Topic suggested by Udhaya on Tue Oct 13 09:26:12 .
I was hoping this thread could serve to expand our Thamizh vocabulary, personally I would benefit a lot from it. For instance, I would like to know the Thamizh equivalent for "irony".
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Topic suggested by Udhaya on Tue Oct 13 09:26:12 .
I was hoping this thread could serve to expand our Thamizh vocabulary, personally I would benefit a lot from it. For instance, I would like to know the Thamizh equivalent for "irony".
muraNpAdu?
Whats the thamizh word for "stereotype"?
orEmAdhiriyAna?
Gokul,
muranpadu is straightforward and mostly means "breach". But it's still better than what I could think of.
Stereotype was a toughie! How about "thaniththanmai maruththal"? I know it's too wordy though.
Gokul,
how about 'achchu kOththaarpOla' - it is just the literal meaning for 'stereotype'. i think balaji and udhaya have covered the other meanings-'unvarying form' and 'not original or individualized'.
Reka,Udhaya,Balaji
I guess it is difficult to get one word for such
words.
Kanchana,arUL what do you guys think?
irony is something like a vEdhanaiyAna nagaichchuvai. my own
"creation" for this word would be "annagai" (alladhu + nagai; alladhu
is opposite of nalladhu!!). Or may be thInagai would be an apt and short
word. Too old sounding???
will try something for sterotype also, soon.
what is the thamizh word for "cliche"?? whenever i see a normal thamizh film, the thought that springs to my mind is "it is highly cliched". but several people don't know the english usage and i am not able to translate into thamizh.
balaji,
"araitha maavu" is the Thamizh cliche to describe cliche.
Udhaya, ..:-))
Irony does not have any meaning to do with humor of the negative kind (vEdhanaiyAna nagaichchuvai). Sarcasm is closer to it.
Merriam-Webster's dictionary:
irony: [Gk. eiron: dissembler] the use of words to express the opposite of what one really means; incongruiyty between the actual result of a sequence of events and the expected result.
Given this muran or murnbAdu would be candidates;
But muran should be good enough. Because muran directly means contrast or incongruity.
The principle to follow is to use as concise a phrase or word as possible. MuranbAdu would be superfluous. I find people attempting to suggest long phrases taken from sample sentences that use the concept. This results in longer words or phrases than necessary. Also we, in these days of unsophisticated usage of Tamil, tend to forget or shy away from compact Tamil words that are actually able to accurately and elegantly convey the meaning of the target english word.
Stereotype: a metal printing plate cast from mold made from a set type; something agreeing with a pattern especially an idea that many people have about a thing or a group and that may often be untrue or partly true.
achchukkOrththArppOla is not a noun equivalent to the noun stereotype. achchu seems to be the equivalent of mold; achchukkOrppu equivalent of set type. casting is vArththal and cast is vArrppu like in "puthiyavArppugal"; then I wonder
if achchuvArppu or vArppu if one wanted to literally translate the first meaning. if one wanted to have an equivalent Tamil word matching only the second meanining one has more freedom.
nandri...
chandra.
Chandrasekaran,
We are not deliberately shying away from a compact word, we are infact searching for it. The very reason behind this thread is to get more sophisticated with our Thamizh vocabulary.
I appreciate your in depth response for each word. I still don't feel that muran captures the full meaning of irony because irony is not just a contrast, it also stands for a poignant turn of events (If a writer didn't possess a pen, it would be an ironic circumstance; if a cigarette company owner died of lung cancer there is irony there). Either through usage or its vagueness, the word irony packs a lot of meaning that covers a range of moods and situations.
Udhaya,
Thanks for your response. I would like to clarify that I was not saying that people *deliberately* shy away from compact words. I meant that people do it subconsciously or as a habit due to subconscious sociolinguistic habits, complexes and compulsions. I apologize if it sounded otherwise and you or anyone else.
Now to address using muran for irony, I had quoted the text of the meaning for that word from the abovementioned dictionary. To see whether poignant turn of events is covered by irony, I checked the dictionary again and am quoting the text for the text of the meaning for the word poignant:
poignant: adj:1. painfully affecting the feelings
2. deeply moving.
