Absence of /kha/, /ga/, /gha/, /cha/, /tha/, etc, signs in T

Topic started by p~n (@ bgp385601bgs.jersyc01.nj.comcast.net) on Thu May 1 21:20:37 .


Tamil doesn't have signs for /kha/, /ga/, /gha/, /cha/, /jha/, /da/, /dha/, /tha/, /pha/, /ba/, /bha/ (I haven't included everything, there's more) that is found in most other Indian languages - Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali etc. The same letter takes diff sounds in various positions, which only a native speaker can be perfect. Don't you think this makes the language deficient and makes it difficult to learn? It also poses problems to Tamilians willing to learn other Indian languages, I have gone thru these phases and also come across many ppl with these complaints.

Thanks to borrowed 'Grantha' signs - we today are capable of writing most names e.g., Mahesh, Sriram, Rajan, Saraswathi, Christian names like Stanley, John, Muslim names like Hassan, Jaffar, etc...I dread to think otherwise..

Hindi also has some missing signs - short /e/, short /o/, but much less compared to Tamil. In the past, when Tamilians were strictly confined to TN, it was never a problem. That doesn't hold good anymore, in this internet age, where there is lot of cultural interchange.

Can't we add a few more new letters, derived from older ones, that wud make the language more effective, powerful and modern...Grantha letters have been added, few signs have been removed and new ones added to facilitate type-writing, Why can't we come up with some letters to enrich the language? (I'm neither a linguist nor a Scholar, just someone who has some thoughts to improve the lang to suit the present scenario)..Views please..

What about those alphabets /signs / sounds which are present in other global languges like Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic,etc.,but not present in tamil?

By the same token, we might have to start demanding for changes in English to take care of basic 'deficiencies' like a missing 'aa', etc.,

SV & Pn,

"By the same token, we might have to start demanding for changes in English to take care of basic 'deficiencies' like a missing 'aa', etc.,"

In human speach we have 12 vowel sounds. Most Indian languages have 12 vowels. English language has only 5 vowels. The voice-to-text recognition of English language makes it very difficult because of fewer vowels. In addition English also missing some base consonant such as 'dha' in 'this' and 'tha' in 'thank'. The consonants 'j', 'k' and 'v' did not exist in old English and they were added around 15th century. Even today, the word cat is spelled with 'c' not 'k'. Same with 'G' for 'J' and 'w' for 'v'.

In Telugu and other Indian languages have extra consonants and they were added to accomodate the sanskrit sounds. They are 'kha', 'gha', chha', jha. 'tta', 'dda', 'thha', 'bha' the stressed consonants. We can simply use the softer consnants and eliminate the stressed consnants. For example we can pronounce the word bell as 'ganta' not 'ghanta'. Pali, Bengali applied this technique and use only the softer consonants.

Most of the human speech have around 24 base consonant sounds and tamil is missing a few. Should Tamil add some missing base soft consonants? My answer is yes. The Tamil leader Y. Gopalachari is called VaiKo not VaiGo, becuase there is no 'ga' consonant in Tamil. People should understand language and script are two different things. When you add few consonants, you are adding to the script to make it more clear. That will not devalue the Language. Hope Tamils will rise up to this challenge!!

p~n,
Do not forget the letter "ru" in Krishna. As of present, Krishna is spelt ki-tu-sh-Naa in thamizh. Why not add letters to thamizh for the samaskrudham letters, ru, krt, thru, pru, mru etc..

Skanthavelu Nadarajah,

"Why not add letters to thamizh for the samaskrudham letters, ru, krt, thru, pru, mru etc.."

First they all contractions of two consonants and there is no need to have separate charecters. Second we should modify sanskrit sounds to tamil by removing 'r' sound. This is what pali did 2500 years ago. Ordinary telugu and Tamils pronounce 'pranalika' as 'panalika'. This will make Dravidian languages sound more natural. No language should add foreign sounding letters and burden the native speakers. If English with 26 letters can serve, Tamil with 50+ letters can do the same with the exception of couple base consonants I mentioned earlier.

