:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranking 

message: The article currently says:
:The vowels /ə/, /æː/, and /ɔː/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, occurring only in loanwords.
Aren't these, respectively, the sounds of the kuRRiyal ukaram, kuRRiyal aikaram and kuRRiyal ekaram, all of which are most definitely native to Tamil phonology? 
:::Yes, I think they are, however, the precise meaning description of /ə/, /æː/, and /ɔː/ MAY differ from my understanding. Definitely they are very close.--Aadal 22:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The sounds /b/, /d̪/, /ɖ/, /ɟ/, /g/, /f/, /ʂ/, /ɕ/, /x/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, being found only in loanwords and frequently replaced by native sounds.
sounds just plain wrong. As far as I am aware, voiced stops like /b/, /g/, /d̪/ and /ɖ/ are very much a part of Tamil, as is the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (listen to the Jaffna pronunciation of the intervocalic க, which is pretty much how it was pronunced in Sangam Tamil). -- Arvind 22:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree voiced stops /b/, /g/, /d̪/ and /ɖ/ are very much part of Tamil, but in standard Tamil, they occur in a well-dfined manner using the rule of Tolkāppiyam; the fricative /x/ is also present, I think, in Āytham and in many colloquial language (both in Tamil Nadu and in Jaffna). --Aadal 22:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Phonology 

message: User:Sarvagnya wants to diminish the ancient quality of Tamil, and its legal (in India), and scholarly status (global) as a Classical language.  There are many others who think this as counter factual position to take.  If he has quarrels, he can take that up at with the Indian government or at other platforms.  But, it is not helpful to try to insert that bias cynically in the Tamil language article.  Thanks.  --Natkeeran 22:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've rewritten the sentence to reflect what actually is stated in the given reference, also making sure that Tamil gets the credit for being the first language to be included in classical language category. Gnanapiti 04:41, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The statement which was there was simple and direct and that is all that is required to be stated in the lead section. Other details are already in the official languages of India page. --Aadal 12:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content Disputes #1 Tamil is a Classical language vs Tamil is not a Classical lanaguage 

message: * Information about the number of speakers should be included.
* The information about Diglossia is not required in the intro.  Most languages have formal and informal versions of language, and Tamil is no different.
* Much of the detail comments about the grammar can be avoided as well.
* Tamils ancient origins, continuity, and modern vibrancy should be clearly stated.
:I see what you are saying, but Wikipedia has its own standards for what the introduction of a featured article should have, and they are not always what seem most obvious to us as native speakers.  The old introduction, with which this article first attained FA status, will simply not pass the FA process today because Wikipedia's standards have changed.  The article about Russian language is usually held up as a model in this regard, and I've tried to follow its pattern in the introduction.  -- Arvind 11:34, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I see whay you are saying.  --Natkeeran 16:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments about the Intro 

message: The following intro from a previous version can be apprioriately modified.  
Tamil (தமிழ் ) is classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 1996, it was the eighteenth most spoken language, with over 74 million speakers worldwide. It is one of the official languages of India, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Tamil is one of the few "living classical languages" Prof.Udaya Narayana Singh's Inaugural Address at the first meeting of the Tamil Language Promotion Board held on 10th December 2005. , and Tamil literature has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia. The written language has changed little during this period, with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern literature. Tamil school-children, for example, are still taught the alphabet using the átticúdi, an alphabet rhyme attributed to the poet Auvaiyar who lived during the thirteenth century CE.
A History of Tamil literature
The name 'Tamil' is an anglicised form of the native name தமிழ் (IPA ). The final letter of the name, usually transcribed as the lowercase l or zh, is a retroflex r. In phonetic transcriptions, it is usually represented by the retroflex approximant.
 
