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Though Tamil attained the status of official language according to the decree, in 1956, there were difficulties in implementing Tamil as the sole official language of Tamilnadu. There was a feeling among some people that Tamil cannot be used efficiently for administrative purposes. They attributed several reasons as follows:
1) Tamil at present is not precise enough to be a court language.
2) It is not effective and clear enough to be used for writing notes to government documents for circulation.
3) It is not a developed language for use in dealing with modern matters, scientific and technological concepts etc.
The above notion is gradually changing towards the use of Tamil in many fields. Also attempts are being made now to make Tamil relatively more efficient and simple. Some of the government bodies are involved in such language planning activities which could solve those problems that arise in the introduction of Tamil medium in administration. The following are the steps taken by the Government of Tamilnadu to make Tamil as an administrative language.
1) Organizations like Tamil Development Directorates, Official Language Committee, Translation Bureaus etc., were created by the government to coin technical terminologies for administrative purposes. The Tamil Development Directorate has so far published supplementary glossaries of special and technical terms related to the 44 departments of administration and of general glossary of administrative terms. These glossaries help the concerned administration department to use apt equivalents for official use. Apart from this, various manuals, rules and codes required for day-to day administrative activities were also translated from English and published in Tamil. A Tamil short hand manual was printed and published in September 1965.
2) The Tamilnadu Government has opened a Central training institute to train government typists in Tamil typewriting. Also it has recruited sufficient number of Tamil typists.
3) The government typists and steno typists were granted permission and concession to appear for lower and higher grade examinations in Tamil typewriting as well as Tamil shorthand thrice without payment of examination fees. In addition to these incentives in the form of special pay of Rs.20/- for Tamil typist and Rs.90/- for steno typist, were given.
4) In view of the encouragement given by the government of Tamilnadu for the use of Tamil in official correspondences, certain cash prizes are given every year. Government employees who write best drafts and notes in Tamil are selected and are awarded cash prizes. Three prizes for each district, viz., first prize of Rs.500/- second prize of Rs.300/- and the third prize of Rs.200/- are being distributed.
5) The Tamilnadu Government has also appointed Tail Development Officers in various District Head Quarters to help and solve all those problems that arise out of using Tamil in administration.
6) The government implemented the script reform proposed by E.V. Ramaswamy (G.O. 1875 of the Education Department, Government of Tamilnadu, Letter No. 4/78).
7) The Government has issued an order revising the script of I and xs as ma; and mt; (G.O.No/1875, dated 19.10.78). The script reform in vowels was protested by a section of scholars stating that it will question the very fundamental system of vowels. Since it was related to the sentiments of people, the Government withdrew the reform in I and xs (G.O. No. 4704/E2/79-2 dated 23.05.79).
8) The Government instructed all officials and ministers to put their signature only in Tamil in all correspondences and files, through the G.O.No.1134, education department 21.06.1978. During 22.05.96 a meeting was held under the Chairmanship of the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu in which the decision to instruct the officials and ministers to put their signature in Tamil (5010/TDI-1, dated 24.05.96) was again insisted.
9) The Tamilnadu government has created a separate ministry for Administrative Tamil and culture for the speedy introduction of Tamil in administration.
10) It also formulated new slogans such as inrum Tamil enrum Tamil (Tamil even today and Tamil for ever) to create a sense of awareness among the people about Tamil language.
11) The Government conducts seminars on administrative Tamil in all districts every year. It advised the Tamil Development officials to invite Tamil scholars, retired teachers and members of various language associations for the seminar through the circular No.3910/TD-97-1, dated 15.04.97.
12) The Government has created one Joint Director, Tamil Development Directorate and several Asst. Directors for the speedy implementation of Tamil in administration (G.O. No. 148, dated 07.05.97).
13) It also issued orders to put the name boards of business establishments in Tamil. It also specified the size of the scripts of Tamil and English in name boards.
14) The Government has issued circular standardising the technical terms as follows (No.24 11/TDI-2/96, dated 09.12.96).
| Earlier | Standard | |
| Confidential | mantanam | kamukkam |
| Strictly confidential | katumantanam | mikakkamukkam |
| Secret | irakaciyam | maariporul |
Language use in India, especially the formal use, has created and also continues to create problems and conflicts in the use of language. The Constitution of India clearly states the law by which all the recognised Indian regional languages could be developed along with the official language of India, viz., Hindi. Each linguistic state has its own language as official language, and each state adopts certain language policies in the formal domains.
The official language of India, i.e., Hindi is not given due importance in Tamilnadu. In all other states Hindi is being used in all administrative fields especially in the Central Government services. The interstate and federal state correspondences are also made through Hindi. Except Tamilnadu, all the other South Indian States are not so rigid and particular in their policies as far as the adaptation of Hindi is concerned.
In Tamilnadu, Tamil has been adopted as the administrative language of the state. Some departments of administration are using English for certain purposes. For example, the communication to the Central Government Offices, audit reports and other matters related to treasury, and letters addressed to the foreign embassy are written in English.
There were movements in Tamilnadu against the Hindi imposition. There were several good reasons for anti-Hindi movement in Tamilnadu. They were i) the local population did not want those privileges which English enjoyed in a given national area to be transferred to another language, even if it was an Indian language ii) the local population did not want one of the local languages (Hindi) to be forcibly introduced into their national sphere and for communication between Indian states. Consequently, one of the Indian states and its language could find themselves in a more privileged position than any other Indian states and their language, iii) the educated people of a non-Hindi state were already bilingual (local language and English) and therefore do not wish to modify the characteristic of their own bilingualism (to a local language plus Hindi) (Barannikov 1972:164)
The nature and pattern of these movements against Hindi as an official language reveal clearly the following points (Srivastava 1979:58):
1) Language movements were organized by such speech communities which felt that with the exclusive adoption of Hindi as an official language, their opportunity for securing government jobs and other status positions will be lost and therefore, their social mobility will be locked. Added to this was a fear that Hindi speaking Indians would tend to dominate the government.
2) Language movements were started by the elite middle class who are bilinguals, (speaking English in addition to a regional language). Apart from laying occasional emphasis on the promotion of their own regional languages, they consolidated their action towards the retention of English, which gave them power and status.
Instead of Hindi, English is used for inter-state communication. Some arguments given in favour of the use of English are:
1) English is a developed language best suited for our industrial and scientific progress.
2) English is not really a foreign language for India since it is being used for several centuries by Indian people.
The prestige attached to a particular language has a significant role to play with regard to language maintenance and language shift. In the Tamil situation, English occupied and still continues to occupy a prestigious place in several domains of formal use. Also those people who use English in their social interaction are highly respected.
The Tamil language has 2500 years of continuous recorded history. It has produced literary works, the best of which are comparable to the best in the world. It started a literary trend in bhakti poetry, which later spread to other parts of the sub-continent. It codified a philosophical system called ‘Saiva Siddhantam within Hinduism. It was a language of administration in which the kings made their proclamations which were necessitated by the development of a political system and maintained land records which were necessitated by the development of an irrigation system. The culture fostered by it reached heights of achievements in arts and architecture. The influence of its culture extended beyond the shores of India to South East Asia, which was facilitated by the culture’s mastery of navigation.
Tamil was thus not an undeveloped language when its modernization started. Its efforts at modernizing in the sense of described stage are a change from one state of development to another. This suggests that change is not necessarily linear. It can be said to be spiral in Tamil in the sense that the change moves horizontally at a gradient and comes above the earlier stage but without direct line of contact with it.
Adopting a modernized language from elsewhere is normally a result of unequal political relation between two societies. The political and economic beneficiaries of the adopted language may even prohibit the native language to acquire some of the modernizing features, like the ban of the colonial British Government on publication of books in Indian languages when the printing technology was introduced in India. Thus, the under-development of a language may be a consequence of the political power of a developed language.
Modernization may also be hindered internally by politically influential strategists holding on to traditional norms codified in old grammars and lexicon leading to situation of linguistic anachronism. Tamil gives evidence for both kinds of hindrance to its modernization.
The process of modernization of Tamil and their features characterizing modernization is described in this part. As far of the use of technology is concerned, Tamil has not yet gone beyond printing technology and oral technology. There is a demand to update the writing and printing technology by rationalizing the existing characters to eliminate irregular shapes and by adding new characters to represent new sounds that have come into the language as a result of modernization, particularly in the area of technical vocabulary and non-native names due to eco-transcendence of the language (Shanmugam 1978).
There is also a minority voice to change the script to Roman to become modern, as it is believed that it will give easy access to all language related technology developed after printing. There are languages like Turkish, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia etc. which did this as part of their modernization. Roman script is a strong indicator of modernity for many tribal societies in India, who want to adopt it for their languages. Romanization is also considered by some to provide higher order integration between linguistic communities in India when all Indian languages adopt the Roman script, and simultaneously with ‘advanced’ languages of Europe and America, which happen to use this script, thus leading to universal integration. It is also believed by these people that one script for all languages is technologically efficient. It may be seen that the technological and structural components of modernization interact here perceptually.
