Keeping Tamil
🎯 Build the habit, and meet the literature that makes it worth it.
🗣️ Say these out loud
- இது தமிழ்ல எப்படி சொல்றது? — idhu Tamil-la eppadi solradhu? 🔊 i-DHU ta-MIZH-la EP-pa-dee SOL-ra-dhu How do you say this in Tamil? Point and ask.
- மெதுவா சொல்லுங்க — medhuvaa sollunga 🔊 me-dhu-VAA SOL-loong-ka Please say it slowly. With the polite -ங்க.
- பயிற்சி — payirchi 🔊 pa-YIR-chee practice
- முயற்சி திருவினையாக்கும் 🔊 mu-YAR-chi thi-ru-vi-nai-YAAK-kum Effort turns into fortune. Thirukkural, couplet 616. Written about two thousand years ago and quoted in Tamil Nadu every day since.
- கற்றது கைமண் அளவு, கல்லாதது உலகளவு 🔊 KAT-ra-dhu kai-MAN a-la-vu, kal-LAA-dha-dhu u-la-ga-la-vu What I have learnt is a handful of earth; what I have not is the size of the world. Avvaiyar, the poet-grandmother of Tamil. The truest sentence in this entire course.
- வாழ்த்துக்கள் — vaazhthukkal 🔊 VAAZH-thuk-kal Congratulations / best wishes! Another ழ் to practise.
Read every line aloud twice before moving on. The mouth learns a language, not the eye.
🔍 The Thirukkural, and why it is the place to start
The Thirukkural is 1,330 couplets of seven words each, written by Thiruvalluvar around two thousand years ago on how to live. Each couplet is short enough to memorise in a minute, and the whole work is free of religion, so it belongs to everybody.
- Learn one kural a week. In a year you will have fifty-two and a large vocabulary.
- Then Sangam poetry — the oldest, and startlingly modern in feeling.
- Then Bharathiyar, the poet of the freedom movement, whose Tamil is closest to today's speech.
- Watch Tamil films with Tamil subtitles, never English ones.
🌍 Among the people
Tamil was declared a classical language of India in 2004, the first to be so recognised. Tamil examinations run through the Tamil Nadu board, and the International Institute of Tamil Studies in Chennai runs courses for non-native learners.
🔁 Practise today
- Learn kural 616 by heart, with its meaning.
- Practise ழ் every day — it is the last sound to come and the most satisfying.
- Read Lesson 1 aloud in the Tamil script.
