Tamil thesaurus for English words and phrases

[Oldposts]

chuzhi

[Oldposts]

Chandra: Thanks. En ithu onnu rendu moonu aLavukku prabalamA illai?

[Oldposts]

Because Tamilians have an enormous amount of
inferiority complex when it comes to using
Tamil words even for concepts (such as names for days and such common things) for which Tamil
words were being employed colloquially until
the last generation.
The very people who are supposed to be the guardians of our heritage startedthe this trend of
destruction...
editors of Tamil periodicals, Tamil writers, movie
playwrigths, movie lyricists...and so on.

This has resulted in the "paNNith thamizh" complex!
(please refer to my earlier postings in this thread on that topic).
Now even those people who have hardly any education have started using paNNIth thmizh
as witnessed in movies and in real life.
I am reminded of a witticism that circulates
in stock market literature that goes something like "when even the shoe polisher starts talking about the stock market then it is time to pull out
your stocks" [it was actually uttered by some guy of
the stature of JP Morgan just before the 30s crash].

I think the same applies here.
Now to convey one's scholarship you have to start
talking in good Tamil!
I mean it seriously. I feel that the mark of
scholarship is to be able to speak fluently in a language in an elegant fashion. period.
And also ultimately to *act* as guardians of one's
heritage.
This is the same as saying that play by the rule.
Uneducated people nowadays cannot speak good Tamil or good English either. Even the otherwise
educated people have started looking like this.
Also being educated simply does not end with
getting a degree in engineering, science or some
such area. It is just vocational training.
This corresponds to the craftsmenship of the days of yore: we had sculptors, medicine men, goldsmiths, woodworkers etc. But the real educated people were those that knew the strategic aspects of heritage and acted as guardians of it: the poets and other intellectuals recognized by Kings and fellow intellectuals.
As I said before, they not only knew what heritage meant and what it takes to protect it but they had
the ultimate test of scholarship: to be able to *act* concretely in order to protect the heritage.
I recommend watching the movie starring Charlton Heston titled "A Man for All Seasons". It is to do
with hiw Sir Thomas Moore stood up to King Henry VIII in the dispute over the latter's manipulations to break off from the Pope in order to divorce his current wife to marry another.
Sir Thomas Moore was a top scholar and was
holding Chancellorship at that time.
We have to do decide what we want to be.
People have to make a start somewhere, in practice.

chandra

[Oldposts]

chandra, well said!! i think the reason is simpler than this. we just haven't given ourselves enough education to think in thamizh, to paraphrase certain things in thamizh, and to communicate effectively in thamizh. this basic education is what is lacking in us(ungaLaich chollalai!) that prevents us from using thamizh in communication. we are better off paraphrasing in english and adding paNNi to it to make it a thamizh sentence. i for one suffered quite a bit due to this factor. as i had mentioned to u in a mail, my formal education in thamizh was quite poor and my vocabulary was worse.
the bane is due to a whole generation coming up without knowing good thamizh words, without making effective usage of them, and lacking an impulse(or an inertia) to preserve thamizh. in fact, it is a sad situation that we need to talk about preserving a language, rather than talking about making it flourish even further. the end result is a lack of difference between colloquial usage and literary usage, deterioration of the usage of good thamizh words, idioms and phrases, failure to grasp the inner shades and meanings of thamizh words(and their profundity) and finally a stripped off language which is going to be passed over to the next generation...

[Oldposts]

chandra: ennOda kELvi vEra.. onnu rendu moonu pOnRa thamizh vaarthaigaL paravala ubayOgapaduththum pOthu, En suzhi-ngratha ubayOgippathillai?

[Oldposts]

Ravi...
The answer that I gave was intended to answer precisely your question. I think you thought I was answering a different question because you think there are technical reasons why suzhi is not being in as wide a usage as are other names for thr rest of the numerals. But there are no *technical* reasons why it has happended. It was and is all social.
That was why I cited paNNith thamizh. What would your answer be if someone why is that you Tamil guys cannot say "thhingkal kizhamai paarkkalaama?" instead of "monday meet paNNalaama?".