There is, however resistance to introduce new characters as it is against the traditional norms of adapting the foreign words to the Tamil phonological system. There is acceptance so far only to regularization of thirteen characters, which was done by an order of the Government of Tamilnadu in 1984. This change is considered not merely a refinement of technology (i.e., the alphabet in this case) but also as being rational. It was originally propagated by a rationalist movement in Tamilnadu. This is an instance of technology interacting with value orientation perceptually.
The technological updating of the language through script reform may, however, be rendered unnecessary when more advanced technology comes into being. For example, the computer technology is powerful to handle the complexities of any script. It is then the technology which develops to meet the demands of traditional patterns and not the tradition which changes to suit the limitations of technology.
The oral electronic media in Tamil has not yet solved the problem of style in this new mode of communication. The problems relate to having appropriate and acceptable instant translation for newscasts, to remove the bias of urban educated discourse style in rural programmes and to handle the overlap of formal (Written) and informal spoken styles in interview programmes (Arokianathan 1988). An example of unacceptable translation is
நடுநடுவே அவருக்குப் பிடித்தமான தோட்டமிடுதலில் செலவிடுவார்;
For “occasionally he spends his time in his favourite part time of gardening.” An example of dissonance in discourse style is
இந்த நேரம் மகசூலெ பெருக்கும்னு சொல்லப்படுது
“It is said that this fertilizer will increase the yield” instead of
இந்த ஒரத்தெ போச்சா மகசூலு கூடும்னு சொல்றாங்க.
“(people) say that if (you) use this fertiliser, the yield will increase”. Unlike in many other languages, the style of this media as used in its newscasts and announcements is not the model for the standard formal style of Tamil for the people to adopt.
Tamil is trying to acquire new differentiations in styles and registers. There is new movement to develop a scientific language to write science. Administrative style of writing and legal style of writing have emerged. The journalists and creative writers have introduced new semantic, syntactic, morphological and morphophonemic features into the language, which distinguish their style from others (Manian 1986). It may be noted that all these new style differences relate to variables which are not conditioned by ascription (i.e. birth) like region and caste as in the case of dialect differences. In the context of new styles emerging, a crosscurrent, which has official sanction, is also working with force particularly through educational textbooks, which are produced only by the Stage, to discourage multiplicity of lexical styles and to promote one paristic style motivated by considerations, of identification with a pristine past when loan words were few, and of fear or loss of distinctive identity of language (Annamalai 1979). Insistence on a monostyle is counter to the process of modernization.
There are also other problems in the development of style. The sensational style of political speech designed to appeal to primordial sentiments is not differentiated from a style appropriate for commercial and academic communications. To give an example, a letter from a Senior Divisional Manager of the Life Insurance Corporation of India to all of the Company’s agents of his division appealing to them to reach the target of new insurance policies fixed by the company writes:
“குறிக்கோலால் உங்கள் நாடி நரம்புகள் முறுக்கேறிவிட்டதைப் பார்க்கிறேன். ஊங்கள் நத்தம் சூடேறிக்கொதிப்பதைப் பார்க்கிறேன். வேளிவியின் பூரணத்தினால் பூரணகுருதியால் உண்டாகும் வெற்றித் தீச்சிவாலையினால் விண் சிவக்கட்டும்.... மண் சிவக்கட்டும்.”
“to achieve this target, I see your veins popping up and your blood warming up...let the sky become red by the flame of your success from the fire of your yagna, let the earth too become red...”
One can easily see that this style is unfit for business communication marked by ornamental and sensational use of clichés. Similarly, an invitation to an academic seminar on medium of education addresses the intelligentsia thus “come to get an elaborate feast of thought; come to get invigorated to achieve what is want; come to attend the conference seminar”
“...விரிவான சிந்தனை விருந்துபொ வேண்டியதை எய்த வீறுபெற வாருங்கள். ருத்தரங்கு மாநாட்டுக்கு வாருங்கள். ”
Another problem is the difficulty in developing a non-technical style to deal with intellectual matters for the intelligentsia who do not feel comfortable with English, which has been in use for this purpose. There is emerging an elite, thanks to the extension of education, who are not competent in English in spite of the widespread preference for it, and who would like to have in Tamil, matters of intellectual interest concerning social problems, economic and technological developments and their consequences, ethical questions, political issues transcending immediate environment, etc. The problem of non-technical intellectual (i.e. analytical and objective) style to communicate with non-specialists is evidenced in the recently introduced Tamil version of the popular English magazine, India Today, which can be assumed to have been started to meet this need with national and international stories ranging over a wide variety of subjects. In the attempt to translate such an intellectual, non-academic and informal style from English to Tamil, the magazine ends up often in a funny and bizzare mixture of serious writing and slangy expressions. Some examples are:
வி. பி. சிங்கிற்குத் தண்ணி காட்டக் கூடிய ஒரே ஆள் அமிதாப் பச்சன்
“only Amitabh is capable of making V.P.Singh eat his dust’ (for the English original “only Amitabh is capable of giving the Janata Dal leader a run for his money”)
Another problem is in comprehension and unnaturalness of some of the new styles. The technical style used in the text books of science, which copies English, is hard for comprehension and is unnatural syntactically.
While differentiated styles are developing and have their developmental problems, higher order integration of the language is emerging due to increasing rate and level of literacy and socio-political awareness, which broaden the base for interaction and identification with the Tamil language for the different segments of the Tamil population leading to sharing of structural features and perceptual values among these segments. A standard spoken Tamil is emerging common to all segments of the population. The High and Low varieties of diglossia, noted for their divergence, are converging abstractly (Annamalai 1983) and the High variety is now easily accessible to all.
Value orientation is the most crucial component of modernization because of its signification of the cultural acceptance of modernization. Eco-transcendence, which is one of the features of value orientation, as described above, is made possible by opening new channels of communication, which itself is an indicator of modernization (Lerner 1963). This value orientation is exhibited in the Tamil language beginning to deal with subjects which are not the concerns of immediate social and physical environment and cultural existence of its speakers. It may be done through translation, which is a new channel of communication, or through original writing. The expansion of subjects dealt with in Tamil is, however, yet to take place in sizable proportion.
For example, writings of current debates on the issues of human rights, environmental pollution, ethical questions on the social impact of science and technology, information revolution, etc, and happenings in foreign lands like Latin America, Soviet Union, China etc. in Tamil have not gone much beyond news reporting. The difference in the coverage of national level events and issues and of non-political areas in the English and Tamil editions of India Today also reflects this. The Tamil edition has more stories of local political and film interests at the expense of stories of national interest, for which one has access only in English.
Rationality is exhibited in Tamil in many ways such as development of a secular style of language, expansion of intellectual vocabulary and emergence of objective style of expression. The expansion of secular words and secular use of words can be seen in the followings examples. The words referring to service castes and castes of craftsmen have been changed to occupational words without any connotation of caste naavidan ‘barber’ has become mutitiruttuvoon ‘hair dresser’, vannaan ‘Washerman’ to salavai tolilaali landerer’ (literally laundering labourer) aasaari to porkollar ‘Goldsmith’ etc. The last word has been taken from classical literature giving evidence that tradition comes to the aid of modernization. The use of honorific pronouns is determined more by age and economic status of the addressee and referent than by ritual status (i.e. caste). Words referring to natural phenomena have come to be used for man-made things: min in minnal ‘lightening’ being used for minsaaram ‘electricity’; the sacred word saami ‘God’ as a term of address for superiors has given place to saar ‘sir’ except in feudal settings which sill continue; saar ‘sir’ is preferred to the kinship word ayyaa ‘father’ to address the teacher or the boss except for Tamil teachers and for bosses and strangers in traditional settings; though ammaa ‘mother’ is still common for elderly or superior woman, maadam ‘madam’ is also used particularly in cosmopolitan settings. Sacred and secular, ethnic and class expressions co-exist in traditional and modern settings respectively. This shows that the development of new kind of vocabulary based on modern values does not necessarily replace the vocabulary and its use based on traditional values.
Like the technical vocabulary in Tamil to codify new knowledge in common use, the expanded intellectual vocabulary has not yet gained general currency. Words like தரவு ‘data’ கருதுகோள் ‘hypothesis’ சான்று ‘evidence’ நிரூபணம் proof are still in the realm of academic writing and they sound pedantic in a general discussion in Tamil. The technical terms relating to higher levels of knowledge generated and disseminated terms relating to higher levels of knowledge generated and disseminated at the university level mostly rest in the glossaries and are not in active use.
There has been a fertile literature in Tamil from ancient period. Those literatures can be divided into two, viz., poetry and prose. Poetry is the form of language used to express human emotion and prose, a form of language used to express human thoughts and stories (Vanamamalai 1978:1). Prose was written to convey the message, i.e., the actual happenings to the educated and uneducated people. But poetry which is full of imagination can be understood by a limited number of educated people. It is also described as follows:
“Prose is best defined as comprising all forms of careful literary expression which are not metrically versified and hence the definition form ‘prosus’ (direct or straight). The notion being that it is straight and plain, and is used for stating precisely what is true in reason or fact.
