Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:33:58 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Marc Ramirez <mrami@mrami.homeunix.org>, Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Aryan and Dravidian (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c)) Message-ID: <20020525093358.GA2031@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <20020525150643.E84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20020525045236.GA1722@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525052539.GA1871@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525150643.E84264@wantadilla.lemis.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 25, 2002 at 15:06:43:
>
> > And while we're on that subject :) the "l" in "Tamil" is not an "l",
> > but a sound which doesn't have an exact equivalent in other
> > languages (except Malayalam). It's something between an "l", an
> > unrolled "r" and a "y" -- perhaps something like the Japanese "l/r"
> > sound. It's sometimes transliterated "zh" in English but that's
> > even more unlike the true sound than "l".
>
> But I didn't know that. Considering the amount of contact I've had
> with Tamil people (I used to speak English with a Tamil accent), that
> surprises me. I wonder if that's one of the differences between India
> and Malaysia.
Interesting. It is a very common letter in Tamil, looks something
like this:
_
| / \
| | |
L__|_/
__/
different from the "l" letter (actually, the two "l" letters, one "l"
as in "tall" with the tongue nearer the teeth, and one "l" as in
"gold" with the tongue deeper inside the mouth).
Lots of words use it, eg fruit (palam/pazham), way (vazhi), etc.
However, people from Karnataka (local language Kannada), when speaking
Tamil, often substitute "l" for this sound. Perhaps that's what
happened in Malaysia.
- Rahul
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020525093358.GA2031>