An intensive course in Tamil: dialogues, drills, exercises, vocabulary, grammar, and word index

Citation preview

AN INTENSIVE COURSE IN TAMIL

CIIL INTENSIVE COURSE P^^IES Z

G E N E R A L EpiTOI^ M . S.

THIRUJMi^LAI

)

AN INTENSIVE COURSE IN TAMIL

Dialogues, Drills, Exercises Vocabulary, Grammar and Word Index

S. R A J A R A M

C E N T R A L INSTITUTE OF INDIAN L A N G U A G E S MYSORE-570006

INDIA

First Published in July 1979 Guru Poornima Ashadha Suddha4901 by D . P. Pattanayak, Director Central Institute of Indian Languages Printed at Central Institute of Indian Languages Preiss, Mysore

^

Central Institute of Indian Languages

Price Rs. 74 No part of this book may be reproduced ' in any form without permission from the publisher.

Contents

UNIT 1

2

3

FOREWORD

...

y

EDITOR'S N O T E

...

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

..

viii

INTRODUCTION

...

ix

REFERENCES

...

xx

ABBREVIATIONS

...

xxi

TAMIL ALPHABET

...

xxii

LESSON 1

I am a Tamil teacher

1

2 He is a Malayalam student 3 Is Tamil your mother tongue ? 4 Is H M T a good watch ? 5 A t the hostel 6 In the classroom 7 Jawaharlal Nehru 8 Whose umbrella is this ?. 9 In the hostel room 10 Of what nature is Radha ? 11 What is the number of this house ? 12 Shopping

... ... ... ... ... ...

13 14 15 16 17 18

What are you? With an officer India Dresses How is Thanjavur ? ~ How is the weather in Mysore now ?

... ...

19 20 21 22 23

Renting a hotel room About the hotel Buying fruits At the dinning hall Do you know Tamil ?

... ... ... ...

,

14 24 38 48 62 72 83 93 102 117 125

... ... ...

132 143 151 158 165 175

... ... ... ... ...

183 192 199 206 214

a I Contents

4

24 25 26

yisiting a friend's house Buying a bus ticket Boarding the bus

221 230

5

27 28 29 30

Going to the market Preparation to go to Kanyakumarl Receiving a friend Sending off a friend

246 257 266 275

6

31 32 33

Writing home assignments At the tiffin hall Buying a saree

282 291 298

7

34 35 36

Receiving a telegram Departing from the house In the kitchen

304 311 319

8

37 38 39

Where did you study ? When did you join the job ? Will you please give this book to him ?

325 332 342

9

40 41

Guiding to the Central Institute of Indian Languages With the peon '

...

351 359

10

42 43

Asking for recommendation Why do you worry so much for this ?

... ...

366 373

11

44

Don't write the homework with ball point pen What do we do with legs ? Meeting a friend for recommendation

... ...

378 ' 385 392 399

45 46 47

239

Madurai

12

48 49 50

Consulting a doctor With the servant boy Instructing a cook

... ...

409 416 424

13

51 52

We teach Tamil Morning duties

...

431 438

14

53 54

Are all the examinations over? When is Sundaram coming from Madras ? ...

444 451

15

55 56 57 58 60

I want to learn Tamil Inviting a friend Borrowing money from a friend Expecting a guest to arrive Do you know reading Marathi well ? What should I do in the morning ?

16

61 62 63 64 65 66 67

With the station master About a film About an actor Opening an account in the bank About a musician Over the telephone About the smugglers

17

68 69 70

Asking way to Kanyakumari Meeting a friend after sometime About the preparation for examination

71 72 73

About the examination Consulting a teacher The Moon

74 75

About the Garden About the crops Preparation to go to a doctor Advice to the patient

59

18

76 77

19

78 79 80 81

Going to the Railway station Hiring a taxi Appointing a servant maid

20

82 83 84

The crow and the fox About a public meeting Going to Madras

21

85 86 87

Going on a pilgrimage At the post office With the porter

22

88 89 90

Arranging a trip to Azhaharkoil Going for a picnic Intimation about a friend's arrival