Prose, however, is not everything that is loosely said. The sentence must be built up in a manner which displays variety and flexibility. There should be a harmony and even rhythm and harmony are not recognizably metrical. Again, the colour and form of adjectives, is an important factor in the construction of prose. The omission of certain faults too is essential. One must be content to say that, Prose is a literary expression which is not subjected to any spacious or metrical law.
There are different views among scholars regarding the evolution of prose and poetry, especially about the language that evolved first. In Tamil, there is a controversy among scholars about the chronological evolution of poetry and prose. Since Tamil is one of the classical languages, the prediction about its evolution is difficult to make.
From the available literature, it is clear that poetic form was used in those days. One can understand from inscriptions that prose was also practised to some extent in those days. The written records prove that even before these inscriptions, poetry was used.
The early reference for prose is found in the inscriptions. Those inscriptions were written in Brahmi scripts. It gave the details of the persons who patronized the Jain monks. It seems that the purpose of those inscriptions was to propagate the name and fame of those people. The details are given in prose form. They do not tell anything about the history of prose or prose literature.
The inscriptions and edicts of the Pallava period show different kinds of prose styles. (Historians opine the Pallava period between 3rd century A.D. and 9th century A.D.). The inscriptions and edicts were written using the Sanskrit and Grantha alphabets. (Somale 1968; Vanamamalai 1978). There are two types of prose styles practised during this period. They were:
1) Colloquial style and 2) Literary style
The colloquial style was used in inscriptions in order to communicate with the common people. Most of the government orders, possession of temple lands and other religious activities were written in colloquial style. The words used in day-to-day life were selected for such inscriptions. New words were either coined or borrowed from Sanskrit to express new ideas. The writings were in the people’s language.
Literary style was used to teach people who were interested in learning the religious and grammatical literature. So the prose was written in a formal way such as teaching a student in a class room. In the literary prose, there were two styles, viz., elucidational style and interpretational style that were followed to teach the grammatical works. The religious ideas were taught in a separate style known as philosophical style. All these were in high literary style (Paramasivanantham 1959).
This is a kind of prose style in which the combination of Sanskrit and Tamil words are used. The scholars who were well versed in religious works learned both Sanskrit and Tamil. So, lot of Sanskrit words are found in their works. This style was practiced by Jain. They used grantha script and scripts of the regional languages like Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, etc., in their writings to propagate their religious ideas. They used manippravalam as a religious link language.
Tamil prose was restricted to commentaries in the early period. It was used for new purposes by the Europeans, when they came to Tamilnadu as traders, missionaries and administrators. Each of these groups has contributed to the development of prose.
The Christian missionaries from Europe came to Tamilnadu, with the sole purpose of spreading Christianity among the local population. When the Christian missionaries arrived, prose writing in Tamil was in this early stage of development. Books on literature, medicine, astrology and astronomy were written in poetry, which could be understood only by learned scholars and pandits. The missionaries found that Tamil poetry and other literary writings were not intelligible to a large number of people. They realised the need of Tamil prose to reach the masses. So the missionaries resorted to Tamil prose.
The Jesuits in South India had much earlier started a printing press at Punnaikkayal, a small hamlet near Tirunelveli in Tamilnadu. They published a series of books and pamphlets in Tamil to disseminate Catholic doctrines among the people. They followed a very lucid prose style. Their initial publication like Flos sanctorum(1578 A.D.), Doctrina Christiana, and the first monthly newspaper Tamil magazine (1831 A.D.) of the Madras religious tract society were all religious works (Venkatasamy 1955). Works like Ve:tiyar olukkam, ve:ta vilakkam, parama:rtta kuru kataikal, etc., were written in simple prose style.
After this, the available evidence for prose is found in Ananda Rangam Pillai’s diary. The writings of Ananda Rangam Pillai consist of long phrases expressing ideas in so many words. The sentences are complex and one cannot easily identify where a sentence starts and where it ends.
There were also some scholars like Arumuga Navalar, Ramalinga Swamikal who wrote prose in simple style. Summaries of Puranas in verse were written in prose by scholars like Arumuga Navalar to propagate Hinduism against the inroad of Christianity. Those prose styles are considered as model for the present day prose.
By the end of the 19th century, due to the impact of Western literature, novel literature came into Tamil. In 1876, Mayuram Vedenayakam Pillai published his novel, Pirata:pa Mutaliya:r Carittiram which was the first to appear in Tamil. After this work, several novels like, Rajam Ayar’s kamala;mpa:l Carittiram, Madava Ayyar’s Padma:vati carittiruam were written to educate people against the veils of the society. Apart from this, prose of that period was also used to propagate the rationalistic views. Twentieth century Tamil prose style consists of different varieties such as literary style of scholars, pure Tamil prose style, mass media style which is easily intelligible to common people. Tamil poet Subramanya Bharathi was responsible for expanding the use of Tamil prose to various new domains of use. As his writings were simple to adopt, easy to understand, they provoked the thinking of the people towards social reforms and nationalism. In the early part of the 20th century as well as after 1950’s, several scholars and personalities like U.V. Swaminatha Ayyar, V. Kalyanasundaram, T.K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliayar, S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, R.P.Sethu Pillai had contributed much for the development of Tamil prose.
In the beginning of this century, Tamil was a good case of skewed development. It had 2000 years of literary history and had a highly developed literary language, almost all of which was poetic. Even philosophical, astrological and medicinal treatises were in poetry. Prose was restricted to the exposition of the creative and philosophical literature to scholars. Tamil was used in education, but was restricted to a small class and to literature and philosophy. Tamil had been used in administration, as partially revealed through inscriptions, but there was a break in its continuity when other languages became the languages of administration. Hence the development of Tamil was skewed and the written language was incomprehensible without special training. The problems of comprehension came to the forefront when, in this century, poetry was made accessible to and prose was developed for the consumption of an increasing number of literate population with the help of the introduction of printing technology, which helped the spread of modern education and journalism.
There were conscious efforts to simplify Tamil in the areas of script, sandhi and syntax as part of its modernisation process. There was a parallel move to purify Tamil of its foreign elements in this century (Annamalai 1977) and, with its concentration on the vocabulary; it was another force for simplification to contend within the area of vocabulary.
Simplification of script consisted of visual discrimination of convergent letters and sequences and regularisation of divergent letters to follow a single pattern. The language written on palm leaves, copper plates and rocks did not visually discriminate between pure consonants and the consonants with the inherent vowel a and between short and long e and o and their metros. For example, what was written as nfhsh could be read as kolaa, kolar, koolaa, koolar, keeralaa and keeralar among other things (Venkataswami 1962:42). Fr. Beschi, an Italian missionary, brought, in the eighteenth century, visual discrimination in print by reintroducing the use of a dot (or circle) over pure consonants as described in the traditional Tamil grammars and a stroke and a loop at the bottom respectively for long e and o and a loop at the top in the matra symbols of both. These were accepted and gained currency. Thus the different readings mentioned above all were written distinctly as கொளா, கொளர், கோளா, கோளர், கேரளா and கேரளர்.
In the earlier writing, words, clauses and sentences were not discriminated. A string of letters could be identified as one sentence or more and a sentence could be segmented in more than one way with different identifications of words. Unique reading of utterances (barring of course syntactic homonymy) was made possible by introducing punctuation marks including space between words. The punctuation distinguished sentence types also like the declarative, interrogative and imperative. The punctuation marks reflected the phonetic pause and intonation in speech, thus making the transfer from visual symbols to oral sounds easier. These two innovations helped to simplify the task of reading by eliminating reflection and back tracking and thus increasing speed and comprehension.
Regularisation of divergences arises from the assumption that what is regular is simple. Irregularities in the Tamil script in the matra symbols of a few vowels, viz., aa, ai and oo, with certain consonants were thus proposed to be regularised by following the pattern of other consonants. For example, னா was to be written as னா and னை as னை. The separate vowel symbols for the diphthongs ai and au were proposed to be eliminated, since they could be represented by a sequence (the vowel a followed by y or v) in the word initial position, which is the only place they occur and since by dispensing with them, the number of vowel symbols could be reduced by two.
These changes, or reforms as they are called, were meant to simplify the alphabet from the point of view of its learning and later on from the point of view of accommodating it to the typewriter key board. These proposals for simplifying the alphabet were first made by Manicka Naicker (1871-1931), an engineer by profession, and was adopted by a political party, DK. But they did not gain wide acceptance. Recently a proposal has been made to regularise the matra symbols for the vowels u and u. It was discussed in various conferences including the Tamil Scholars Meet (Pulavar Kulu) and in the ‘All India University Tamil Teachers’ Conference, but there is no consensus. There is a wild proposal by a couple of scholars to reduce the alphabet from 247 to 31 letters or even less by representing the consonants and vowels independently in sequence as is done in the Roman script (Mahadevan 1975, Kothandaraman 1974). According to this proposal தமிழ் will be written as த்அம்இழ். The claim for its simplicity is presumptuous and spurious.
Simplification of script, which has succeeded, is the elimination of the composite letters for the clusters of identical consonants and one cluster of non-identical consonants like க்க for kk, கூ for tc etc. This has reduced the number of symbols to be learnt and devised for the key board.