Madhu, Thanks for ur comments. One small correction I wud like to point out - It's V.Gopalsami (Or Vai. Gopalsami) not Y. Gopalachari..


We are comparing Tamil with other popular languages that we learn or we are in contact with...So, discussion on Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Arabic is ruled out.

English also happens to be a "deficient", a difficult-to-learn language. We all speak and write in English well because we learnt it from Childhood or were forced to learn it.

The global popularity of English today can be chiefly attributed to the rise of United States and other Technological advancements. French is equally deficient (words are pronounced very differently from what is written) and that explains its decline over the years. English wud have met the same fate as French, had history taken a diff course.

I feel Spanish is much easier to learn as compared to English, the sounds are more crispier, easy to master, e.g., Television is pronounced as televisión (NOT 'te-l&-"vi-zh&n), Instruction becomes instrucción in Spanish, NOT in-'str&k-sh&n. That's precisely the reason why Hispanic, Russian speakers have a thick accent while they speak in English, it's more difficult to master, the converse is not true. This also explains the growing popularity of Spanish, second only to English.

Tamil neither has the 'Technology' factor nor the 'Super Power' advantage, that English has. Most of us, Tamils, are also moving away from the language, speaking only at home and using English for all other practical purposes. We scare away people willing to learn Tamil, by projecting it as complex and different. In addition, it lacks sounds most other Indian languages have. the script is different and complex. With all the odds against the language, how do you think we can develop Tamil? Or, do we want to keep Tamil strictly to ourselves?

If things continue the same way they are now, Tamil, inspite of its glorious, rich literary past, wud die a natural death, eaten up by English and Hindi, the languages of power and politics (in India).

I bet, unless one has special interest and lot of time, he/she would find it very difficult to master Tamil, vis-a-vis other languages like Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam.

Where should we get the missing letters from? Well, as told by Mani, we cud pick them from our neighbor Malayalam, but, I'm sure Tamil scholars would frown on this suggestion. The wall of ego would prevent us from borrowing letters from a language like Malayalam, much younger to Tamil.

For a moment, shed your ego, superiority complex and ask yourselves this question "Are we really doing anything for the betterment of Tamil??

>>Where should we get the missing letters from? Well, as told by Mani, we cud pick them from our neighbor Malayalam, but, I'm sure Tamil scholars would frown on this suggestion. The wall of ego would prevent us from borrowing letters from a language like Malayalam, much younger to Tamil.<<

Didn't Tamil borrow letters like "ja" from Malayalam?

p~n,

"If things continue the same way they are now, Tamil, inspite of its glorious, rich literary past, wud die a natural death, eaten up by English and Hindi, the languages of power and politics (in India). "

Till 1990s, people in US were using phones for communication and letter writing was disappearing. Many collage students could not write a simple letter. Every body was worried. Then came the Email revolution, now every body is an author. This can also happen to Tamil. The Indian languages are very efficient to write with hand but are not suited for automation. Twenty-five years ago I started to simplify Telugu by droppng many hard consonants and writing vowels on the side like English. I have two rules, one for vowels and the other for stressed consonants. The Unicode consortium allocated 128 charecters for each Indian language. Microsoft implented Indic languages in Windows XP, now you can use tamil in Winword. They introduced a Input Exit Method(IME) for Indic languages, every time you hit a consosonant followed by vowel, the IME will take over and translate into a compound charecter. For example: If you enter 'k' follwed by 'a', it will display 'ka', as a compound construct. Every time we display or print, it has to go thru this translation. It will also create a problem in sorting in alphabetical order. I suggested to Microsoft to disable the IME, and let us write side by side like English. It may look little odd but we are still using our chracter set. With this change, we can use Tamil, Telugu in emails, word processors, Databases etc. When the language usage increases, langugae will grow and will never die.

Mani,
Your suggestin is good, but, two problems. Malayalam kha looks like va and Malayalam tha(aspirated) looks like Tamil ma. How would a person differentiate kha from va and tha(aspirated) from ma?