Now irony seems to hardly cover poigant turn of events. The focus of irony is still incongruity or contrast. And muran should be able to take care of "irony".
Of course, I would like to refer to an English-Tamil dictionary produced by an organization such as a university or research institute or some authority. I am sure they have done the research already. Does anyone know an abridged version of such a dictionary? I understand that there is the Tamil lexicon which is voluminous which is worth keepig in one's library anyway.
Nandri,
chandra
I don't want to belabor the point but there are many forms of irony: dramatic, tragic, Socratic, etc. All of them can't be cloaked under one word such as muran. But I hope we can move onto other words and phrases. BTW, English-Tamil and Tamil-English dictionaries do exist. I have both and I will check there too, but some of the words they give are archaic or longwinded.
here are some words that i have not been able to get a GOOD thamizh equivalent:
volatile
thesaurus
prototype
Is Thesaurus diff from dictionary. If it is not then agarAthi?
[This word means something else in Trichy, JR?:-)]
:-)
Gokul: Dictionary gives the meaning of words. Theasarus gives the equivalent words. ( very useful when solving crosswords).
Dictionary is agarAthi.
Does the concept of theasarus there in our language?
sorkalanjiam - na encyclopaedia va ?
nigaNdu.
There exist a few classic nigaNdu's in Tamil
some of which are pingalam and thivAgaram.
chandra
Thanks JR, Chandra!
Platform-?
Sathiya,
thaLam?
thaLam seems to be good. Any other more
natural translation?
agaraathi - gets its coinage because words
are arranged 'beginning in agaram' (alphabet) agaramudhali enpadhu adhan sendhamizh vadivam.
prototype? mun-madhiri?
stereotype - pazhagiya padivam?
irony - muraN enbadhe sari. In fact I have
heard dramatic irony getting translated as "Naadaga muraN"
araitha mavu for cliche - is excellent lateral thinking. I like your approach of looking beyond the words into their meanings and coming back with equivalents.
BTW, What is the word for 'lateral thinking'?
Chandra
There is a beautiful thamizh dictionary called
'Tharkaala thamizh agaraathi' published by
Kriya Bangalore. I have seen it but do not
have a copy. It is really a marvelous research
publication compiled around 1991-93. It lists a lot of coloquial words and usages.
what is the word for 'specialization' as in
work specialization?
maybe, thesarus could be also translated as 'poruLagaraathi' - because a thesarus groups
words by their meanings. The synonym function
is not as important as the overall framework, whereby you get words closer in meaning next
to each other in the list and in adjacent pages.
Roget's thesarus was converted into
a dictionary format only later.
Rjay,
Specialization as a word means "thaniththanmai".
But I guess it is not adequate for your context.
Chandra?
Also. I came across these two words recently.
Variety - vagaimai ( I bet there are other simple words for variety)
Index - AttavaNai.
Chandra, Rjay, and Gokul,
thanks for your further scrutiny. I have always wondered if there were Thamizh equivalents for non-primary colors.
Are there words for Brown,Purple,Burgundy,violet, etc.?
I know we have kili pachchai and ilaip pachchai to differentiate shades. But I have only heard "mara niram" to express brown. Is there a better word?
brown - pazhuppu
oodhA - violet
karunIlam - indigo
kAvi - orange (saffron)
As for other colors, I cannot recall immediately
the equivalent Tamil words.
Other please pitch in!
RJay,
Thanks for informing me about the existence of 'Tharkaala thamizh agaraathi'.
I will keep that in mind next time I shop for
Tamil books.
Chandra
The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines
Specialize: vb. To concentrate one's efforts in a special activity or field; also: to change in an adaptive manner. ---speicalization n.
I think that thaniththanmai would be difficult to justify in the light of this.
I cannot recall a Tamil equivalent right away.
But thaniththanmai seems to imply specialty
specialty (a particular quality or detail ; a product of a special kind or of special excellence).
Then a shorter equivalent to match this sense (specialty) would be siRappu or veeRu.
I like vagaimai very much at least from the point of view of using short (based on the number of syllables) Tamil words. I would like to contrast
vagaimai with thaniththanmai: the suffix -mai by itself already has the sense of "thanmai" or property or quality or state; thw word thanmai then in thaniththanmai would be redundant.