Related to the script simplification, is the simplification of the numeral symbols. Tamil numeral system was a decimal system, but had M symbol for zero.
There were separate symbols for 10 and its decimal multiples and they were used to indicate digits. Thus the numbers 10, 11, 21, 100, 101, 111 and 221 were written respectively as க உ@ க ள ளக்; ள;க உளஉ;க. The complications of this writing system, like the Roman numeral system, for computational operations cab be easily seen and have been illustrated by Pandala Ramasami Naicker (in 1825 and reproduced in Venkataswami op. cit. 51-61). He introduced 0 (zero) following the Indian-Arabic system and the digital symbols became unnecessary. The above mentioned numbers will now be written respectively as க0, கக, உக, க00, க0க, ககக, உஉக. This simplification was accepted and whoever uses the Tamil numerals now-a-days follows this practice. However, the common practice is to use the Indian-Arabic numerals themselves.
In sandhi, simplification was aimed at the visual discrimination of words and their easy identification by preserving their isomorphic unity. This was done by avoiding external sandhi. When sandhi operates, it produces many variants of, the same word as in maram paarteen ‘I saw a tree’, maram kanteen ‘I saw a tree’ maram caayntatu ‘the tree fell down’ maram teevai ‘(we) need trees’, mara murintatu ‘the tree broke’, where the single word maram ‘tree’ has been realized as maram, maran, maran, maran and mara. In extreme cases like muttaattaamarai ‘throny stalked lotus’, the phonological shape of the word is changed beyond immediate recognition. The above phrase is composed of mul taal taamarai and the middle word taal (தாள்) has been realized as - taat - (டாட்). Operation of sandhi also results in ambiguous sequences. Besides the loss of isomorphic unity of a word, these effects of sandhi also necessitate reflection and it is obvious how they slow down reading.
Avoidance of external sandhi as a means of simplification was not only motivated by the desire to preserve the isomorphic unity of the word but also was forced to some extent by the decision to use space between words. Phonotactic rules like the restriction on the occurrence of retroflex consonants in the word initial and final positions would be violated if space was used and muttaattaamarai was written as mut taat taamarai. The use of other punctuation marks like comma indicating phonetic pause also made the operation of external sandhi, which obliterates the phonetic pause, incompatible.
Avoidance of external sandhi brought the utterance closer to speech also and thus the gap between the spoken and written styles was narrowed facilitating reading and writing. The demorphonemicised compounds and words like mankutam ‘earthern pot’, palpoti ‘tooth powder’, katavukku ‘to the door’, etc. from matkutam, palpoti, katavirku, etc. resemble speech. There are similar compound words, however, where the external sandhi was not avoided in the written language. Compounds like marappetti ‘wooden box’, where sandhi has operated, were continued to be used, and in such compounds the sandhi operates in their spoken forms also. Thus the speech forms constrained the extent of demorphonemisation in writing. The constraint of speech on demorphonemisation at word level would go counter to the visual discrimination of words and preservation of their unity.
The speech form, however, did not always determine the demorphophonemisation process. For example, maramtaan only tree’, though pronounced as marantaan with assimilation of nasal, is written without sandhi. There are identical forms like avantaan ‘he only’ from avan taan, which do not have sandhi but are also closer to the spoken form (in this case also the nasal is not assimilated to dental as in speech). It may be noted that these forms are not compound words. It may be said that when there is conflict between preserving isomorphic unity of the word and maintaining closeness to the spoken form, the former takes precedence in the case of forms which are neither simple words nor compound words and the latter takes precedence in the case of simple words and compound words.
Consideration of length of the word takes precedence over to being closer to the spoken form in some words. Tamil, being an agglutinative language, ends up in long words, particularly verbs. In such cases there is a tendency to demorphophonemicise and split up the word. For example, peecikkontiruntaarkal ‘they were talking’ is written as pecikkontu iruntarkal. There is, however, variation in this practice. The news papers like Dina Thanti and Malai Murasu, which take special efforts to improve their readability for semi-literates, split up the words like the above, but not the other news papers.
Demorphophonemisation was spearheaded by journalists, creative writers and critics. Two important persons who actively propagated it were T. K. Chidambaranatha Mudaliyar (T.K.C.) and V. Ramaswami (Va. Ra.). It did not meet with much opposition except in the case of compound words and publication of demorphophonemised versions of old literary texts. The argument for the former position was that demorphophonemisation of compound words might lead to demorphophonemisation of simple words also. There might be no logical reason to stop writing karraan ‘(he) studied’ as kaltaan when puttarai ‘meadow’ is written as pultarai. It did extend to some derived words like paalkaaran ‘milkman’. There was vehement opposition for the proposal of T.K.C. to double the stops after liquids like pulttarai to uniquely correspond to pronunciation, since a single stop is fricativised in this context in pronunciation. This proposal did not find favour. It is really not necessary since the stop pronunciation is predictable because of the word boundary which precedes it. The argument for the latter position mentioned above was that it distorted the original text, violated the metrical design and spoiled the rhetoric beauty of assonance and alliteration. Distinct identification of words was not very relevant for poetry since a sequence is divided on the basis of metrical and not lexical considerations.
Demorphophonemisation has succeeded to a great extent in the modern written Tamil. Maximum demorphonemisation is at the phrase and clause levels. At these levels the sandhi of doubling the initial consonant still operates, but there is variation. At the level of compound words of the three morphophonemic processes viz., addition, deletion and change, the first two operate. Even here one finds variations like viiraanattittam and viiraanamtittam ‘viranam scheme’, tanka vilai and tankam vilai ‘gold price’, kantetu and kantu etu ‘find’, etc. The demorphophonemicised variants are, however, less frequent. The morphophonemic process to change is not now operative at this level except in a few newly coined words from literary sources like corpolivu ‘public lecture’. It must be noted that it is pronounced in the speech also in the same way. Regarding the new editions of old literary works almost all the major works have got demorphophonemicised editions.
One aspect of simplification in syntax was reducing the length of a sentence. Words and phrases like iravu neeram, oree iruttu ‘Night, pitch dark’ came to be accepted in the place of full sentences. The complex sentences and compound clauses were broken into simple sentence. The use of quotation marks made it possible to avoid conjoining all the quoted sequences with enrum and to use instead only once enru at the end of the quotation. Another way to avoid conjoining a set of sentences which are predicated by a single verb in a matrix sentence was to use a pronoun to refer to them in the matrix sentence, which was written as a separate sentence. The same device was used when comparison was made between events expressed in sentences by adding, poola ‘like’ to the pronoun which referred to the sentence or sentences compared and began a new sentence. Relating sentences with logical operators like atanaal ‘so’" aanaal ‘but’, iruntaalum ‘nevertheless’, which begin a new sentence, eliminated the need for using clauses like the infinitive for this purpose.
These new syntactic constructions reflected the speech pattern also. Syntactic constructions which were peculiar to or more common in the spoken language were accepted in the written language also. Thus the simplification of syntax consisted also bringing the written language closer to the spoken language in syntax.
Among the notable early Tamil scholars who used simple syntax were Arumuga Navalar (1822-1867), U. V. Swaminatha Aiyar (1855-:1942) and T. V. Kalyanasundara Mudaliar (Thiru Vi. Ka., 1883-1953). All of them were involved in the use of Tamil in new domains like education and mass media including pamphleting, journalism and public lectures. Among the creative writers Subramaniya Bharati started the use of simple syntax and influenced others who came after him. Simple syntax is now used not only in the popular writings but also in scholarly writings.
At the lexical level, the efforts of simplification were to use the words of the spoken language. There was, however, serious attempt to simplify the spelling by following the pronunciation of the spoken word and thus eliminate the difference between speaking on the one hand and reading and writing on the other. The move was to prefer the words found in speech to those found only in literary texts, since it would make the language more comprehensible to a large number of people. To analyse the lexical simplification in Tamil, a distinction must be made in the spoken words between native and non-native. The native spoken words which are used only in standard speech but not in modern writing (excluding the conversations in fiction and play) are very few like sumaar, romba, etc. and slangs. The written language had been accepting the spoken words and this trend continued except for a few words like the ones mentioned above. They are found more commonly in personal letters, fiction (the narrative part) and newspapers. Since the written words exist side by side with the spoken words, like kuuru and col ‘say’, ul and iru ‘be’, the written language has many synonyms or near-synonyms and there is no attempt to reduce them.
Regarding the non-native spoken words, the purism movement was opposed to their use. When the non-native words in the written language corresponding to the spoken language like kastam ‘difficulty’, kantaktar ‘conductor’ were replaced by pure Tamil words like innal, natattunar, etc. largely from literary and inscriptional sources. This raises the question whether purification and simplification worked at cross purposes. There were heated discussions about this between non-purists (mostly journalists, creative writers and critics), who argued that replacing commonly used non-native words by pure Tamil words would undermine comprehension and use of the language by the common people (Somale 1968:100-107) and purists (mostly Tamil scholars), who argued that the free use of non-native words would destroy the beauty, fertility and identity of the Tamil language and thus would go against the very purpose of language development. Between these two efforts of modernisation of Tamil, purism succeeded to a large extent in the vocabulary (Somale op. cit.: 112-151). Nevertheless, the trend of accepting the pure Tamil words in the spoken language itself, mainly due to lexical expansion on puristic lines for expressing new objects, institutions and concepts as a part of modernisation process, is likely to narrow down the lexical gap between the spoken language and the written language. If this trend continues and succeeds, then purification may not vitiate simplification. Successful blending of both has been done by scholar-writers like M. Varadarasan (Mu. Va.), who is considered to have set an example for modern Tamil prose.