--Natkeeran 00:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  An Alternative Intro 

message: Arvind, I think your edits are making the content more cogent and things like transliteration are being well harmonised. Thanks! --Aadal 13:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Good changes Arvind!

message: A more general introduction along the lines of 'Tamil is a phonetic language' may be suitable.  --Natkeeran 16:53, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree, somewhere it should be mentioned that it is a phonetic language.--Aadal 16:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sounds 

message: I think it would be important to mention, at least in brief, about the remarkable Tolkāppiyam rules on the production of phonemes (letter-sounds) of the language by the body. In Chapter 3 entitled 'piRappiyal' he spells out these. The systematic way the consonants are arranged in accordance with the piRapiyal is a remarkable fact and it is worth mentioning it here.  Ideally we need a picture to explain and I can get it. Arvind, what do you think? Welcome comments from other users as well.--Aadal 16:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Arvind, I meant  by 'production of phonemes' what is known today as articulatory phonetics or  Place of articulation - described in the ~ 2nd century BCE work Tolkāppiyam's (chapter on piRappiyal).--Aadal 20:11, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I know the bits you're talking about.  Sure, it will probably be worth adding a bit about that in the section on phonetics!  Incidentally, I'm going to be offline for some days from tomorrow onwards so I probably won't be able to contribute to this article for a while, but I think it should get through the review now. -- Arvind 17:25, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Phonology

message: I uploaded a sharpened version of the original Vatteluttu pic .  Should I have uploaded it on commons or should I have just uploaded it as a new version of the original pic that User:Venu62 had added?  And anyway, how does it look.  I just sharpened it so the inscription is easier to read.  Feel free to revert if people feel the old one is better.  Sarvagnya 08:36, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Vatteluttu pic 

message: Could people with a Tamil background have a look at Devaneya Pavanar? There seems to be a lot of insane nonsense flying around, and it is difficult to assess it without knowledge of Tamil (I have already scrounged as much as I could off search engines). If possible also reference the bibliography section. thanks, dab (𒁳) 08:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at the wiki page and it is indeed badly organized and presented, but it is true that Devaneya Pavanar was a leading light in tamil linguistics (actually without a parallel). I'm quite familiar with his works and they are of excellent quality. He was knowledgeable in some 30-40 languages (in linguistic, etymological sense).  Excepting a few quite exotic and unproven claims (that Tamil is the most ancient language based on his surmise that they originally lived in the landmass south of India which was lost due to tsunami-like "flood" and their history goes back to some 10,500 years ago), his linguistic analysis is pretty strong and unmatched. He is not as well recognized and known as Murray Emeneau or Thomas Burrow, but his contributions are nonetheless comparable and I would dare say even more deep quality. He was very poor (economically) and was not recognized even by political powers of Tamilnadu. But his linguistic genius is extremely rare to find. When I have time I'll go to that page and make changes I think will be appropriate. If you have any questions about Devaneya Pavanar, please let me know and I'll be happy to share. I've almost all his books (some 30+).--Aadal 13:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: please do. The present material in the article doesn't present him in a favourable light to say the least. In fact, as an autodidact with utterly confused notions of linguistic fundamentals (what does it even mean to say "Tamil is superior to Sanskrit"?). If he as done any work of linguistic value, this should by all means be presented. Since there is a living field of Dravidology, such contributions would certainly have been  reviewed academically, and I am sure it would be possible to cite the opinion of established Dravidologists. Outside Dravidology, it appears he is only noted for his fanciful mysticist claims of Stone Age Dravidians from Lemuria. Also, the article needs references for various claims (awards etc., what does it mean that his works have been "nationalised") that can probably only be answered by editors who can read Tamil. dab (𒁳) 15:16, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Pavanar and linguistic genius?!  Yeah right :) How else would you "prove" that all languages in the world have borrowed half their vocabularies from 'classical divine' Tamil!  Pavanar's theories have long been discredited by the 'mainstream' though there is always the odd author who'd love to live out his fantasies on paper.  Sarvagnya 00:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Excepting a few quite exotic and unproven claims (that Tamil is the most ancient language [..snip..] - dont tell me you're harboring fantasies that his claims will be 'proven' some day.  Sarvagnya 00:52, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: are you asking me? His forays into etymology and historical linguistics are quite obviously worthless, no debate required. His qualities as an author (of literature and poetry, not scholarship) and his command of the Tamil language are obviously unrelated to that, and can only be assessed by people who know the language. It appears that he is very notable as a poet, even if his Lemurian "Dravidology" is a surreal joke. dab (𒁳) 12:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I readily admit I had never even heard of Pavanar one week ago. I admit he may well have been a genius, and may have possessed supreme command of the Tamil language. This has nothing to do with historical linguistics or etymology. If he was a great Tamil author, let's say he was a great Tamil author. But any "scholar", be he Tamil or German or British or whatever, who proves that his native language is "divine" and the mother tongue of mankind, if possible deriving from some sunken continent of the Paleolithic, is simply outside anything that may be considered academic. It is simply run-of-the-mill "antiquity frenzy", a rather common symptom of naive national mysticism. I am sorry if this somehow mars an otherwise ingenious author, but that's how it is. We don't even need to argue about Lemuria. Calling a language "divine" has nothing to do with historical linguistics, and is purely a statement of linguistic mysticism. This is 17th-century-style "linguistics", and such stuff wouldn't be better received in actual 20th century scholarship than an alchemist claiming to have found the Philosophers' Stone would have been received in the 1966 edition of Physics Today: Pavanar is "not even wrong", he lives in a world apart: mysticism. dab (𒁳) 18:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand your point, but why don't you continue this elsewhere (like Devaneya pavanar page), rather than here? I'll answer it there for you, if you wish. The connotation of divine language is in the context of Sanskrit-Tamil controversy and it only means that one can pray in Tamil, and it is not such an outrageous comment as you make out. Sanskrit was claimed to be the exclusive language to 'speak with gods' (so called Deva Basha) and DP's comments were in relation to this. Anyways, I'll not reply to you in this regard here, though I can in an appropriate talk page. --Aadal 20:29, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Devaneya Pavanar]]