Hope I have clarified my point.

chandra

[Oldposts]

We often wonder what the Tamil equivalen might be
for the English phrase "touch wood" to express
one's wish to ward off "evil eye".

I am proposing the following:
"pallaaNtu pallaaNtu".

What is the basis?

Rememebr the follwing poem:
"
pallaaNtu pallaaNtu pallaayi raththaaNtu palakOti n-URaayiram
mallaaNta thiNtOL maNivaNNaavun chEvati chevvith thirukkaappu."

This (as the kaappu of a decade or pathikam or 10-piece composition) was sung by Periyaazvaar (father of ANtaaL)
when he wished to ward off evil eye on Thirumaal
himself!

I feel that this would be suitable as it exactly captures the sentiments in question in fashion highly traceable to antiquity (about 600+ AD.)

chandra
Atlanta,GA
periannan.chandrasekaran@delta-air.com

[Oldposts]

"OnLine Tamil Lexicon"
----------------------
I came across the following when searching the
On-Line Tamil Lexicon:

------------
vEy

1. bamboo; 2. bamboo rod; 3. tube, anything hollow; 4. the seventh naks2atra ; 5. covering, roofing; 6. mansion; 7.
karma; 8. yal ; 9. composition, as of a song

1. report, as of a spy; 2. spy; 3. theme describing the choice of spies
--------

It is intriguing to see the second sense that covers report and spy. Of course we are reminded of the word "vEvu" for spying.
Even in the first sense, "anything hollow" is an epiphany in the sense that this in isolation provides a short and cute term for hollow things
and in general a scheme or basis for a policy for arriving at short and logical terms for technical and non-technical concepts.

Please visit the OTL at
http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/otl_search.html.

The search menu always provides searching for the meaning of a Tamil word or looking for entries of Tamil words containing the english word in its description.

Also some important aspects of the transliteration scheme used by the OTL is not what we normally use but it is an academically used standard.
Remember to encode the written form not the spoken
form to understand the scheme.
e.g.:
tamiz (the language)
tamiznATu (the tamil country)
tagkam (gold)--->"g" always stands for the "ng" sound.
tAkam (thirst) --->do not try to use g here!
pajncu (cotton) -->do not try "panchu" or "panjchu"
pacu (cow) -->do not try "pasu"
pan2Ri (pig) ----->remember to put teh "2"



Please read for the txln scheme, the page:
http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/otl.html.
You can get to that page by clicking on the link that labeled "here" that appears on the search menu, below the statement that says:
"For Information on the OTL click."
Remember that the search is not case sensitive.
The results however are presented with the correct case for the phonetics; so you will know to reject entries which you did not intend: e.g.
if you looked for "nAtu" the results will produce
entries for "nATu" and "naTu" etc.
Verb forms are presented with the suffixes
"tal" (intransitive) and/or "ttal" (transitive);
e.g. the search for "nATu" produces:
1: naTu
2: nATu
3: naTu-tal
4: natu-ttal
5: nATu-tal
6: naTu-ttal

search results also use roman numerals such as 1&2
to indicate nedils for vowels which seems to be
unnecessary since they are able to present words
with upper case( i do not why...)
that is, a1 for "A", s2 for "S" (that is the grantha letter as in viSNu). Be prepared for this!.


It is usually slow to connect to and searches take
5-10 secs.


Have fun acquiring more Tamil knowledge...

chandra

[Oldposts]

Does anyone know the english equivalent of the word "vaseegara" ? If you do, please let me know.
An email would be helpful.

Thanks in advance,
Vishnu

[Oldposts]

A repeat posting following the last one, I forgot to post my e-mail....
My e-mail is vdev75@yahoo.com

Thanks
Vishnu