The Mysore zoo

iv I Contents 23

24

25

91 92

Ramayana Visiting Thiruparankundram

93

Asking for a job

94 95

Holiday reading About learning another language

96 Tamil newspapers and magazines 97 With the vegetable seller 98 A n accident 99 The snake 100 With the dhoby WORD INDEX

Foreword

The Central Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17th July, 1969 with a view to assisting and co-ordinating the development of Indian languages. The Institute .was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary out-put from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research and developmental research in the fields of languages and linguistics in India. The Institute and its five Regional Language Centres are thus engaged in research,and teiaching, which lead to the publication of a wide-ranging variety of materials. Preparation of materials designed for teaching/learning at different levels and suited to specific needs is one,of the major areas of interest of the Institute. Basic research relating to the acquisition of language and study of language in its manifold psycho-social relations constitute another broad range of its interest. The publications will include materials produced by the members of the staff of the Central Institute of Indian Languages and its Regional Language Centres and associated scholars from Universities and Institutions, both Indian and foreign. The Central Institute of^ Indian languages has initiated a Basic Course Series in major Indian languages to provide suitable and comprehensive material for learning and teaching the language cpncerned for Indians. In a language teaching situation, the teacher is expected to combine the roles of a psycho-linguist, socio-linguist, linguist, language pedagogue, a creator of materials, a literary critic and a testing and evaluation expert. Most of his competences are naturally reflected in the materials, which simultaneously are graded from simple to complex, known to the unknown and contrived to the natural. This is a very difficult task. After research and experi­ mentation we have come out with more questions than answers at each stage of the material. For example, how basic is basic? What is grading? In what way can linguistic and cultural matter be graded? Is question, with which most learning, begins, simpler than state­ ment ? How does one move from a purely language based competence to.creating literary sensibilities? How does one build into the material conceptual prose ? How are lessons to be presented ? Should the translated discourse structure be made to look similar to the original discourse structure ? Questions such as these have been answered differently by different teachers and researchers.

vii An Intensive Course in Tamil This search is a continuing phenomenon. Therefore, these materials represent our unfinished education in this area. The format for the basic course is the result of a consensus arrived at by the lecturers and Principals of the five Regional Centres of the Institute engaged in the teaching of major Indian languages. This is the product of almost eight years of teaching and research. This format is flexible and has left much scope for individual authors to innovate. If these courses help the desirous to learn and stimulate those interested in applied linguistics, with special reference to the teaching of Indian languages as second/ foreign languages, then the Institute would feel rewarded. 1 congratulate the teachers, the trainees, the supervisors and the press and publication people who have brought out the publica­ tion in a creditable manner.

(DEBI PRASANNA PATTANAYAK) DilKtor

Editor's Note

The Intensive Course Series aims at imparting mainly a proficiency in the listening and speaking skills of the language learnt. The learning materials are presented in the script of the language throughout; in the beginning several lessons are presented in Devanagari as a prop. The books under this series do not provide the learners with an introduction to the script of the language. However, the traditional alphabetic chart of the concerned language is given at the beginning of the book. In addition, the learners are expected to paster the script of the language before they actually use the lessons of the Intensive Course, For this they are advised to use Script Books and Copy Books published by the Central Institute of Indian Languages in its CIIL-KVS Series. For Tamil, they can also use another publication of the Central Institute of Indian Languages,^ viz., An Introduction to Tamil Script: Reading and Writing. Language teaching, in some sense, is an artificial activity. It requires breaking the global language into, at times even arbitrary, units. The books in this series are no exception to this inevitable consequence of the model followed. This was, however, borne in mind all through to keep the artificial element under control. Each Language learning manual in the Intensive Course Series covers the "basic" structures of that language uped for certain identified topics of common interest. Lessons are generally presented in the form of conversations. These lessons are grouped under various units. The variables for the choice of dialebt through which the materials are presented, the methods for the administration of exercises and drills in the class, and other tips for both the,teacher and the learner would be found in the introduction to eyery book in the series. It should be emphasized here that the Intensive Course Series is an integral part of the scheme of language teaching of the Regional Language Centres of the Central Institute of Indian Languages. Books in the Intermediate Course Series and the Advanced Course Series are an extension of the books published under the Intensive Course Series. M . S. T H I R U M A L A I

