Language Log

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Recently we have had a string of posts on South Asian linguistic phenomena.  Most of the languages involved have been Indic, and will probably continue to be predominantly so during the coming months and years.  Consequently, I'm delighted today to make a post about Tamil, a Dravidian language with a glorious heritage.

Except where otherwise noted, the indented paragraphs below are by Carrie Wiebe (professor of Chinese language and literature at Middlebury).  They are integral and self-explanatory, so I will make few interpolations.

I grew up in Tamil Nadu; at least for the formative part of my young years. Then spent high school in the Chicago area and immediately went back to India when I was 17. My father still has a home there as do my mother’s sister, some cousins, and one of my brothers. So we spend quite a bit of time there (and have, off and on, since 1966.

Tamil was a language I learned as a child but not sophisticated, “adult” registers or to read or write. It is an absolutely fascinating and beautiful language. Originally I wanted to learn to read classical Tamil because I had found and studied so many cognates to Chinese stories in the Sanskrit Kathasaritsagara.* There are versions of that long collection in several Indian languages; some of the stories do have cognates in Tamil. I figured that it would be neat to be able to see if there were Tamil stories that had made their way into China. but when I really started studying Tamil in earnest, I discovered that it is probably the hardest thing I have ever studied and I do not think that I will be able to have the determination or time to continue intensive study of it. So I am going to content myself with reading contemporary Tamil and speaking it in a rudimentary way.

[*VHM:  The Kathāsaritsāgara ("Ocean of the Streams of Stories") is a famous 11th-century collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold in Sanskrit by the Shaivite Somadeva.]

I studied Tamil five to eight hours a day last year for five months with a teacher, then for another six months on my own, before the school year started and I jumped back into Chinese language and literature. When I returned from Madurai, I wrote the following on my Facebook page (might give you a feeling for what I studied):

“I finished my five months of Tamil class today. I was in class with Vidya for three hours per day and spent from two to five hours per day studying at home. I feel proud of myself, amazed that I stuck with it, excited about all that I learned and thrilled about the good foundation I now have to continue learning. We studied written and spoken language by reading through three of Vidya’s textbooks (and I also read through about three other textbooks that I brought with me), by watching two full-length movies (Anbe Shivam and Dharbar) and six thirty-minute movies by Balu Mahendra. We read through six short stories by Pudumaipithan, Gopura Vilakku T. Janakiraman (Thi Jaa), Ramaswamy Aiyer Krishnamurty (Kalki), Sujatha Rangarajan (a man who I think is awesome partly because he used his wife’s name as his pen name!), S. Vaidyalingam (Prapanchan), and Bahuleyan Jeyamohan. I wrote seven poems and many little essays. We had endless conversations. Lots more, but that’s the gist!”

Carrie mentioned to me, somewhat regretfully, that she has not studied Sanskrit, to which I responded:

I think you did exactly the right thing, Carrie, in concentrating on Tamil.  I'm sure you picked up a lot of Sanskritic vocabulary and Indic ideas through their borrowings into Tamil and also through reading so many English translations of Indian works over the decades.

Above all, you've been acquiring genuine fluency in Tamil and appreciation of its literary culture.

I think it's better to learn one second language well than to acquire a superficial smattering of many foreign languages.

You have my complete approbation and appreciation.

Carrie has written several poems in Tamil and translated them into English.  They are on all sorts of subjects, but many of them feature waterfalls.  I suppose that is because waterfalls are prominent in the Tamil Nadu landscape.

Here is one of my favorite Tamil poems by Carrie, with Romanized transliteration and English translation:

Eclipse in Kodai

—–

Kōṭaikkāṉalil kirakaṇam


cantiraṉ cūriyaṉiṉ mēl paṭuttirukkiṟāḷ

makimaiyai maṟaikkiṟāḷ

ilaikaḷ vazhiyāka

cantiraṉ mūṭiya cūriyaṉ

taraiyilum nama uṭaikaḷilum

piṟai vaṭiva oḷiccitaṟalkaḷai tūvukiṟatu.


Paṟavaikaḷ amaitiyākiṉṟaṉa

maṟṟum

ulakam iruṭṭākiṟatu

—–

 

Addendum

I should mention that Carrie is the translator of the remarkable work titled Yǒuyáng zázǔ 酉陽雜俎 (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang):

…written by Duan Chengshi in the 9th century. It focuses on miscellany of Chinese and foreign legends and hearsay, reports on natural phenomena, short anecdotes, and tales of the wondrous and mundane, as well as notes on such topics as medicinal herbs and tattoos.

Yǒuyáng Zázǔ includes the world's first written version of the Cinderella story, for an English translation of which, see:

Victor H. Mair, tr., “The  First  Recorded  Cinderella  Story,” in Hawai’i  Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture, ed. by  Victor H. Mair, Nancy  Steinhardt, and  Paul R. Goldin (Honolulu:  University of Hawai’i Press), pp. 362-67.

For an analysis and history of Duan Chengshi's Cinderella story, see:

Fay Beauchamp, "Asian Origins of Cinderella:  The Zhuang Storyteller of Guangxi", Oral Tradition, 25/2 (2010): 447-496.

For an annotated translation of the Nuògāo jì 諾皋記 section of Yǒuyáng Zázǔ, see:

Carrie E. Reed (now Wiebe), tr., Duan Chengshi, Chinese Chronicles of the Strange: the “Nuogao ji” New York: Peter Lang, 2001.

Story #543 (p.35) in this collection is a fascinating account of an ancient king of Persia building a city in Tocharia.  Carrie provides abundant, detailed annotations.

See also:

Carrie E. Reed, A Tang Miscellany: An Introduction to Youyang zazu (New York: Peter Lang,
2003).

 

Suggested readings

• "Memorizing a thesaurus" (10/28/20) — with many relevant posts in the bibliography
• "Congee: the Dravidian roots of the name for a Chinese dish" (11/13/17)
• "Genetic evidence for the spread of Indo-Aryan languages" (6/22/17) — with relevant posts in the bibliography
• "The languages of India" (4/7/17)
• "Some citrus terms in Sinitic: today and in the past" (7/11/20)
• "Naked dough" (5/22/14)
• "Receptive multilingualism" (11/27/18)

October 31, 2020 @ 11:56 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and literature, Language teaching and learning, Translation

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