Learning Tamil the unconventional way

Learning Tamil the unconventional way

Twenty years back when I landed at Bangalore on posting, I did not know 'T' of Tamil. About a year later there, one of my patients, a Kannada-speaking Sanskrit scholar, presented to me a copy of Rajaji's English translation of Kural, and a copy of the learn-it-yourself English-Tamil teacher. That was in 2000. Twelve years later when I took up a job in Pondicherry, I hadn't progressed beyond Tamil alphabets. Now I can manage conversation, reading and writing in Tamil. Some consider it amazing. Learning Tamil without a teacher? They consider it unbelievable.

It hasn't been an easy journey.  If truth be told, my love for Tamil has been my sole motivation. This piece is all about my journey with Tamil. 

Learning alphabets is elementary to reading, it isn't necessary for learning conversation. Children and adults speak languages without learning alphabets. For me learning conversation was my immediate need for clinical practice in Pondicherry. Passion of learning Tamil in its totality followed. Therefore, in the beginning I carried a small notebook in my pocket. I used to note down individual Tamil expressions in Devanagari/ Roman script wherever I went. Yet, this served a very limited purpose; with memorized sentences I could make a request or ask a question but I couldn't understand responses. Yet, sometimes common sense, other times a little help from bilingual colleagues worked. Nonetheless, passive learning even with limited efforts continued improving my vocabulary. But, forming intelligible sentences during conversation remained a problem. Reading Tamil lessons without help from others required sustained and unconventional effort. Yet my strong urge to speak colloquial Tamil proved ultimate stimulus and I was ready to go ahead solo!

Rudimentary Tamil etymology learnt years ago had acquainted me with the peculiarities of Tamil language, like कमला and गमला (a flower pot) has similar alphabets, although the latter isn't a Tamil word. Hotel can be written in Tamil as 'hottal' or 'ottal', 'high' is 'aye', etc. 'गज' is written as 'गेज/ केज' and so on. Yet, numerous self-help resources on the internet came handy. Hours of browsing the net, through hundreds of web pages proved a revelation; Tamil, Sanskrit, and books of innumerable other languages unavailable  even in well-stocked libraries were available free for reading and download from Archive.org and Project Gutenberg, etc. I made liberal use of these. G U Pope's Tamil Handbook published in 1856 proved a goldmine. The Tamil Grammar by John Lazarus also helped. It hardly needs mention that G U Pope, a Christian missionary, a school master, and later a professor at the University of Oxford spent nearly seventy years working on Tamil language. His Tamil Handbook, Tamil Grammar, Tamil- English and English-Tamil dictionaries, Catechisms, Tamil Prose-reading books are the most useful resources for anyone attempting Tamil through English. I am convinced, in learning Tamil through English there is no better book than G U Pope's Tamil Handbook. Tamil Handbook’s numerous editions replete with cross references also provides exercises with key. I do not know of any contemporary Indian scholar who worked so diligently even on any Indian language other than his mother tongue. European colonists  were very different in this sense although for entirely different reasons.

It took me a couple of years to complete a couple of revisions of G U Pope's voluminous Tamil Handbook. With every revision my Tamil improved. Having completed 'The Handbook' I set upon Tamil Prose-reading book by the same author- G U Pope. Initial difficulty resulted in a short-lived inertia. They say in Tamil:

'கற்கக் கற்கக் கசடறும்

Difficulties will vanish as you learn on.'

And it did.

The Prose-reading Book has 3 sections. The first book has short passages. I completed it with the help of Tamil-English dictionary. Book II deals with the Hitopadesh, a well-known Sanskrit classic I had read during my high school days. Whereas I was familiar with the stories from Mitralabha section of Hitopadesh, at many places I could not pick up the Tamil words and the long-forgotten context. To get around the problem, I downloaded the Sanskrit-Hindi version of Hitopadesh.  Hindi Hitopadesh was immensely useful wirh the unfamiliar Tamil words. Having completed the two parts I set upon reading the Book III. The Book III describes the story from the Mahabharata, the story of Chakraborty Raja Nal and his wife Damayanti. This hundred-and-fifty pages of story in sanskritised Tamil proved a little different experience. However, with repeated readings I could accurately guess the Tamil tadbhav of original Sanskrit words that appear aplenty in the Tamil written over a hundred and sixty-five years ago. Linguists believe, use of Sanskrit words in Tamil is a phenomenon noticed after scholars of Northern descent started writing in Tamil, particular during bhakti movement. Nevertheless, my knowledge of high-school-level Sanskrit learnt long back gave me enough clue to a plethora of Tamil words derived from Sanskrit. As such words derived from Sanskrit do appear in Tamil literature with varying frequency. Whereas ancient classics like Kural has few words derived from Sanskrit, later works have more of them. It is common knowledge, Sanskrit words appear even in sangham literature. Some say, every eight words in the Tamil classic Silapathikaram has its origin in Sanskrit.

Encouraged with my progress, and some help from Google Translate, lately I have been reading headlines in The Hindu Tamil edition. For acquiring new Tamil words with the help of familiar stories I have downloaded Tamil translation of a collection of short stories by Premchand. And my unconventional journey with Tamil continues without the help of a native ‘munshi ' that Rev. G U Pope considered 'necessary for the European students of Tamil language.' For I'm a native, no European!

For the record now I am done with reading the first volume of Shivkamiyin Sapadam (சிவகாமியின் சபதம்) in original Tamil!