Acknowledgement

A n Intensive Course in Tamil is intended for teaching Tamil as a second/foreign language. I would especially like to express my indebtedness to Dr. D . P. Pattanayak for his constant encouragement and valuable suggestions. I am indebted to Dr. M . S. Thirumalai who has taken the pain of reading the manuscript in an early and overinflated form and made many helpful suggestions and finally edited. I am thankful to Dr. E . Annamalai and Dr. K . V . V . L . Narasimha Rao, Principal, Southern Regional Language Centre with whom I discussed many aspects of this book. I am also thankful to my colleagues Dr. V . Gnanasundaram, Mrs. B. Syamalakumari, Mrs. - M . N . Leelavathi, Dr. G . Subbiah, Dr. R. Panneerselvam, Dr. K . Rangan, M r . N . Nadaraja Pillai and Dr. G . Sankaranarayanan for many stimulating discussions and their criticisms of my earlier part of this work and to M r . N . H . Itagi who designed the cover. Of the many people who have helped me determine the content and organisation of this book, I would particularly like to thank several batches of students of Tamil at Southern Regional Language Centre who have had this material tested on them and who have been responsible for many modifications. Finally, I should like to express my thanks and appreciation to Mrs. Grace for expert typing, the Manager and the staff of the Central Institute of Indian Languages Press and Sri H . L . N . Bharathi for the neat execution of printing..

S. R .

Introduction

Language learning is a cornplex activity. Its success iis largely determined by the method, medium, material and the motivation of the learner. The highly organised curriculum and planning show the way to achieve the educational goal with ease and rapidity. The present Intensive Course emphasizes listening and speak­ ing skills. The Phonetic Reader, the Script Book, the Recall . Vocabulary (semantically classified), the Hindi-Tamil Common Vocabulary and several other reading and writing materials envi­ saged by the Central Institute of Indian Languages for use in the basic course stage of its Regional Languages Training Programme, may be used with profit along with this book. The present book is intended mainly to be used in the basic course stage of the Tamil language training programme "of the Central Institute of Indian Languages. The entire training pro­ gramme has the duration of 10 months, i.e. about 1100 clock hours. This period is divided into three stages, namely, basic course, inter­ mediate course and advanced course. The basic course has about 450 clock hours-of instruction with primary emphasis on the spoken language. The present Intensive Course is the prescribed instruc­ tional material for the above mentioned course aiming at listening and speaking skills in the basic level. , This bookcanbe very profi­ tably used as a text book also for any generalised second languageTamil course. There are atleast three principles which characterize an Intensive Course. They are (i) complete concentration on one purpose (ii) high degree of curriculum organisation and planning and (iii) the separation of the functions of teaching and drilling. The first principle entails that (a) the learner concentrates on the learning task ; (b) the teacher and the material producer present the learning material in a systematic and consistent manner, taking one step at a time and concentrating wherever possible on one structure at a time. . The second principle advocates high organisation and meti­ culous planning.. As the allocated time is precious and valuable the careful planning of what is required by the student is indispensable. The selection and, gradation of the linguistic patterns and the presentation will certainly, facilitate the learher to acquire the

X I An Intensive Course in Tamil language rapidly. Therefore, a high degree of organisation and planning is one of the basic pre-requtsites of an intensive language training course. The present book will cover 300 hours of intensive instruction following a sequence of four basic steps, namely, presenta­ tion, explanation, repetition and transfer in the basic course stage. The rest of the instructional hours will be devoted for such items as script teaching, practice in the language laboratory, reading etc. 232 teachable linguistic patterns are carefully graded considering the various factors like siinple to complex, known to unknown, relevance of content to the user etc. With regard to the third principle, there is a strong belief that" the teacher who introduces patterns alone can do the better function of drilling. But some scholars like Orrin Frink (1968) feel that it is inadvisable to have the same teacher for both the functions. He , holds the opinion that to insure the optimum fulfilment of teaching and drilling there should be a separation of responsibilities taken by the teacher who introduces the patterns on the one hand and the drill instructor on the other. Although this principle has no direct rele­ vance to the preparation of instructional material as such, the teach­ able patterns are covered in the body of the leeson and the drills and exercises are presented separately after the body of the lesson. Several linguists, both Indian and foreign have published materials for teaching and learning Tamil as a second,,or a foreign language.. Special reference may be made to the works of Shanmugam Pillai (1965 ; 1968), Jothimuthu (1965), Kumaraswami Raja and Doraswami (1966) SchiflFman (1971) Asher and Radhakrishnan (1971) Samraj (1972), Subramoniam and Veeraswamy (1973) Pattanayak etal (1974) and P. Kothandaraman (1975). The present work takes into account the merits of the above but differs from them in several ways in terms of selection, gradation and presentation. Firstly, in the preparation of instructional materials the 'methodics' in which the linguistic items and the peda­ gogical implications should be combined and properly blended. In other words, there should be a proper co-ordination between the list of linguistic items and the most appropriate sequences for practical teaching should be pursued. Secondly, as language is a social activity, utterances learned and produced should be 'acceptable' and 'appropriate' to the be­ haviour patterns of the community in which it is spoken. The criterion of'appropriateness' in many of the existing materials has