message: Almost all indian languages use sanskrit-derived terminology to describe their grammar. Tamil uses Tamil terms. In English too grmmatical terms (except in modern times) come from other languages - for example noun comes from latin nomen meaning "name." The english term verb comes from Latin verbum, the term gerund comes from Latin gerundium etc. The meta language for tamil is Tamil from more than 2300 years ago- at the least. --Aadal 17:38, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: you mean 2100 years, at the most, per Tolkāppiyam. I agree it's impressive, but to say "the metalanguage of Tamil is also Tamil" is confusing. Look at metalanguage. You can make statements on Tamil in any language. You can describe any language in its own terms. What you mean is "the oldest known native grammar of Tamil dates to ca. 2000 years ago." dab (𒁳) 18:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is not that you can describe, but rather -in Tamil it had been described unlike in most of the languages. Will you stop deleting valid statements such as the one on metalanguage?! Will you also go and check other indian languages and most other literary languages? I don't understand what is confusing in the statement "the metalanguage of Tamil is also Tamil" . Modify it to remove the confusion if you can, but just don't delete the whole statement. It is not trivial fact to mention. I don't have the ready reference to point to, but others have made an explict pointed reference to this fact. It is a unique feature of Tamil (by unique I don't mean 'the only one', but rather 'one of the very few' in the world). --Aadal 20:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Metalanguage

message: I've added some and removed some. Please check out. Instead of discussing Tamil history, the section following the different period contained references only to Sanskrit influence. It should be mentioned but the contribution of Tamil to Sanskrit have to be mentioned as well. All these mutual influences need to be short. --Aadal 19:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent edits

message: Now where did this term tamil language family pop up? Can anyone list down the the 35 langauges which come under this family.
This is a quite controversial Issue.As far as i know tamil has 20 dialects, but dialects can't be considered as languages.
Even a language like kannada has 20 dialects.But it can be considered as a language family.There is a difference in a language and langauge family.I want discussion on this,i will delete that contents in about 2 days.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nrupatunga (talk • contribs) 09:07, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: It is sometimes classified as being part of a Tamil language family