Learn Tamil Alphabets in Thirty Days Through English
(Part - I)

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(ð£èñ¢ - I)

'Kalvi' Gopalakrishnan

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îñ¤ö¢ â¿î¢¶è÷¢ ð좮òô¢

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Tamilians live in all countries of the world and of course in all the provincese of country. It is but natural that Tamil parents, why for that matter any parent would like his or her children to acquire the skill to read and write in their respective mother tongue.

Children learn to speak in their mother tongue by merely listening to their parents and relatives. But learning to read and write in a language is another matter. These skills can be learnt only with outside help.

To expect the provincial authority to provide facility for children of other provinces living in their province to learn their mother tongue is impossible. Hence parents living in states outside their own, will have to make their own arrangements to teach their children their mother tongue. Since the parents do not find the time and besides it is very difficult to get tutors to teach one's mother tongue in states other than their own, the need for a 'self learning' reader is imperative. It is to fulfil this need, this reader  has been published.

Since English is taught as a second language in all the states of our country, I have adopted the method of teaching Tamil through English, and Tamilians residing in other countries where English is spoken, this reader will come in handy to learn Tamil.

This reader will teach the skills to read and write the Tamil alphabets with the help of English and that too in just thirty days.

While the English alphabets has but 26 letters, the Tamil alphabets has 247 letters.

At the outset the numerous letters to be learnt in the Tamil language will certainly frighten the learner and it will look a formidable task to learn Tamil. To lighten the burden of learning the numerous letters in Tamil, I have devised a method which will make the task of learning easy.

The letters to be learnt in Tamil can be classified into three categories namely : (1) Vowels, (2) Consonants (3) Vowel - Consonant combination. Vowels consist of 12 letters; consonants of 18 letters and the vowel-consonant combination 216 letters.

Vowels are once again classified as short and long vowels. They are :
 

The two remaining vowels, which are called dipthongs, a compound vowel sound made by pronouncing two vowels quickly one after the other. They are : ä and å÷

From the list of 12 vowels given above except „, the other pairs of short and long vowels are almost identical in shape with a little variation. Hence in this book, these pairs are grouped in one lesson, with the result, the five pairs can be learnt in five lessions or five days and the dipthongs in another day, and thus all the 12 vowels can be learnt in six days.

Now let us take the eighteen consonants. Instead of teaching each consonant separately, they are grouped in twos and threes based on the identity in shape. The groups and their pronounciation is given below in English.
 

From the above you will note that you can learn all the 18 consonants in just seven lessons (i.e.) seven days.

Further in the same seven lessons another thirty six letters can also be learnt by the addition of (.) dot on top of the 18 consonants and the symbol '‘' on the right hand side of all the 18 consonants. The additional 36 letters thus learnt are given below:

1) è¢ é¢ ê¢ ë¢ ì¢ í¢ î¢ ï¢ ð¢ ñ¢ ò¢ ó¢ ô¢ õ¢ ö¢ ÷¢ ø¢ ù¢

2) è£ é£ ê£ ë£ ì£ í£ î£ ï£ ð£ ñ£ ò£ ó£ ô£ õ£ ö£ ÷£ ø£ ù£

Thus 54 vowel-consonant combination could be learnt in seven lessons.

Out of the 216 letters formed by the combination of vowels and consonants, 54 letters have already been learnt.

You will note that the 216 letters of the vowel-consonant combination are in twelve groups of eighteen letters. Out of these, three groups have already been learnt. The remaining nine groups you will notice that in eight of these groups you have to add one or two identical symbol or symbols to form the new letters. If you learn the symbol to be added on each group, you have learnt eighteen letters at one go.

The symbols to be added for each group are as under :
 

1.	è¢	+	Þ	=	è¤
2.	è¢	+	ß	=	è¦
3.	è¢	+	â	=	ªè	'—'
4.	è¢	+	ã	=	«è	'þ'
5.	è¢	+	ä	=	¬è	'€'
6.	è¢	+	å	=	ªè£	'—...‘'
7.	è¢	+	æ	=	«è£	'þ...‘'
8.	è¢	+	å÷	=	ªè÷	'—...÷'

In the case of the remaining two groups, (i.e.) è¢+à three symbols and è¢+á four symbols are to be used. They are :

As for the pronounciation of the letters, I have indicated it by appropriate English letters.

There are some letters in Tamil which have almost identical sounds with very little variation. They can be grouped as (1) letters with short and long sound (2) letters with soft and hard sound. I have indicated the soft and short sounding letters with one letter and the hard and long sounding words with an additional letter (i.e.) a pair of them.

Examples of short and long sounding letter are:
 

Examples of soft and hard sounding letters are :
 

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