Ever since Junior started learning tamil in school, it has been a tough time and home. While consciously or otherwise, we are particular in knowing the right spelling and at times even the pronunciation of the English language, tamil being the mother tongue is taken for granted. And worse of the list being, the way it is being taught in school. During his first standard, his tamil teacher did her absolute best in ensuring the essence of the language was destroyed in its bud and the language was introduced more as a fractal symbol and shape rather than actual alphabets. The immediate challenge for us at that time was to unlearn the way in which we were writing the Uyir and Mei ezhuthukkal and adapt to how it was being taught, which was actually the correct way of writing those alphabets. When they moved on to words the challenge became multifold with pronunciations coming into the picture. Tamil, a language that is so close to my heart that it pains to type this sentence, for want of better word, has a limited set of characters. It probably was the front runner in using multi tasking and multi threading as a concept, where in same letter will have different sound basis the context and word formation in play. The letter “Ta” is a classic example where it is used to represent not just the “Ta” sound but also the “Da” sound. It may be a tad too early but at a formative stage, we are very particular in junior understanding the difference in pronouncing “la” and “La”. Even though there are script wise representation for certain letters like “ha”, “sa” as those that are borrowed from Sanskrit and other languages, they are never really taught in schools as such, till at least couple of years into the language. When in Bangalore, I used to tease fellow Andhra and Kannadiga folks that their scripts resemble jaangiri or jelabi. They used to give it back saying tamil letters resemble noodles on chopsticks. I actually verified this and found it to be reasonably correct. One guy even used to tease us saying we will never be able to laugh in tamil for the word “ha” is not there in the script itself!!! At best we can only laugh “ga ga ga” and never “ha ha ha” without using the borrowed letters!! Again, I did try to recollect from whatever little tamil books that I’ve read as to how they’ve represented laughter. The closest I can remember being “gala gala vena sirithaal” or “goll endru sirithal” or “idi yena sirithaan”. Never in any other way that I could recollect. Possibly those authors having been handicapped by this and not wanting to “pollute” their writing by using other scripts, might’ve represented the laughter in this manner? Coming back to Junior and his tamil, at present he speaks tamil in mazhalai and even for some regular words he mixes them up which sound cute. After a point of time, considering him, he may start questioning on these lines and hopefully his tamil teacher then should’ve some acceptable answer!!
What makes a drama series tick, in OTT, that too in Tamil? The question should've been pretty straight forward and not as difficult as it is for making a successful movie, for drama series are dime a dozen across scores of TV channels and none of them are found wanting for audience. The more the cry the merrier the TRP. In that context, the only challenge that OTT platforms might've had while streaming tamil series must've been to choose the path - either the well trodden and worn out cryathons aligning with Satellite channels or try for something genre specific like how they do across English and other foreign languages. This is where Heartbeat series in Hotstar finds the fine balance between being a soap oppaari (no pun intended) in tv and carving a niche OTT audience. While the setup might've been familiar one for Hindi audience with so many series happening on hospital based storyline, i guess this is a first for tamil. The first season was more on establishing the...
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I thought you will also agonise over Tamil as it is spoken and as it is written. Its almost an impossible language to learn for somebody coming to it completely new. Just see how we butcher most words when we speak it - how on earth will a beginner ever learn it ? Junior is going to insist that you speak the landuage as it is written; that's a juicy post to look forward to in the future.
By the way, I can see that IT has permeated your blood too. This post is littered with fractals, multi threading ....
I learnt that there is an art to teaching Tamil. Tamil is one of the national languages here, and so kids can choose Tamil as a second language. They start with the easy 'ta', then 'pa', then 'ma', then 'ya', then 'va', followed by 'la' etc... Basically, start slow and build on what you know approach.
Sari, who said we only laugh 'ha ha ha'? I think the usage of ha ha ha for laughter is a social conditioning to laugh in a low tone. Don't we have different shades of laughter? Isn't each laughter different? For eg., When we actually burst into laughter, we don't use ha ha ha. Try it. Doesn't this social conditioning introduce a lot of biases and prejudices :-P
Each language/individual is beautiful in its/their own way - doesn't have to always conform. :-)