Of course we might feel uncomfortable with the alternative which is thanimai;
In these days of sorry state of affairs of Tamil which we have set out to change, the space of other potential senses of that word seems to have been arrogated by the obvious sense of "loneliness". I am saying other *potential* senses, because I do not know if the word thanimai has been or could be used in other senses. But I won't be surprised if that were the case.
The principle followed is teh same as in paring the suffix -pAdu from muraNpAdu to arrive at muran. I feel that a key to the success of Tamil is using short words that might at first not seem appropriate either because it is unusually short or it already has a more common sense. I feel tha this will be a scaleable principle.
Too many compound words spoil the attractiveness.
Take for example replacing "surgery" or "operation" in modern Tamil. One would immediately think of "aRuvai-ch-chigichchai"; I beg to differ with that as an effective candidate. I feel aruVai
should suffice. I actually have been using this in my phone conversations with my relatives when referring to such incidents ("mAmAvukku sundu viralle aRuvai senchAngalAme") I feel that using the compound alternative would sound too artificial or long. Of course I would worry less about the former feeling than the latter. But to have this practicable by the average Tamil aspirant, we need to consider all aspects; even then, the speaker has to ultimately have some conviction and guts to regularly use Tamil equivalents in colloquial settings.
As I have said before under a different thread
("Future of Thamizh"), the first step is to stop
using "panni thamizh"; stop worrying about threat to Tamil from modern concepts such as Internet and
stop replacing Tamil words for age-old concepts such as days of the week (use thingaL instead of Monday etc), verbs and nouns (vAdagai instead of rent, kazhuththu instead of neck, vali instead of pain, vizhA instead of function...)...or simplest of all nanRi instead of thanks....can we do it...
I was also guilty of this ...and I have actually started practising this. In the last few weks I greeted relatives (8 year olds through 46 year olds) and friends for birth days and deepavali using the word vAzhththugaL...I never used the english words "Happy", "greetings"; neither instead of no in addiiton to the Tamil words. It works fine...you just have to have the initial feelings worked out.
Replacing Tamil words with English words for such concepts is what is killing Tamil and not usage of
words like internet or airport which come by every now and then.
Well I suppose this is enough for the day and for a thread not titled exactly to accommodate this...
nanRi
Chandra
what's the best Thamizh word for "juxtapose"?
juxtapose means to place side by side: like in juxtapose unexpected combinations of colors, shapes and ideas.
so i guess a straightforward translation will be aduthaduthu vaithal. i think a better meaning will be "korthal" as in poo korthal. it blends itself well into the profundity given by usage of juxtaposition.
i mean , kOrthal and not korthal.
I was browsing through the Kazhagath Thmizh Agarathi and voila:
neutral - nodhumal
nodhumal - ayal; viruppu veRuppu inmai.
nodhumalar - ayalAr.
Contrast this with nANbar and pagaivar.
I feel we have a beautiful word for neutral!.
balaji, thanks for the kOrthal suggestion.
chandra, nodhumal and ayal are both good finds. I can't wait to use them in some context.
thannIrmai = personality; individuality
(please help me with this; what is that kuRaL that ends with
thannIrmai kunRA vidil? )
About kOrthal:
folks please note that the correct word is
'kOththal' not 'kOrththal'.
that is the root word is 'kO' = to string together
etc. there is no 'kOr'.
Silappathikaaram:
"kOvaa malaiyaaram kOththa katalaaram"
[chapter: aaychchiyar kuravai?]
here aaram has two meanings: sandal and pearl.
"the aaram from the mountains (sandal) that is not strung together and the aaram from the ocean (pearl) that is strung together".
There are a whole lot of Tamil poetic works
who belong to the 'mummaNikkOvai' genre:
I forgot the definition but it is to do with
composing the book with three different types of
paas, the three different types of gems (for example veNpaas, aasiriya viruththams, kaliththuRai ) alternating in the sequence (kOvai).
e.g.,
Chithampara MummaNikkOvai
chandra
romba low-techaana kElvi.. zero-kku thamizh vaarthai enna? poojiyam, sypher-nnu namma use pannara vaarthai ellam vERRu mozhi sorkaLaavE irukkE? muttai was the only tamil word we could think for it, although it is only colloquial. :-)