The Tamilnadu government directed to use Tamil for the purpose of recording evidences and in all proceedings with certain exceptions in all District Criminal Courts, from January 1970 through a notification. But from the district court onwards it is English that dominates in administration. Arguments, recording evidences, judgments and even execution of petitions etc., are in English.
In the ancient period, medium of instruction and administration of Tamilnadu was in Tamil. Though there were a few Prakrit and Sanskrit inscriptions the majority of them were in Tamil. When the Britishers came to rule in India, Tamil was replaced by English in administration. After independence, in pursuance of the formation of linguistic states in India, all the states replaced English by their own regional language. Tamilnadu is one of the earliest among the states to enact the Official Language Act. The then Government of Madras, as early as 1956, brought the statute, ‘the Madras Official Language Act 1956’ under which Tamil has been declared as the official language of the state. This Act received the assent of the Governor on 19th January 1957.
As a primary measure, a committee known as Official Language Committee was constituted by the government of Tamilnadu. The main duty of the committee was to make speedy introduction of Tamil in the field of administration.
Under section 4 of the Official Language Act of Tamilnadu, the state government may issue notification from time to time to use Tamil for official purposes. As the switch over from English to Tamil for official use could not be effected all of a sudden, it was decided to bring about the change by stages.
The first achievement was the introduction of Tamil in government offices at lower level, where no type writers were in use. This was introduced in January, 1958. But even then the judicial orders and appellate orders were allowed to be written in English.
After this, in the year 1960, Tamil was introduced in six departments, viz., 1) Collector’s office 2) R.T.O’s office, 3) Taluk Office, 4) Office of the District Agricultural Officers, 5) Office of the Executive Engineer and 6) Block Development Offices. During the year 1961-63, the scheme was extended to all government offices upto the district level. In this way, the introduction of administrative Tamil got gradual momentum.
In 1962, the Official Language Committee formulated a set of proposals for introducing Tamil medium in four stages, as follows:
1 Stage : Tamil shall be used in all official communications addressed to the public.
II Stage: All heads of the departments are instructed to communicate with their sub-ordinates and district officers in Tamil.
III Stage: Tamil shall be used in all the correspondences with other heads of the departments.
IV Stage: Tamil shall be used in all communications to the secretariat.
The first stage of the activity was implemented in the year 1963. Tamil was used in all official communications issued from the government offices to the public. There were some exceptional categories in which English was used to avoid complication in administration. They were:
1) The preparation of pay bills, contingent bills, stipend bills and other communications addressed to the treasuries, the accountant general and audit officers.
2) In all correspondences addressed to the heads of departments of other states and central government offices.
3) In the state government courts, other than the village courts, the orders related to the appeal, etc.
4) In all communications to the foreign embassy and persons belonging to the diplomatic services and other foreigners.
The second stage was implemented in the year 1965. When sufficient number of Tamil typists was available, the heads of the departments were asked to correspond in Tamil with their subordinates and district officers. Orders were issued to reply in Tamil to the subordinate and district offices to the communications received from the heads of departments.
The third stage, in which Tamil was used in communications with other departments within the state and this was introduced in the year 1969.
The fourth stage was reached, when Tamil was introduced in the secretariat departments. Except in communications dealing with the technical matters, the other letters from the heads of departments were in Tamil.
In the secretariat, excepting law, finance, legislative assembly and legislative council departments, the first stage of this scheme was introduced with effect from 1st May 1966 and it was extended gradually to other stages. Law and Finance departments were also brought under the first stage of the scheme with effect from 1st April 1970.
The very purpose and goal of mass media is to make communication effective and simple in such a way that it could be understood by everyone. India is a developing country which has a higher percentage of illiterates. So if one wants to give a wider effect to communication, in order to make communication reach the common folk easily, the style of the language used in such media should be simple and not pedantic. The language that is used in such programmes must neither be highly literary variety of Tamil (to which in which only the elites are accustomed) nor completely spoken (in which we find more diversity). So this must be nearer to the so-called modern literary Tamil.
In Tamil Nadu, though the majority of the people speak Tamil, one can find the native speakers of other languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Saurashtri, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, English, etc. that have permanently settled in many parts of Tamilnadu. In order to make them ‘at home’, a number of cultural programmes, plays, features and other varieties of entertainment programmes are broadcasted. Among the above said languages, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and English are spoken by comparatively more number of people. Hence Madras-B of All India Radio is broadcasting programmes in the above said four languages.
Mass communication has to be effective in the sense, it is the one which can spread not only more general communications but also educate the masses to a great extent. In order to make the ‘language use’ simple, popular and efficient the type of language varieties as well as styles have to be standardised and modernised atleast to a certain extent that it could be easily adaptable. In Tamil broadcast one could find a number of programmes ranging from news bulletin to agricultural programmes and the type of language used in these programmes also vary accordingly. One could also find stylistic variations among the language varieties used viz. spoken style and literary style. Depending upon the programme that is broadcasted, the style of language use varies. The programmes broadcasted are classified on the basis of social factors such as education (literacy), socioeconomic status, occupation, age group, sex, etc. In short it could be said that the Tamil broadcasting system covers a wider range of socio-cultural interactions of the society taken as a whole.
It has long been recognised that there are at least two distinct varieties of Tamil, viz. spoken and literary. This condition of having two different forms of language, with the distinction between them relating to prestige or other extra-linguistic values, is not an unfamiliar one. This situation is termed as Diglossia by Ferguson.
On the basis of the variety of Tamil used in broadcast, the programmes could be broadly classified into two categories viz. programmes in spoken variety, and programmes in literary variety as shown below.
Tamil Literary variety spoken variety Language use Language use Programmes Programmes P1 P2 P3 P4 P1 P2 P3 P4 1. netivilakkam 1. kulantaykalukka:na nikallcci ‘way of life’ ‘Programme for children’ 2. pe:ccu 2. kira:masamuta:yam ‘talk’ ‘rural society’ 3. sanki:ta upanya:sam 3. vivaca:yikalukka:na nikalcci ‘musical discourse’ ‘progamme for farmers’ 4. ilakkiyappeerurai 4. ma:tar nikalcci ‘literary discourse’ ‘programme for women’ etc. etc.
Tamil is one of the highly diglossic languages. Mass communication through the spoken language becomes effective in the sense that the masses are quite accustomed to understand spoken usages (in spite of the dialect diversity) rather than the literacy usages. This is due to the important fact that the percentage of literacy is very low ranging upto 30% approximately. Hence, the language varieties used in radio broadcast, news papers, etc. have to be planned, modernised and standardised in such a way that the society may not have much difficulty in understanding the communications and other day-to-day affairs, events, etc. This type of linguistic situation is quite common in the rural areas where the percentage of illiteracy is very high. Any mass contact programme or those programmes intended for mass education have to be in the simple style of the ‘living language’. Then only the outcome of mass communication network will be more efficient in their function.
Literary variety of Tamil is the one which is acquired by a native speaker through formal education. Using the literary variety in informal discourses is very rare. However, in broadcast, literary variety is used in formal situations like literary discourses, talks, features, etc. Since these programmes are mainly intended for the particular groups of the society (such as elite, students of schools and colleges), these programmes are mostly in literary Tamil. Moreover, the usages of spoken variety in literary discourses is not encouraged by a few in the society.
In the present day situations, it is rather difficult to find a speaker who uses only a single style in his speech behaviour. Every speaker shows a shift of some linguistic variable, at least, as the social contact and topic change.
Switching from one language to another or from one variety of a language to another when social situation demands is called code switching. Code switching may take place even between two different languages which are not at all related. One can find quite a number of instances where the code switching from Tamil to English takes place.
There is a clear and rather considerable difference between the two varieties of Tamil, viz. Literary Tamil and Spoken Tamil. Diglossia is a particular kind of language standardization where two distinct varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the speech community and where each of the two varieties is assigned a definite social function. The literary variety has in all cases to be learnt as a school language. Generally speaking, literary Tamil has greater prestige than the spoken variety and is often regarded as more beautiful even if it is less intelligible. Linguistically speaking, the differences between the literary Tamil and spoken Tamil in diglossic situation may be considerable. Many of the differences are vocabulary differences. Usage of literary Tamil in every day speech is generally felt to be artificial, pedantic and reactionary. So one can find code switching within Tamil in the literary programmes such as ilakkiyacco:lay ‘literary grove’, sangi:ta upanya:sam ‘musical discourse’, inkum ankum ‘here and there’ etc.
Code switching from literary to spoken Tamil is found to take place in the following contexts.
1. When the speaker wants to make some points specific and clear to his audience, he switches from literary to spoken Tamil. This very often happens when the speaker is talking on a new theme or a concept.
