Very well researched, thank you dear Vairam, as always. I want to pose a question to knowledgable members - why is tamil language so limited in phonetic syllables - common example ha and ga, sa and ja? We have 3 'na's and a super difficult 'zha' but only one 'sa'? Even in English, a fairly limited language with only 24 alphabets one has these syllables but in tamil we have to contend with one ga and one sa? I dont mean the inclusion of the sanskrit ja, ha and that whole family -which we can see liberally used in Kalki's work and in most historical novels, but without that the basic tamil alphabet is fairly limited. One of the main reasons for tamil not being accorded due status is many people who know other languages are not able to accept this limitation.
I am not any linguistic expert , but my basic understanding is that - People who spoke Tamil never used those syllables in early times. One place Hart points out that probably Tamils didn't like the pronunciation of the Sanskrit words and had to use Tamil words for words of Sanskrit origin eg. Veda-->marai etc.
This was during sangam age. But Tholkappiyam (atleast the basic structure was written in about 100 bc) was written much before this age which defined the grammar for the coming age .
This is some thing like the tribal in 'god must be crazy'. He uses sounds which we can never incorporate in most of the languages. Early Tamils were unfamiliar with the Sanskrit tones and hence when the scripts were formed for their own script they didn't accommodate the scripts for these syllables.Tamil is oldest available Dravidian language most probably had pre literary culture before any Indo aryan language could penetrate.The fact that Tamil is from diff language chain and sankrit being a diff language chain might have been the biggest contributing factor.(Except for Tamil all other Dravidian language literature started under influence of Sanskrit so cant be taken in the above context)
Even in 10-12th century Kamban chooses to use ilakuvanan instead of lakshman. We can also see swami changed to sami even in these days.Probably if we go deep interior rural tamil nadu we might find people having difficulties pronouncing the sha and jhas.
on a lighter note I remember Senthil pronouncing pusham as puipam in some old Tamil movie.
Actually Vairam, i thought it was the other way around, people have 'difficulties' pronouncing it is because they were never taught these syllables and that is because the language was not expanded in detail to include them. In other languages we can see there is a basic alphabet and an expanded alphabet with nuances of the same sound- like in kannada and telugu after learning basic ka ga etc one goes on to kaa ka gaa ga na type of things. Different variations of the same sound. We have ka kaa ki kee ko koo and so on which are different sounds but no nuances of the same thing. It is a pretty huge and difficult variation from not only sanskrit but most other world languages.
Then..some sounds are breath sounds, if we learn yoga we learn sounds that are natural extensions of breath..Ha for example is what is called a breath sound..tamils don't laugh differently than other humans do we, so how do we claim we don't know 'ha'? I dont know much of the history but i think somewhere down the line the language did not develop well enough, probably experts can explain better.
Chanced upon this book " Elements of south-Indian palaeography, from the fourth to the seventeenth century by A.C.Burnell" . I have only read about 15 pages on it. Thought it might be interesting to share with all for this discussion.
>This was during sangam age. But Tholkappiyam (atleast the basic structure >was written in about 100 bc) was written much before this age which >defined the grammar for the coming age .
The core of Tolkappiam might have been written during 3rd century BC. This we can deduce from the adaptation of Northern Brahmi for Tamil and it was well researched.. not written off the head.. It was well researched and accepted by scholars and propagated across the country.
There are also theories that writing originated in Tamilnadu and then spread to the north...
Even in 10-12th century Kamban chooses to use ilakuvanan instead of lakshman. We can also see swami changed to sami even in these days.Probably if we go deep interior rural tamil nadu we might find people having difficulties pronouncing the sha and jhas.
- Swami changing to Saamy could be numerology :) Ilakkuvan - i thought the ksha did not exist in tamil during times of K-III.
I can see that come in during the Thirupugazh era.
Small point to be made here: In Pali (among other languages, I guess), the Sanskrit _bikshu_ becomes _bikku_, similar to Tamil. I'm sure we could find quite a few similar instances...
In my opinion, there's no question that _all_ Indian languages were influenced by each other, and there's nothing wrong in that. Declaring that one language is "more ancient" than the other as a matter of pride (or equally, that another is "less ancient") is just missing the point. This matters in terms of understanding our history, not the present.
Great point Shashwath. Language related pride is like casteism, it has become part of people's identity and it is hard to do battle with. And in many situations it becomes a forced identity - if you are with 10 fellow indians who identify themselves that way then you can't be the one with no language and no pride. 'I am proud of something..' and 'I am better than something..' by the way are two completely different stances. Pride is not related to superiority or inferiority it is just a sense of positive achievement. As far as tamil being a classical language I think one reason that might be important for tamils is that we are so different than other languages as far as linguistics go and need a leg to stand on. It provides that as far as I know, that is all.