Introduction / xi not been adequately considered. A s a result of this, the foreign language learnt is not functional for communicative purposes. It also leads the learners to utter sentences lacking 'authenticity'. Pattern practice and dialogues alone will not be sufficient to meet the needs of the learner in communication. "Activities such as pattern practice, dialogues, question-answers are •pretend' language learning activities" (Jakobovits : 1972). This does not mean that these 'pretend' activities would not have any impact on the process of language learning. The question is how far these conversational transactions are 'real' and 'authentic'. It is obvious that classroom cannot be a real conversational setting for all purposes. Hence, it is quite imperative on the part of the material producers to provide the learners with conversational rules or the communicative rules of the speech community whose langu­ age is being learnt. The present book tries to overcome this problem by providing the learners with many different types of conversations in natural setting and also by giving varied drills. The notes at the end of the lessons provide certain conversational rules. ' The following are the main and the sub-objectives of the basic course offered at the Regional Language Centres of the Central Institute of Indian Languages : 1 To perceive and reproduce the sounds and their meaningful sequences. Sub-objectives : a To identify the sounds in their meaningful sequence, b To discriniinate the sounds in their meaningful sequence. c To orally reproduce the sounds in meaningful sequence. 2 To be able to form sentences orally from given patterns and lexical items. 3 To be able to converse with the teacher and with fellow trainees on specified topics under controlled situations. 4 To be able to narrate specified events and topics orally. 5 To be able to read simple and graded passages with comprehension. Sub-objectives : a To be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet in isolation and in sequence. b To be able to comprehend passages, containing simple sentences.

xii I An Intensive Course in Tamil 6 Tube able to write simple sentences and giiided composi- tions on specilic topics. Sub-objectives : a To be able to write letters, words and simple sentences, b To be able to write guided compositions 6n specified topics. Of the above objectives, the present Intensive Course is based on the objectives 2 to 4. With regard to the teaching method to be adopted, the Central Institute of Indian Languages is highly convinced by theory and experience that no single method can explain and guide second language learning as a. developmental process. The complexity of language teaching can be met only with flexible and many sided procedures and techniques. Therefore, an integration of many procedures into a method is highly appreciated. In this way, our approach is •"eclectic" which is open to all valuable suggestions from dilferent methods. The language variety used in this Intensive Course may be described as the Standard Colloquial Tamil which is generally considered as the spoken language of the educated non-Brahmins. Unlike other instructional materials the present book adopts the Tamil script for the presentation of the lessons from the beginning to end. In Tamil, it is not uncommon to Write the .spoken forms in Tamil script when the creative writers wiant to bring in reality. But, the second language teaching materials follow a convention of using Roman script from the beginning to end. Although the Tamjl script, like any other script, is inadequate to'bring out the natural pronunciation, using this script in a composite course like the one visualised here will enable the learners to read the written materials fluently at the later stage. Our experience shows that the mastery of script can be achieved within ten clock hours. Hence, the teacher is expected to ask the students to start reading the text in the script of the language concerned. The transcription here does not account for all the nuances ol the spoken rythm. For example, the phenomenon of nasalisation which is conimon to all the dialects'of Tamil is not represented. Various writers use different devices to represent this phenomenon. But in this Intensive Course no such device is used. However, the pronun­ ciation rules should be clearly stated before going into the details of

Introduction I xiii the. text.

