Learning tamil

[Plus]

So its not a kind of pasta?

  no. penkutty means little girl or baby girl, penn means girl. Penn is also used in Tamil.

Thank you, everybody who responded to my question. I was telling a friend about the song "Penne En Penne" and we were wondering what "Penne En Penne" meant. Thanks!

Penn is girl. Penne means oh girl! like you're calling her. so penne en penne means oh girl, my girl. Not oh pasta, my pasta. 

Thank you! I had figured it wasn't a type of pasta ;-)

But Daniel hadn't.

Now that we've established that penn means girl…  what's the word for boy?

[Daniel]

Perhaps its fettuccine?


And here's to taking a joke too far

[Ishiqa]

So its not a kind of pasta?

  no. penkutty means little girl or baby girl, penn means girl. Penn is also used in Tamil.

Thank you, everybody who responded to my question. I was telling a friend about the song "Penne En Penne" and we were wondering what "Penne En Penne" meant. Thanks!

Penn is girl. Penne means oh girl! like you're calling her. so penne en penne means oh girl, my girl. Not oh pasta, my pasta. 

Thank you! I had figured it wasn't a type of pasta ;-)

But Daniel hadn't.

Now that we've established that penn means girl…  what's the word for boy?

Boy - Aan

Actually, penn means woman. Girl, which is for little girl, is Sirumi.

[Prem Rogue]

Girl is "penn" or "ponnu," while "penne" is a more poetic form of the word.  In conversational speech "ponnu" is used most commonly.  "Sirumi" is new to me.

"Payyan" is another word for boy, which is what I've heard used more often than "aan."  "Aambalai" and "pombalai" are commonly used for man and woman, respectively.

[srkitalianfan]

As I have problems finding a good course in Tamil and no classes where I live, could somebody help me with a few words?

Days of the week
Colors
Numbers 1 to 10

thanks in advance

[Ishiqa]

As I have problems finding a good course in Tamil and no classes where I live, could somebody help me with a few words?

Days of the week
Colors
Numbers 1 to 10

thanks in advance

Days of the week:
Monday - Thingazh
Tuesday - Sevvai
Wednesday - Buthan
Thursday - Viyaazhan
Friday - Velli

Colours:
White: Vellai
Green: Pachai
Yellow: Manjal
Red: Sivappu
Blue: Neelam
Black: Karuppu
Purple: Ootha
Pink: Ilanjchivappu
Orage: Aaranch

Numbers:
1 - Ondru
2 - Irandu
3 - Moondru
4 - Naangu
5 - Iynthu
6 - Aaru
7 - Yezhu
8 - Yettu
9 - Onbathu
10 - Pathu

[meenkaran]

The Pachai Nirame song from Alaipayuthe is a good excercise in learning the colors.

[srkitalianfan]

Oh, yes songs...why I did not think of them 
Meenkaran thanks for the tip, also it will be a very nice excuse to rewatch
Alaipayuthe 
thanks guys 

[stimpy]

Not that easy to find anything in the learn yourself some Tamil department, so I bought the only thing I could find > Colloquial Tamil, complete (weell ) course for beginners by Routledge. And because the glossary didn't look particularly extensive I also got 'Tamil Dictionary and phrasebook by Clement J. Victor'. It's a slim romanized tamil-english/english-tamil dictionary, but then the colloquial doesn't really concentrate on written Tamil, so it doesn't really matter and will do for starters.

[srkitalianfan]

I bought the same book from Routledge and was a bit disappointed.
 