2. In a literary discourse, whenever the speaker wants to attract the attention of the audience to his talk, he cracks some jokes. This is done by code switching phenomenon. Jokes in literary forms, as a rule, are not appealing to the audience. So in most of such cases of code switching, the spoken variety, is often used. This type of code switching (from literary to spoken) reveals the language attitudes of the society, especially towards mass communications. The present day sociolinguistic set up found in the Tamil situation shows the usage of spoken variety in many instances of mass communications. Some ten to fifteen years back, it was literary Tamil, which occupied the sole medium of mass communication. The usage of spoken variety even in a smaller level was considered as an uncultivated and unsophisticated usage. But after 1960, this state of affairs started changing slowly towards the use of spoken variety and the so-called modern literary Tamil. In the existing situation, in most of the films, magazines, news papers this variety is being used. The same is the case in the radio broadcasting also. So one can easily attribute the changing social factors as well as language attitudes and motivation as responsible factors for switching from spoken to literary variety and vice versa.
3. In certain places, in order to give a clear and detailed explanation for some point, spoken Tamil is used. This gives much clarity to the listeners of mass communications.
4. In few instances it is found that the speaker begins his discourse in literary Tamil but during the course of his discourse, he slowly and unconsciously switches on to spoken Tamil. Especially when concluding a talk, the speaker sums up whatever he talked in his lecture by using spoken variety of Tamil.
It is observed that whenever a speaker switches from literary to spoken Tamil, the spoken Tamil used by the speaker is influenced by his own dialect. This is based on the concept of eye-dialect.
It is observed that generally, the literary variety or a kind of standardized language is more commonly used in the edited programmes of the radio. In some of these, only some of the usages are more commonly used in present day Tamil. However, such programmes use many of the earlier forms which are not found in the living language. This type of language use makes communication quite difficult especially in those programmes which are meant for mass contact and mass education.
In the Indian situation, the rural population is of high percentage when compared to the urban population. In the same way the rate of literacy is also very low in the rural than in the urban areas. This situation very well applies to Tamilnadu also. Hence any programme related to mass education, mass contact, etc. should be based on the style which could efficiently convey the intended message.
The present day mass contact programmes such as news bulletins, educational programmes etc. are not found to be efficient in their outcome. Since these broadcasts are in literary variety of Tamil, it is hardly understood by the rural public. In order to make the communication more efficient and effective, the language variety used must neither be a literary nor a spoken variety. It must be the one between these two, that is, a variety which consists of the common features, standardized usages, modernized forms, etc.
Modernization of Tamil is an on going dialectic process with conflicting pulls mentioned earlier. It is an interactive process of change from its past, which is neither exclusively continuous and linear nor a break from it. It is also a process of complementarily in which both past and present co-exist and the contradictions are left to be resolved by dialectics. The role of English in the process is ambivalent. The power of its success as a modern language due to its political power brings in certain modern domains of the society that hinders its development towards modernity. As long as Tamil remains predominantly the vehicle of cognition and communication in traditional domains alone (like the Tamil women largely confined to the traditional domains), its modernization will be blacked or constrained. The situation may change with quantitative increase in education when English becomes less effective cognitively for a large number of educated people who will force silently the use of Tamil to meet their modern needs, socially and cognitively, as increase in literacy rate contributes to standardization and simplification. The process of modernization will also be accelerated when political manipulation of Tamil as a symbol for affective ends becomes less important and it is used more and as an instrument for intellectual ends.
Maraimalai Adigal, a noted Tamil scholar, started the pure Tamil movement (tanit tamil iyakkam) and the aim of this movement was to purify Tamil as it was felt that the purity of Tamil has been spoiled by the heavy borrowings from various languages like Sanskrit and English. So the movement advocated the elimination of all loan features found in Tamil. The followers of this movement headed by Maraimalai Adigal went to the extent of changing their personal names to pure Tamil forms (the name Vedachalam was changed into Maraimalai). The forerunner in changing the name was his Christian College colleague Vi. Ko. Suryanarayana Sastri who changed his name into Paritimar Kalainar. He also changed the name of his magazine from the Sanskrit form ñanasakaram to arivukkatal. Annamalai (1979:48) points out that the scope of this movement was indeed very extensive. The target of this movement was on vocabulary. It closed the way for all foreign words. The new letters, affixes, sandhi, etc., were removed as a consequence of removal of the non-native words.
The arguments put forward for purism are that the indiscriminate use of Sanskrit and other foreign words has put the common Tamil word to disuse (Adigal 1925:29). He also explains that Tamil is as rich in vocabulary as to be capable of independent existence without the support of other languages, and so it is a sin to spoil its beauty and weaken its strength by employing the loan words for the concepts for which native words are available.
Parantamanar (1972:185) says that if there is excessive borrowing in a language it would lead to divergence of language to the loss of the capacity for creation of new words. Iramalinganar (1972:32) feels that the borrowing of words would pave the way for creating new graphemes which would then cause the decay of the language and the divergence of language as Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu from Tamil.
The scholars of this movement avoided Sanskrit, English and other non-native words in their writings. The sentences used by them were so simple compared to those of the old commentators. Among the active scholars who propagated purism Somasundara Bharathiyar, Devanaya Pavanar, Chidambarantha Chettiyar, Varadarajan and Manickam interpreted and popularised the old Tamil Literature through their writings.
This movement also gained political support from D.M.K. party. The D.M.K. leaders practiced purism not only in their public speeches and writings, but also took it to the cinema which later on became a significant mass media.
Due to functioning of the pure Tamil movement, Tamilising the personal names and place names either by assimilation of translation or replacement became prevalent. For example,
Krishnan kiruttinan Narayanasamy netuñceliyan
Some other pure Tamil names like, Putumaippittan, Kalaiccelvi, Anbalagan, Ilavalagan, Tamilarasi, Inbavalli, etc., can be seen among people due to the impact of this movement. During the later half of this century, many short stories, novels, etc., have come up due to the spread of education. The main reason for this development is the large scale production and publication of news papers, weekly and monthly magazines. The writings of the day to day prose can be understood by less educated people also. The writers made use of a simple language style. They used loan words which are present for centuries in the language apart from pure Tamil words. The prose is being used in all types of domains like education, administration, etc. The Tamilnadu Government is also now encouraging the prose writings by giving prizes for best books and best writers every year on different topics.
In a bi/multilingual contact situation, the languages which come into contact with one another in a particular area undergo changes due to the interference of one language on another. The incidence of bilingualism varies from one contact situation to the other. Sometimes the interference is heavy, some other times only a partial convergence can be found and yet in some other cases it is only marginal. That is in certain levels of the language the convergence is high and in some other cases it is moderate and in yet some other cases it is marginal or very low. It is found that changes take place both from the majority to the minority language and vice versa. This is otherwise referred to as the direction of convergence. Some of the features that come into a native system due to the convergence, get social acceptance gradually and treated as standard usages in course of time. Such usages replace the native usages in some cases in the normal day-to- day interaction.
Karunakaran states that there are as many as fifteen grammatical categories in which convergence is identified. In all these cases convergence is towards the majority language. In the lexical level one could find a number of items of the majority language finding place in the normal linguistic behaviour of the minority speakers.
One of the striking grammatical patterns in the process of convergence is the occurrence of pronominal terminations. The occurrence reflects the Tamil pattern and so the direction is towards the majority language, Tamil. There is only one set of pronominal terminations in Tamil for all the tenses. Contrary to this, there are two sets of pronominal terminations in Standard Kannada, one for the past and future, and the other for the present. The Kuruba speech considered here reflects only one set of pronominal terminations. Thus we find the loss of the other set in the process of convergence which is due to the heavy impact and direct contact with the majority language of the area.
Convergence Rules Tamil Kuruba kotutte:n kotte ‘I gave’ kotutto:m kottemu ‘We gave’ kottutta:y kottai ‘you(sg.) gave’ kotutti rkal kottiri ‘you (pl.) gave’ kotukkira:m koduda ‘he gives’ kotukkira:l kodudalu ‘she gives’ kotuppa:l koduvalu ‘she will give’ kotukkum koduvudu ‘it will give’
In standard Kannada, there are two sets of pronominal terminations to denote the respective pronoun category as shown below:
I Set II Set 1. bandenu ‘I came’ barutte:ne ‘I came’ baruvenu ‘I will come’ 2. bademu ‘we came’ barutte:ve ‘we come’ baruvemu ‘we will come’ 3. bandiye ‘you (sg.) come’ baruttiye ‘you (sg.)come’ baruviye ‘you (pl.) will 4. bandiri ‘you (sg.) came’ barutti:ri ‘you (pl.) come’ baruviri ‘you (Pl.) will come’ 5. bandanu ‘he came’ barutta:ne ‘he comes’ baruvanu ‘he will come’ 6. bandalu ‘she came’ barutta:le ‘she comes’ baruvalu ‘she will come’ 7. bandaru ‘they (n.new.)come’ barutta:re ‘they (n.neu.) come’ baruvaru ‘they (n.new.) will come’ 8. banditu ‘it came’ baruttade ‘it comes’ baruvudu ‘it will come’
The two sets are conditioned by the tense suffixes that occur before them. In one case one can find past and future tense suffixes added with one set of forms, and in the other case, present tense suffixes added with another set of forms can be found.
