Those who follow Justice Katju on Facebook are bound to have noticed his frequent assertion that “Tamilians cannot think. They can only tink”. Apparently, according to Justice Katju, Tamil does not have the ‘th’ sound required for ‘think’.
At first
glance, Justice Katju seems to be making a ridiculous assertion. I spent the
first 18 years of my life in Tamil Nadu, studied Tamil as a second language in
school and can vouch for the fact that Tamil does have the ‘th’ sound required
to say “think”. However, Justice Katju isn’t a newbie to Tamil either. Justice
Katju took a diploma course in Tamil while he was at Allahabad University and
later spent a year at Annamalai University in Chennai learning spoken Tamil. He
also served as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court in 2004-2005.
Having seen
Justice Katju’s Facebook status updates on this point many times over the past
few months, I kept wondering what is it that makes Justice Katju pontificate
thus.
Then one
day, the penny dropped. I remembered an old conversation with a friend named
Lata, a native Hindi speaker, who married a South Indian. My relatives keep
spelling my name as Latha, she complained to me. Is it a big deal? I asked.
Isn't Latha phonetically closer to the way your name is pronounced, rather than
Lata, I wondered? No, “my name is Lata, not Latha’’, she told me, pronouncing
the T in name with a soft ‘th’. Sounds like Latha to me, I said. ‘No,’ came the
retort. ‘It’s L-A-T-A.’ I was left none the wiser then.
I’ve had
similar conversations with friends from north of Deccan regarding names like
Nithin, Sunitha and Latha. Heck, even with my own name, it was so common to
have people in Tamil Nadu write it as Vinodh or even Vinoth. My parents, like
many thousands of South Indians who copied the names of North Indian movie
actors when naming their kids, copied Mr. Khanna’s spelling as well. If they
weren’t Vinod Khanna fans and had to spell Vinod, the chances are that they
would have spelt it as Vinodh.
It took me
many years to figure out the Lata/Latha, Sunita/Sunitha, Vinod/Vinodh
conundrum.
In written
Tamil, there’s only one alphabet for ta/tha (த), while Hindi has four versions of
ta/tha, namely [त थ द and ध]. Similarly, Tamil only one alphabet each for ka (க), cha (ச), da (ட) and pa (ப), even though in spoken Tamil, each
of these alphabets can be expressed in multiple ways. Hindi has four versions of each of
the alphabets ka (क, ख, ग, घ), cha (च, छ, ज, झ), da (ट, ठ, ड, ढ), ta (त, थ, द, ध) and pa (प, फ, ब, भ).
In Malayalam, which is a mix of Tamil and
Sanskrit, the alphabets correspond exactly to the Hindi alphabets, but all
Malayalees spell names like Sunitha, Latha etc. the way the Tamils do – when
writing in English, that is. I assume this is the position with Kannada and
Telugu speakers too. My father, who grew up in Kerala and learnt basic Hindi as a
student, pronounces the D in Hindi the same way as he pronounces the D in
Dictionary.
For many Hindi speakers, spelling Lata with a T
makes it phonetically closer to the relevant Hindi alphabet (the first Ta in
the four Hindi variants of ta/tha) than a TH. For Tamils and other south
Indians, spelling Latha and Sunitha with a TH makes more sense, since a T is
usually pronounced as a hard T, as in the word “Time”.
The TH in think requires to be accompanied by a
small exhalation of breath and is not, strictly speaking, the Tamil THA, though
it is phonetically closer to the Tamil THA than the hard T in time. If a Hindi
speaker had to write “Think’’ in Hindi, he would presumably use the second THA (थ) from out of the four Hindi
variants of ta/tha. When Justice Katju says Tamils don’t think, but they tink, he
is possibly pointing out that Tamil doesn’t have an alphabet equivalent to the second
Tha (थ) in the four Hindi variants of ta/tha. When he says Tamil tink, he isn’t
using the hard T in the word Time, but the first Ta [त) in the four Hindi variants of
ta/tha, the one used when writing names like Lata or Sunita. For Justice Katju,
the T in tink matches the T in Lata, whilst for a South Indian, the T in tink
would match the T in time and the TH in think would match the TH in Latha or
Sunitha.
If you
disagree with my analysis, please let me know, I could be wrong. I don’t claim
to be a linguistic expert. And please let’s keep the conversation civil.
2 comments:
Hi buddy, Tamil doesn't have letters with 4 different sounds like Hindi, that's correct. Grammatically speaking Tamil doesn't need to. But let's talk about Tink and Think, Tamil has different letters for Think and Tink.
Ta = ட
Tha = த.
You may have been tought about it already as you have learnt Tamil as a Second language. Each language has its own characteristics. I can even say Hindi has no future can you guess why?
Dear Mani, for a native Hindi speaker the 'ta' sound would correspond to the 'ta' in Lata. I've been watching the Suitable Boy Teleseries and hence Lata comes to mind easily.
Post a Comment