Tamil: A Family of Languages

Tamil: A Family of Languages Harold Schiffman South Asia Studies University of Pennsylvania 2011 INFITT Conference

Tamil: an ancient language • One of the oldest languages in India • Generally thought of as existing in three stages: • Sangam Tamil (from the earliest period two millenia ago • Medieval Tamil • Modern Literary Tamil, last codified in the 13th century • But what about modern spoken Tamil?

Tamil is difficult to access • Spoken Tamil is not valued by Tamil society • Foreigners are not encouraged to learn it • But if they don’t learn it, they lack access to much of what goes on in Tamil society in everyday language use • Those who do try to learn spoken are discouraged: • They are scolded for using it and ‘corrupting’ the language • They are ‘corrected’ by being given the Literary Tamil form • They are laughed at for their attempts to speak

Examples: • Scolding: In 1965-66 when I was trying to do research on spoken Tamil in Tamilnadu, a delegation of DMK students visited me and begged me to cease doing my research because I was corrupting the language • Ridicule: In 1994 when I was studying how Tamil is taught in Singapore, I went through customs and seeing that the agent had a Tamil name, spoke to her in Tamil. • Her response: You sound just like my Granny!

What do other languages do? • English also has a centuries-old history which is divided into three stages: • Old English, dating from 800 CE or earlier, with works such as Beowulf. • Middle English, from around the 11th century, lasting until about 1600, with famous works by Chaucer • Modern English, from 1600 onward—from Shakespeare up to the modern period.

Beowulf, page 1 • Do we expect students to be able to read this without a translation?

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: • Heerebigynneth the Knyghtes Tale • Whilom, as olde stories tellen us, Ther was a duc that highteTheseus; Of Atthenes he was lord and governour, And in his tymeswich a conquerour, That gretter was ther noon under the sonne. Ful many a riche contreehadde he wonne, What with his wysdom and his chivalrie; He conquered al the regne of Femenye, That whilom was ycleped Scithia, And weddede the queeneYpolita, And broghtehirhoom with hym in his contree, With muchelglorie and greet solempnytee, And eek hiryongesusterEmelye.

Do we expect all English learners to be able to read Beowulf and Chaucer? • When I was in high school, we read Beowulf, but in a modern translation. • Chaucer is also difficult to read in the original, so it’s also read in translation • Even Shakespeare can be difficult to understand—when I am scheduled to attend a Shakespeare play I read it in advance to get an idea of what I will hear

The study of Language Loyalty • After my first year in Tamilnadu I was often asked what it was like being with all those ‘fanatical’ Tamils • I had arrived in Tamilnadu after there were language ‘riots’ over the issue of Hindi and the ‘national language’ • Universities had been closed and some lives had been lost in the turmoil • I began to look at work in the subdiscipline of the Sociology of Language and what researchers said about how to manage language policy.

Language policy • Fishman, Ferguson, Haugen, Hymes, and many others had written about language policy and after some study, I decided to offer a course on this subject • This soon became my main research interest, along with my interest in Tamil language and structure • Having spent some time in the Soviet Union, and having lived in France, I could see different ways that nations and peoples handle the issue of their language loyalty, and how linguistic minorities can be encouraged to thrive.

What keeps a language alive? • Many of the researchers on language vitality make the point that languages will survive if they are transferred intergenerationally. • This means they must be learned at home and thus no matter what language is taught at school, the home must be the refuge for the language. • For Tamils, the language of the home is peeccu Tamil, but very little is done to strengthen it and buttress it • All the effort goes into teaching literacy in Literary Tamil, but sometimes children may not acquire spoken Tamil at home—English may predominate.

What is the mother tongue? • In Linguistics we believe that the language learned before the age of 6 is the ‘mother tongue’ and any form of the language or other language learned is actually a second language. • Since spoken Tamil and Literary Tamil are very different, spoken Tamil tends to be treated as something to be ignored or even eliminated • Literary Tamil gets all the attention, while spoken Tamil more and more is ignored.

The case of Singapore • Singapore is a good example of how spoken Tamil is given little support, while students of Tamil background are required to learn Literary Tamil in order to pass Cambridge O-Level exams • Singapore until recently treated spoken languages as a handicap—something to be destroyed if possible, and replaced by Literary Tamil • But instead what happened was that students abandoned Tamil completely—English replaced spoken Tamil, and Literary Tamil was learned as if it was a ‘dead’ language.

This is now changing • The work of various Singapore Tamil linguists such as Gopinathan, Seethalakshmi, and Saravanan has turned the tide and now efforts are being made to support spoken Tamil as a ‘resource’ instead of a handicap. • This approach needs to be instituted in Tamilnadu as well, since more and more, young Tamils who are educated in English medium are replacing Tamil with English and becoming English speakers almost exclusively.

Example of a resource: the formation of relative clauses • In my 30 years experience of teaching Tamil to Americans and other non-Tamils, I found that students hit a kind of ‘sound-barrier’ when it came to the formation of Tamil relative clauses. • What is a relative clause? Two sentences can be joined into one with the other becoming a relative clause • 1. That boy came yesterday. • 2. I saw the boy. • 3.→I saw the boy WHO/THAT came yesterday.

Spoken Tamil relative clauses: • 1. neettupayyanvandaan • 2. naanandapayyanepaatteen • 3. → naan [neettuvandapayyane] paatteen • Tamil does not have relative clause markers using ‘which, what’ etc. but instead embeds one sentence before the other, and turns a verb (vandaan) into an adjective: vanda

This pattern closely replicates what happens in Literary Tamil • 1. நான் பய்யனைப் பாரத்தேன் • 2. பய்யன் நேற்று வந்தான் • 3. → நான் நேற்று வந்தப் பய்யனைப் பாரத்தேன் • What I noticed about my students is that those who came from a Tamil background with spoken Tamil used in the home easily learned the LT form • Those who did not speak Tamil at home, like the other Americans in the class, got stuck on this structure. • They found it a tremendous barrier to overcome, and most did not overcome it.

In other words… • Spoken Tamil is a resource that can help Tamils to learn Literary Tamil • It should not be annihilated, but should be celebrated • It needs to be kept alive in the home so that it can be a resource, and it needs to be given other domains that it can be used in. • If not, English (not Hindi!) will take over, and Tamil will gradually be lost.

Tamil: A Family of Languages