Infinitive suffix – a As in Tamil, the infinitive suffix in Kuruba is - a Tamil Kuraba o:ta o:da ‘to run’ nirka nindura ‘to stand’ pa:rkka no:da ‘to see’ etc.
In Tamil the hortative marker is –attum and in Kuruba due to convergence, the Tamil form is reflected with a slight change, namely the loss of final –m.
Tamil Kuruba varattum barattu ‘let one come’ tinnattum tinnattu ‘let one eat’ po:kattum o:gatu ‘let one go’ etc.
To express the meaning won’t as in the case of Tamil, Kuruba dialect also has –ma:t- as the auxiliary verb occurring after the infinitive form of the main verb.
Tamil Kuruba o:tama:tta:n o:dama:ta ‘he won’t run’ varama.tta:n barama:ta ‘he won’t come’
The occurrence of the verbal participle marker after the negative suffix –a reflects the convergence towards the Tamil form –mal (
Due to the convergence, one can find similar type of markers representing the conditional category occurring after the negative suffix –a:-. The marker –tti- is suffixed to the negative marker –a:- in both the contacting languages. In this case, the convergence is in the direction of Tamil to Kuruba.
In Tamil, the ablative marker that occurs with human nouns is –kitteruntu. In Kuruba the form – iruntu is replaced by the corresponding past tense form –iddu. However –kitte is retained. This partially reflects the Tamil pattern, and hence the convergence is from Tamil to Kuruba. It has to be mentioned here that the suffixes like –huttira and –india used in Standard Kannada are not at all found in the Kuruba dialect. Instead a complete convergence towards the majority language can be found.
The Tamil locative markers –kitte and –le are found in the Kuruba dialect also and this reflects the Tamil-Kuruba convergence.
In spoken Tamil, otane is not common, but in the literary usage utan is more common. In the case of Kuruba the form odane commonly occurs as a sociative marker.
Unlike the above case, here the literary form has been adopted.
In Tamil, the addition of –nkal and –unkal to singular imperative forms gives the plural (honorific) imperative forms. In Kannada –ni, -ri etc, are added as plural imperative forms. But in Kuruba dialect, the Tamil pattern is commonly found in majority of the cases.
Tamil suffixes like –atti, -itti, -icci, -cci, etc. are found in use in the Kuruba speech which reflect the convergence.
The lexicon of the Kuruba speech reflects a number of attestations of the Tamil forms. A classification of convergence based on the direction, frequency etc., can explicitly throw more light on the nature of the convergence.
In the following five cases, the convergence between Tamil and Saurashtri can be found.
The Saurashtri speech variety discussed here uses two markers viz., -gu and –ug apart from –ko: and –go:. Suffixes –gu and –ug are due to the convergence that takes place towards the majority language Tamil (in which we find –ku and -ukku as dative case markers).
In addition to the suffixes –re:, -ra: and –r Saurashtri speech variety shows genitive forms in which there is no separate genitive marker.
That is, genitive is unmarked in some cases and this is based on the pattern of modern Tamil. In modern Tamil, ra:man vi:tu gives the meaning “Raman’s house, which can also be expressed by the construction ra:manutaya vi:tu. In Saurashtri a similar situation is found. But it is to be mentioned here that the genitive is always marked in many of the Indo-Aryan languages. Hence, one is able to point out that the convergence that has taken place in this case is also towards the majority language, Tamil.
The suffix that is used to denote the instrumental case in Tamil is –a:l. In the case of Saurashtri, one comes across -a:l denoting the instrumental case. In Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi, etc. –se: is normally used to denote the instrumentality. So, this is nothing but the impact of convergence between the majority and minority languages resulting in the feature of the majority language replacing that of the minority language.
In Saurashtri, locative is formed in two ways that is, one set with inanimate nouns. Markers –fo:l and –l occur with animate nouns. In the case of Tamil, however, one finds locative marker –il occurring only with inanimate nouns. It is not a clear cut case of direct convergence but the impact of the Tamil locative marker –il in the process of convergence.
Adverbial is formed in Tamil by the addition of the suffix –a:ka to the noun bases. This kind of formation is found in the Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi also. But the suffix –ga found in Saurashtri is more closer to Tamil –a:ka than to suffixes like -se in Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages.
There are a number of Tamil lexical items finding place in the lexical repertoire of Saurashtri, the contacting language. Lexicon is less resistant to adaptation, i.e., it is restraint to contact situation or borrowing.
Language contact and linguistic convergence have to be considered here in the broadest sense without going into the details, such as the degree of convergence between the two or more languages that come into contact with each other. Some attempts have been made to investigate the linguistic commonness as well as diversity in language contact situation by applying the interference phenomenon. This phenomenon implies and explains the rearrangement of linguistic patterns and features that result from the introduction of foreign elements into more highly structured domains of language, such as the bulk of the phonemic system of a large part of the morphology and syntax and some areas of vocabulary (Weinreich, 1964: 1-6). According to Weinreich, a full account of interference in a language contact situation, including the diffusion, persistence, and evanescence of a particular interference phenomenon, is possible only if the extra-linguistic factors are duly considered. Among the non-structural factors, some are inherent in the speech of people who are involved in contact situation and so on. Language contact is considered by some anthropologist as an aspect of culture contact and linguistic convergence as a fact of sociolinguistic diffusion and acculturation. There are some processes like pidginisation and creolisation which ‘play some role in the process of convergence. However, when one goes into the details relating to actual convergence situation, he/she finds factors like the majority vs. minority language use, the significance attached to the contacting language(s) in actual use, the efficiency and easy adoptability of the languages concerned playing greater role.
Sociolinguists when they analyse the process of linguistic convergence that takes place in language contact situation, indeed need the help of the sociologists and anthropologists to describe those factors governing linguistic convergence, though lying beyond the structure of the language in contact, but do fall within the realm of the society and its culture.
In contact situations, the adoption of linguistic features from one language to the other takes place freely in certain cases, and in certain other cases resistance can be found. It is a common phenomenon that the minority language in the contact situation freely adopts features of the majority language and so the direction of convergence is from the majority to the minority language.
In the Indian multilingual situation this is more common in a number of regions. For example, in the Tamil situation minority language groups heavily make use of the Tamil features. There are some minority language groups like the Telugus migrated to Tamil nadu centuries back who have completely identified themselves with the majority language speakers. For some of them, Telugu is no more their mother tongue. They have completely shifted their mother tongue loyalty and identity towards the majority language i.e, the regional language, Tamil. This is nothing but language maintenance which leads to loss and shift.
The Telugu minority speakers who live in the Coimbatore area consider the above forms as standard usages and have started to adopt them in their day-to-day use.
The Kannada (Kuruba) minority speakers who live in the Pudukkottai and Coimbatore districts of Tamilnadu consider the above forms as standard usages and have started to accept and adopt them. This type of convergence is also found in the grammatical level of these minority languages.
Contrary to this tendency found in the standardization process viz., from the majority to the minority language, one also finds usages getting standardized from the minority to the majority language due to linguistic convergence in contact situations (Karunakaran, 1974:273-84). Items thus getting into the majority language become standard usages in course of time as they are found to be efficient in the day-to-day linguistic behaviour of the contacting groups. So, there are sample evidences to explain this process of standardization i.e., from the minority to majority language.
The following features found in some of the minority languages like Malayalam and Telugu; have become standard usages in the linguistic behaviour of the majority language groups living in the Kanyakumari and Dharmapuri district border areas.
(Contact situation. Bilingual; Area: Kanyakumari District Border area of the Tamil –Malayalam region.)
MT (Tamil) has accepted and started to adopt the following linguistic features found in the contacting language, Malayalam due to the convergence that has taken place in the use of the concerned languages in contact situation. All these forms are found in the normal linguistic behaviour of the majority group of the area whose mother tongue is Tamil.
Here, both a;na and a:kkum have the same function and they convey not only a kind of emphatic meaning but at the same time reject something else as well.
The occurrence of this suffix is phonemically conditioned. It occurs only after /n/.
In addition to this a separate marker –a is found to occur in the speech behaviour of some of the social groups who belong to the middle and lower classes.
There is only one distinct marker viz, i-/ that occurs in this speech variety to represent the locative case.
-a:tt- is the marker that occurs as a peculiar feature in this dialect. This is also due to the influence of the contacting language viz., Malayalam.
-a:nn- is the present negation marker that is exclusively found in the Vilavencode dialect of Kanyakumari district.
Here, ennil form is due to the interference of the Malayalam feature.
The sound (a) occurs as an allophone of /e/ in the word final positin. In all such cases this sound replaces the (g) which normally occurs in the word final position as an allophone of /e/.
The majority language Tamil (Ta Mj) has accepted and started using several Telugu features which are found in the day-to-day linguistic behaviour of the majority language group in some of the areas in Tamilnadu like Tiruttani (The Tamil-Telugu border area) and Dharmapuri district (in some multilingual pockets).