Not all that is in the book is recorded on CD
Exercises with phonetics aren't enough to let a beginner practice with new sounds
Even  first dialog on lesson 1 is a bit too fast
It may be just a personal problem but I had so many difficulties following both the dialog and the romanize transliteration... which is btw a hard task as so many sounds in Tamil don't exist in many european languages

I hope that maybe somebody would revise the quality of this book or (dream on girl  ) adding this language in the Teach Yourself series

[stimpy]

I wasn't expecting much anyway, but it falls short by a mile. There's also a pretty terrible 'Learn Tamil' CD-ROM in the Talk Now! series I spotted in the library. They have quite a few languages in the series and they all follow the same pretty boring format and they use exactly the same words too some fairly useless as well like; sox, say in tamil > sox, tie, say in tamil > tie don't buy it unless you find it really really cheap or better yet try and find it in your library and have a laugh. Then again sometimes something very basic might not be that bad. I haven't really had time to check the links Pyaara posted earlier, I think they will prove much more useful:

 The University of Pennslavania has a fairly good introduction to Tamil website.  The home page is here:

 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/

 ...and there are preliminary lessons including sample sounds here:

 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/lessons/lessons.html

And then listening to BBC World service in Tamil, I have it on in the background quite often      http://www.bbc.co.uk/tamil/
And loads of music and films ofcourse 

[Fantam]

Girl is "penn" or "ponnu," while "penne" is a more poetic form of the word.  In conversational speech "ponnu" is used most commonly.  "Sirumi" is new to me.

"Payyan" is another word for boy, which is what I've heard used more often than "aan."  "Aambalai" and "pombalai" are commonly used for man and woman, respectively.

'Aambalai' is colloquial for aan-pillai and 'pombalai' is colloquial for penn-pillai or ponn-pillai.

'Penne' is the form of addressing a 'Penn',  akin to saying 'hey woman'.

[tabula rasa]

Girl is "penn" or "ponnu," while "penne" is a more poetic form of the word.  In conversational speech "ponnu" is used most commonly.  "Sirumi" is new to me.

"Payyan" is another word for boy, which is what I've heard used more often than "aan."  "Aambalai" and "pombalai" are commonly used for man and woman, respectively.

'Sirumi' is a very formal word for little girl - you mostly write it, and it's only heard in formal speech, not everyday conversations.

And 'aambalai' and 'pombalai' are indeed very very colloquial, and in some contexts almost derogatory.

[piyaara]

 Some of you may be interested in this website:

http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/tamilonline/

 Within the site are small streaming video clips that illustrate basic language points.  Script is in Tamil, rather than transliterated Roman script, but if like me, you only hope to pick up the odd phrase that is heard repeatedly in films then this will probably be a minor point.  If you have some knowledge of Tamil script then this will be of help too.

 The site is related to the University of Pennslavania's Tamil website:  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/ mentioned by srkitalianfan in her original post.

[hgquinn]

I wasn't expecting much anyway, but it falls short by a mile. There's also a pretty terrible 'Learn Tamil' CD-ROM in the Talk Now! series I spotted in the library. They have quite a few languages in the series and they all follow the same pretty boring format and they use exactly the same words too some fairly useless as well like; sox, say in tamil > sox, tie, say in tamil > tie don't buy it unless you find it really really cheap or better yet try and find it in your library and have a laugh. Then again sometimes something very basic might not be that bad. I haven't really had time to check the links Pyaara posted earlier, I think they will prove much more useful:

 The University of Pennslavania has a fairly good introduction to Tamil website.  The home page is here:

 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/

 ...and there are preliminary lessons including sample sounds here:

 http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/lessons/lessons.html

And then listening to BBC World service in Tamil, I have it on in the background quite often       http://www.bbc.co.uk/tamil/
And loads of music and films ofcourse 

--  too bad I didn't find this thread last week -- I bought that Talk Now CD over the weekend!  Laughing at myself, but so-o-o-o glad to have found you all at BollyWhat!

Cheers,  Heather

[stimpy]

 Some of you may be interested in this website:

http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/tamilonline/

 Within the site are small streaming video clips that illustrate basic language points.  Script is in Tamil, rather than transliterated Roman script, but if like me, you only hope to pick up the odd phrase that is heard repeatedly in films then this will probably be a minor point.  If you have some knowledge of Tamil script then this will be of help too.

 The site is related to the University of Pennslavania's Tamil website:  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/ mentioned by srkitalianfan in her original post.

I only noticed this now, thanks piyaara    It'll take some tickling though, I can't get the videos to work

--  too bad I didn't find this thread last week -- I bought that Talk Now CD over the weekend!  Laughing at myself, but so-o-o-o glad to have found you all at BollyWhat!