For example, the vowels followed by the nasals eir and lit

are nasalized.

That is, eil^^nrsor 'came-he' should be read as

vandaa and euQi^ih

'come-we' should be read as varoo.

English borrowed words are exceptions to this rule.

The

Similarly, the

pronunciation rules have to be given by the teacher

wherever

necessary. The Tamil alphabet does not provide symbols for the voiced stops in the word initial position in borrowed words and in the word medial position after the homoorganic nasals. Similarly, no symbols are provided for the fricative sounds that occur in the intervocal position. Accordingly certain reading and speaking conventions must be explicitly stated and explained to the class. Allophonic variations of the stop phonemes are given below": A/:

«

[k]

:

: c9jeu(§ C u ® uili—/fiiruja. His name is Mr.. Pattanayak.

Lesson 2 / 15 He is a Telugu student. UDiremeudf,. s r ^ c i ^ f TTW^ I Vanakkam, M r . Pattanayak, uiLi—firriua. : quiet*4^,

qpfFl^ I

uiLi—jbiTUJa : sufiroraaib.

Vanakkam.

Mr. Pattanayak, what is thit ? 6TtfBItfBI'? g ^ :

fei;

qf

sTf i???r ?

qf^nq^ : ?5 3 ^ f ^ I

This is a book.

Is that a novel ?

No. This is a text book.

M g H N * : f w f I ?5 qi^'-yw^M I Who is your Telugu teacher ? uj(5 ujT(5 ? g ^

^

:

STTf^ftq? TO ? Mr. Viswanadham (is my Telugu teacher.)

qprTOJ:

ftf^

f^^TT^ I

DRILLS

a. Variation drill 1.2.5.

^eu(§ wQecmjiren ui/rswrsu®.

^su(5 lurr® ? f^TO ? s9/fiU(5 uj/r® ? 3ra^TO?

161 An Intensive Course in Tamil 1, 2. 6.

qcfUjsaii).

cS/gJffTfiirssr? 6T6JT65T ?

1. 2. 7.

/BTsusOT ?

ufri_u

b.

L/sfOjSSLnrr ?

Build up drill (i)

u5(ol«ouj/T«Tr uifrfiTOTsu®.

^6^(5 Lotolsoujfrsrr tDfrswreu®

^ ^qjoS TT"!^ I LDn'OTBTeU® LoGlsoiUfrcrr ip/ressrsu® ^6U(5 usGlsoiiJirsrr icfrewTsu®

f§ i W f 1 l-/«ft)cS6BLb SWT

(iii)

/BTSU6V)/T ? /Birsueo/r ? /B/reueu/r ?

(iv)

U f f i — U qsfO^dSLDff ? qr^cg^cTW ?

Lttson 21 17

3T1 "TT^cq^cT?^ ? c.

Expansion drill (i) @«U((5 ifl/rswTsu®. icGlsoaj/rsrr

tDfrssffrsu®

^sii(5 LoGlsOiiJ/rsrr infrswrsu®.

;i*|SD{/5 LOffSTOTSU®.

(ii) c9(5 Sl^g^'E'®*Punjabi. We are a5/r(r(5 ; ^ s u ® gj® Indians, are we not ? . ujmiffi, ^sbGco ?

26 / An Intensive Course in Tamil

C!5 d^^fPtusir /BTSBT «p(5 c^.^fPtUSBT.

(ii)ffT6Br^TUJ(oli£i(ry?^iB^p. "f^enqiiffe c f e ^ I

jSn^uliQiDfry? ^iB\p. 6T65r

cnqirffe crffi^^ i STSBT ^n\uQinn\^ ^iByi-

"^^

^iriuQinn^ ^iB{p ^sbQsD.

(iii) STSBT

STSBT

jSfruJQujn-y? •suS'tp ^sbQso.

cTRflffe cTfe^

I

^sbGlso

?^ ^u9jp ^sbQso ^iruJOinrrj^ iSi^jp ^d^Cleo

crPTfl% ersBT

6TSBT jSiruJQiD/rtji?