User:Vadakkan/Karpalakai/Transliteration
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Transcription and transliteration are two very different things. Transliteration aims to accurately represent in the Latin script the way the word is written in a foreign script. Transcription aims to accurately represent in the Latin script the pronunciation of a foreign word.
- The system for transliterating Brahmic scripts currently in use on wikipedia (ISO 15919) is adequate for transliterating Tamil.
- However, the system of transcription for Indic scripts - which is essentially a simplified form of the ISO 15919 system - does not work at all for Tamil consonants (it's fine for vowels), because Tamil's phonology is so different. This is most obvious in the relationship between voiced and unvoiced stops, which the system just ignores: it recommends that stops are always transcribed as if they were unvoiced, which is fine for transliteration but not for transcription.
- Transcription should aim at reproducing what an educated speaker would regard as the "correct" pronunciation of centamil, thus excluding common mistakes (such as the poor "ழ்" which almost nobody gets right). This is usually easy, but there are a few differences between TN and Jaffna Tamil which need to be dealt with. These can be dealt with by taking the Tolkappiyam as the starting point.
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[edit] க்
- at the start of a word, as k
- when doubled க்க , as kk
In the combinations ட்க் and றக், as tk and rk.
- elsewhere, as g
In some TN dialects and nearly all Jaffna dialects, க in the middle of a word is pronounced as h (mahan), unless it follows ங். This, however, is a dialectual change which occured in mediaeval Tamil. It's not used in TN centamil, and the Tolkappiyam itself only distinguishes between the voiced and unvoiced variants of க.
[edit] ங்
- always as n.
With the exception of one word, ங் is always followed by க. The nasal in the combination ng in English is pretty close to the sound of the Tamil ங்.
[edit] ச்
- At the start of a word, as ch
- When doubled ச்ச, as cch
- In the combinations ட்ச் and ற்ச், as tch and rch.
- In the combination ஞ்ச், as ñj
- elsewhere, as s
The initial ச் tends to become s in many contexts in spoken Tamil, but this differs widely from speaker to speaker, and ch is the historically correct pronunciation.
[edit] ஞ்
- Ideally, this should be ñ. This letter is familiar to most English speakers because of its frequent use in Spanish loanwords.
- If people don't like this, then:
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- In the combination ஞ்ச். as nj
- When occuring alone, as ñ
[edit] ட்
- When doubled as ட்ட, the sound is properly pronounced as an unvoiced cerebral "t", and should be transcribed tt
- Elsewhere, as d.
In Jaffna Tamil, the letter ட் is voiced even in the combination ட்ட ("poiddu varen"). Although many Jaffna Tamils think this is the correct pronunciation, the Tolkappiyam indicates that the doubled letter should not be voiced, so the pronunciation in TN Tamil is actually the correct one. This also fits with the fact that proto-Dravidian had three t sounds - dental, cerebral and palatal.
[edit] ண்
- Always as n
It's simply not possible to represent a lingual n in the Latin script.
[edit] த்
- at the start of a word, as th
- when doubled த்த, as tth
- elsewhere, as dh
Wikipedia:Indic transliteration scheme reserves "th" and "dh" for aspirated consonants, but since we don't have aspirates in Tamil we ought to use them to distinguish the dental த் from the cerebral ட்.
[edit] ந்
- As n.
This is properly a dental "n", which is close enough to the English "n".
[edit] ப்
- at the start of a word, as p
- when doubled ப்ப, as pp
- elsewhere, as b
[edit] ம்
- As m
[edit] ய்
- As y
[edit] ர்
- As r
In some Jaffna dialects, ர, ரா, etc. are pronounced as "ta", "taa" and so on ("Yalppanam ninaithal then suvai utum" rather than "urum"). Historically, though, ர is actually a dental "r", as is clear from the Tolkappiyam and from the use of ர to represent the Sanskrit "r" in loan words right from the classical language onwards.
[edit] ல்
- As l
The Tamil sound is a palatal l, which is close enough to the English sound
[edit] வ்
- As v
[edit] ழ்
- As zh
Simply because this is how the sound is always written. Its closest English equivalent is the retroflex approximant used in American English, but it would just look wrong to use an r for the ழ்.
[edit] ள்
- As l
In Tamil, this is a cerebral l. Many in TN tend not to distinguish it from ல், but even in TN that's seen as bad pronunciation. (think of "utkarndhu kollungal"). Still, there's no way to represent a celebral in English.
[edit] ற்
- Normally, as r
- In the combination ற்ற, as tt or rr.
- The combination ற்ற presents a problem. Traditionally, this was pronounced as a palatal tt (the tip of the tongue against the ridge of the palate), as it still is in Malayalam and in Jaffna Tamil. This particular sound goes all the way back to Proto-Dravidian. Even in TN, educated speakers pronounced this combination as tt as recently as around 150 years ago, as becomes evident if one looks books about Tamil written for Europeans from this period. This explains how the sound became "tth" as it is in many TN dialects. It seems to me that the historically correct pronunciation ought to be used, but I realise it will look very odd to Tamils from TN. So whilst this should ideally be tt, we may have to settle on rr - tr, in my opinion, shouldn't be used.
- In the combination ன்ற:
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- as nd when referring to something specific to Sri Lanka and ndr otherwise
-
- OR
- as nr
- This is also tricky - it's pronounced ndr in TN and nd in Jaffna. I don't think there's any "correct" spelling ndr seems to have been the traditional pronunciation in eastern Tamil, but western Tamil (now Malayalam) seems to have had nd for a very long time and since Jaffna Tamil comes from Chera Tamil it obviously has the same sound. We could either use the respective pronunciations, or just use nr, unsatisfactory as it is.
[edit] ன்
- as n
This is a hard palatal n, distinct from the dental ந். The distinction is still important in Malayalam. Tamils tend to mostly pronounce it in the same way as ந் but do pronounce it correctly in a few words (such as words starting in பொன்) although we often don't hear the difference ourselves.