Cheers,  Heather

Yay, more Tamil learners. Have you been checking out the CD? Or did you return it? Don't feel too bad, I got the Malayalam version and that was AFTER I knew how silly it was 
It's unfortunate that there is so little teach your self material out there.

[piyaara]

I only noticed this now, thanks piyaara    It'll take some tickling though, I can't get the videos to work

 I think they take a while to load up( there's a green line that runs along the play bar). Maybe that's the problem?

 Incidently, I forgot to mention that there is an English translation available instead of the Tamil script if you left-click on the 'translation' buttion.  This appears in the same area as the transcipt. 

[tamil_queen]

lol....omg.....im tamil, n im not so gud with the language either....onli now that im watchin more tamil films..im gettin used to the language..lol...im always askin my mom n dad for meanings of certain words n they get irritated. I have that tine lifco dictionary, english-tamil..lol..
Penne is poetic...like ur calling the girl....it means girl..but then..wenever u hear it in songs..its like..."oh maidan"..or sumtin like that....ponnu is the regular use for girl...pombalai to i guess...penn and penne is usualy used in poems or songs....
same with Aan..... aambalai, payyan r common...hehe...if u guys need translating i can help....but then...im also learnin too..lol..

[~*anjali*~]

yayy tamil speakers here! lol i know  tamil too!

btw u might see some words like 'Thingazh' with a Z in them...the 'z' is pronoucned the same as the letter 'l'..so it wud be pronounced 'thingal'
same with the word 'mozhi' that's pronounced 'molhi' i dunno whyy they put the Z in, it's very confusing!!

[bitterlemons]

Anjali,

actually the "zh" in tamil words is not pronounced  the same way as the retroflex "l" - the zh sounds more like the letter r, spoken with an American accent. (kind of like retroflex r) - there was a thread about this earlier.

ETA: this thread talks about how to pronounce the zh sound:
http://bollywhat.com/forum/index.php?topic=10532.50

Actually even the word Tamil should be rightly written Tamizh, but many people do pronounce words that should be pronounced with the "zh" sound with the retroflex l sound instead.

Regards,

Bitterlemons

[tabula rasa]

you got in there ahead of me, bitterlemons. I was gonna say the same thing myself.

So far only stuart has been really serious in trying to master that retroflex approzimant - too bad he isn't around anymore

[SiSi]

In my unending search for a good course of Tamil, finally it looks I've found one, also self study type, that is the best around among those I've checked.

Best as in: it has every lesson recorded on cd and the speed of dialogues is just right for a beginner.

It has a good introduction to the script and it has exercises for practicing it.
It has enough naterial for not falling in the category of a traveller's guide.
It has 100 lessons with the first 50 with translitteration of dialogues and from lesson 51 onward it has only the tamil script but till then one has plenty of time to learn tamil script.

Only thing, the book is in French from the Assimil series "Le Tamoul sans peine"
...now do I look as a seller

[stimpy]

Oh great, now I'll have to learn French aswell  Maybe just a little bit steep at 65 slotties for a non-French speaker like moi self,  but if I get desperate I might consider it.  http://www.amazon.fr/Tamoul-peine-langue-parl%E9e-coffret/dp/B000095XH2

[veracious]

Okay, so just to confirm this.. Wikipedia is right in saying that Tamil zh is like the r in "red" (pronounced in a very American manner)?

Is it exactly like that, or is it just *almost* like that?

Suddenly this zh business does not seem so tricky after all.

[Specsy]

Okay, so just to confirm this.. Wikipedia is right in saying that Tamil zh is like the r in "red" (pronounced in a very American manner)?

Is it exactly like that, or is it just *almost* like that?

Suddenly this zh business does not seem so tricky after all.

In my understanding, it's exactly the same. Your tongue just sits in your mouth and the tip doesn't touch anything. It's not tricky at all, in my opinion using a "z" to represent that sound is completely random. And like stated above, it's the last letter in the word "Tamil" so if you wanna pronounce it correctly, say it like "tamir".