Lexical standardization as mentioned above has taken place due to the Tamil –Telugu convergence. Some of the common and basic items have been replaced in the spoken Tamil by the equivalent Telugu usages and all such usages have now become standardized in the Tamil speech behaviour. This type of standardization is commonly found in the Dharmapuri Tamil varieties spoken by different social groups. Most of the speakers use only the standardized Telugu usages instead of the Tamil forms, and in their speech behaviour the Tamil equivalents are gradually loosing their significance and frequency of occurrence. This is a case of complete convergence in which we find the loss of native usages. For example, words such as
are not found in the common day-to-day language use of these communities. Due to this, an increase in the use of the assimilated forms can be found. If this process continues there will be a greater percentage of convergence in course of time, which may eventually lead to language change.
Tamil Kuruba
Vara:mal bara:me ‘without coming’
Pa:rkka:mal no:da:me ‘without seeing’
Conditional marker
Tamil Kuruba
cyya:vitta:l ma:da:tti ‘if one doesn’t do’
([ceyya:tti])- STa)
kutikka:vitta:l kudiya:ti ‘if one doesn’t drink’
([kutikka:tti] –STa)
Case markers
Instrumental case marker –a:le
C.R. 7 a:lTa a:leKu(‹a;le)STa
Tamil Kuruba
namma:le namma:le ‘by us’
unna:le ninna:le ‘by you’ (sg)
maratta:le marada:le ‘by wood’
etc.
Ablative case marker – Kittevuntu
Tamil Kuruba
nammakitteruntu nammakittiddu ‘from us’
unkitterutu ninnukittiddu ‘from you’ (sg)
Locative case marker – kitte
Tamil Kuruba
nammakitte nommukitte ‘with us’
unkitte ninnukitte ‘with you’ (sg.)
marattule maradule ‘in the tree’
Sociative case marker – odane
Tamil Kuruba
ennutan nannudane ‘with me’
unnutan ninnudane ‘with you’ (sg)
Imperative markers
Tamil Kuruba
po:nka o:nga ‘you (pl.) go’
ceyyunka ma:dunga ‘you (pl.) do’
natanka adanga ‘you(pl.) walk’
Gender- Number suffixes
Kuruba
kallicci ‘Kallar caste woman’
paracci ‘paraya caste woman’
bella:lacci ‘vellala caste woman’
sa:na:tti ‘sanar caste woman’
kumba:ratti ‘kumbar caste woman’
setticci ‘chettiyar caste woman’
Convergence in the Lexical Level
2. Tamil – Saurashtri Situation
Dative case markers
Tamil Saurashtri
na:ykku suna:gu ‘to dog’
sivara:mukku sivara:mug ‘to Sivaram’
etc.
Genitive case markers.
Tamil Saurashtri
sivara:man-o sivara:m.o >
sivara:man sivara:m ‘sivaraman’s’
Instrumental case marker
Tamil Saurshtri
aval enna:l vantal mora:l a:ve:si ‘she came because of me’
patippa:l ceduva:l ‘because of the study’
etc.
Locative case markers
Tamil Saurashtri
avanitam tegol ‘with him’
etc.
Adverbial suffix
Tamil Saurashtri
ne:ra:ka ne:rga ‘straight’
ko:vama:ka ve:gga ‘angrily’
etc.
Convergence in the lexical level
Saurashtri
Nouns
erakkam ‘slope’
onarcci ‘feeling’
te:n ‘honey’
vari ‘tax’
etc.
Verbs
oppi ‘recite’
kuricci ‘mark’
olari ‘babble’
tikki ‘stammer’
tatti ‘pat’
pirinji ‘separate’
mi:ri ‘violate’
etc.
3. Direction of Convergence and the Process of Standardization
3.1. Standardization and Convergence
3.3. Tamil to Telugu
Lexical items
entire ‘get up’
patippu ‘education’
panam ‘money’
pu:ttu ‘lock’ (N)
tu:kkam ‘sleep’ (N)
katalakka:yi ‘ground nut’
ka:tu ‘field’
macca:n ‘brother-in-law’
sa;ppa:tu ‘food’
3.4. Tamil to Kuruba
Lexical items
enne ‘oil’
arisi ‘uncooked rice’
pati ‘study/read’
patippu ‘education’
pa:ru ‘see’
po: ‘go’
pulle ‘child’
tanni ‘water’
kuntu ‘sit’
sa:ppa:tu ‘food’
sa:pputu ‘eat’
rumba ‘much’
4. Minority to Majority Language
Malayalam to Tamil
Lexical usages
(In the Kanyakumari Tamil speech variety)
etava:tu ‘engagement/document’
etuppu ‘omen’
ekku ‘hip’
e:ppu ‘hill’
e:tti ‘a term of address’
atiyantiram ‘function’ (as in marriage, etc.)
akatte ‘inside’
accan ‘father’
anakkam ‘sound’
anti ‘nut’
aranku ‘store room’
alappu ‘acute desire’
avattam ‘danger’
ayyam ‘bad’
:acce/a:lce ‘day’
o:rme ‘remembrance’
u:tti ‘pig’
pi:tte ‘small hole/rag’
potappu ‘blanket’
patuppare ‘verandah’
pate ‘foam/saliva
pakki ‘butterfly’
pokku ‘hollowness in a tree’
ti:nam ‘disease’
r(i)ra:ni ‘ability/strength’
tentu ‘request’
terru ‘mistake’
tokku ‘excuse’
to:kku ‘gun’
tutti ‘death’
Grammatical usages in convergence
Convergence Rules Mami Tamj
1. Ordinal suffix
na:la:matte ‘fourth’
anca:matte ‘fifth’
2. Emphatic suffix
avan a:kkum vanta:n “It is he who came, and not anybody else’
(< Ma. Avan a:na vannu)
3. Adverbial suffix
e.g. alaka:ttu ‘beautifully’
ve:kama:ttu ‘fast’
ne:ra:ttu ‘straight;
4. Negative form
e.g. varanta:m ‘needn’t come’
ceyyanta:m ‘needn’t do’
5.Genitive case suffix
e.g. en-te/ta ‘my’
un-re/ra ‘your’ (Sg.)
avan-re/ra ‘his’
atun-te ‘its’
etc.
aval-e ‘her’
akka:l-a ‘elder sister’s
nammal-a ‘our’
6. Locative case
vi:ti ‘in the house’
ka:tti ‘in the forest’
na:tti ‘in the country’
ma:tti ‘in the cow’
7. Negative suffix
cey-a:tta ceyya:tta ‘didn’t do’ (adj.)
(ceyya:tta ve:la) ‘the work (someone) didn’t do’
(patikka a:tta pustakam) ‘the book that (someone) didn’t read’
8. Present negative
:vara:nna:n ‘he does not come’
natakka:nna(l) ‘she doesn’t walk’
Finite verb + conditional marker
vanta:n- enna:l/ ennil ‘if he comes’
1. NP NN
i) nk nn
te:nka te:nna: ‘coconut’
ma:nka ma:nna ‘mango’
etc.
ii) ñc ññ
kuñci kuññi ‘off-spring of a bird’
puñculi paññi ‘cotton’
pa: ñculi pa: ññi ‘having flown’
etc.
iii) nt nn
pantu pannu ‘ball’
vanta:n vanna:n ‘came-he’
natanta:l natanna:l ‘walked-she’
2. Occurrence of (a)
Kanyakumari Tamil (a) others(s)
/el (a)/ /el(e)/ ‘leaf’
/tal (a)/ /tal (e)/ ‘head’
/an(a)// /an(e)/ ‘dam’
etc.
Telugu to Tamil
Lexical usages
Telugu Tamil
na:yana nayna: ‘father’
bamma bomme ‘boy’
bammala:ta bommala:ttam ‘toy-play’
manava:du manava:tu ‘person who belongs to the same social group’
buvva buvva ‘food’
ku:ra ku:re ‘a religh for food’
gundu kuntu ‘head – shave’
batta batta ‘cloth saree’
ulavalu ulaval ‘horse gram’
bindiga binti ‘a metal vessel’
anda: anda: ‘a metal vessel’
oga tapa; oru tapa: ‘once’
pisuku picukku ‘squeeze’
anumulu anumulu ‘a beans variety’
a:ra:mbu a:ra:me ‘agriculture’
pu:je:ri pu:je:ri ‘temple priest’
dabu dabbu ‘money’
gutta gutta ‘hill’
addanga addam ‘in the middle’
mudda modda ‘food made of ragi’
manta gabba monta gabbe ‘crab’
ja:tara ja:ttare ‘journey’
meravana meramana ‘procession’
baddu atta baddu ‘ox that is deda’
bi:gamu bi:gom ‘lock’
gora gorra ‘goart’
kutam ‘a metal vessel’
kollu ‘horse gram’
vivasa:yam ‘agriculture’
taram/tatavay ‘as in time’
tattayppayir ‘a beans variety’
malay ‘hill’
kali ‘ragi food’
nantu ‘crab’
u:rvalam ‘procession’
erutu ‘ox’
Copyright CIIL-India Mysore