I share with him the belief that we are held back not just by the way in which we learn languages, but by the way we think about learning languages. Briefly, Anki lets you download or create your own decks of flash cards. The new vowel + consonant combination is a syllable rather than a letter, and in Tamil is called a ‘life-body letter’ (uyirmeyyeLuttu, உயிர்மெய்யெழுத்து). For example, I am aware that some Tamil speakers don’t use retroflex consonants, so ழ், ள் and ல் are pronounced identically. However, it clearly assumes that its Tamil readers will use written Tamil when talking about food or marriages! However, in my experience Sinhala speakers tend to emphasise that Sinhala is an easy language to learn, an idea shared by many Tamils too! Schiffman writes: ‘As one foreigner who has spent some 30 years trying to master the language, I would say the main barriers to learning Tamil are sociolinguistic, not structural (i.e. The differences between spoken and written Tamil are expressed in grammar, vocabulary and even pronunciation. I have discovered that compliments about my ‘pure Tamil’ (sutta Tamil, சுத்த தமிழ்) are often a sign that I have been using formal, literary words or phrases. I have often heard that the script is one of the hardest things about Tamil, particularly because it has 240-odd letters compared to the Roman alphabet’s 26. I want to debunk the argument that Tamil has over two hundred more letters than the Roman alphabet. I hope to discuss this at greater depth in future posts, but for now I want to look specifically at dictionaries. The problem is that Tamils experience the situation very differently to learners coming in from the outside. Despite this, I think that the Tamil script is much more straightforward and logical than English. When I was about to begin learning Tamil I was fortunate enough to read an enlightening chapter in a book called Linguistic Culture and Language Policy, by Harold Schiffman, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of South Asian Studies. The Tamil script can be learnt by absolutely anyone, not just by fantastical beings blessed with superhuman intellect or an imaginary ‘natural talent for languages’. The L-variety is ignored, disparaged or considered not to be ‘proper’ or ‘real’ Tamil. 5. Below is an example of how the diacritics are applied to the consonant k: க்           க           கா           கி           கீ          கு           கூ                                                                       k           ka          kaa         ki           kii         ku         kuu, கெ        கே         கை         கொ       கோ      கௌ                                                                                  ke         kee        kai          ko         koo       kau. It’s worth noting that if Tamil has 247 letters by this method of counting, Sinhala – which is also an alphasyllabary and works in exactly the same way as Tamil – has at least a hundred more. From this point onwards I’ll refer to the two varieties of Tamil as ‘spoken Tamil’ (peeccu tamiL, பேச்சு தமிழ்) and ‘written Tamil’ (eLuttu tamiL, எழுத்து தமிழ்). Foregoing physical flash cards, you could use Anki, a free flash card programme I plan to discuss in greater depth in the future. If you count all of the vowels and consonants listed above, as well as all of the syllables formed with diacritics, you will be left with 246. The best way to do this is with Anjal, a programme for Windows and Mac OS which lets you to type in Tamil using a QWERTY keyboard and a simple phonetic system. Uraiyaadal – உரையாடல் –  is a Tamil word meaning conversation. What do you think? This feels very counterintuitive for someone coming from a writing system which runs in a more linear fashion. Rather than being an insurmountable challenge, the script will actually be one of the easiest tasks you’ll face when learning Tamil. But the question of whether English and Tamil are different in kind or degree doesn’t change the main point, which is that Tamil diglossia has a huge impact on foreign learners. First, over the last few decades there have been some small changes in the Tamil script. I don’t think I have ever heard anyone saying that ‘the Sinhala script is harder than English because it has 350-plus letters’. Of course, it could be argued that English is similarly composed of different varieties or registers. 2. This is a regular problem, and it’s compounded by the fact that English-Tamil dictionaries can be unhelpful for spoken Tamil vocabulary (see below), which means I have relied almost entirely on other people for translations. If you have any thoughts about this, please share them below, and we can also discuss it at greater depth in future posts dedicated to pronunciation. Otherwise you can buy it from Murasu Anjal. This is because these diacritics take more than one form and occasionally change the body of the consonant itself: து (tu) ரு (ru) பு (pu). To demonstrate what I mean I have split a few words into their constituent parts: சாப்பாடு (food) = சா (saa) ப் (p) பா (paa) டு (Du). Second, although the Tamil script is not entirely phonetic, it is much more so than the Roman alphabet as used in English. I’m a student from the UK and have been learning Tamil for just over a year, first in London and now in Sri Lanka. Below I give another reason for why this is so. And isn’t that the reason why we’re learning Tamil? I had the opportunity to do this in London, and it turned out to be extremely useful in the long run (not least for explaining how to spell my own name). I want to get things started by looking at the relationship between spoken and written forms of Tamil, which I think is the most important thing for learners to bear in mind even before they begin their studies.

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