From owner-freebsd-chat Sat May 25 2:34: 7 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from postfix3-2.free.fr (postfix3-2.free.fr [213.228.0.169]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7407837B404 for ; Sat, 25 May 2002 02:34:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluerondo.a.la.turk (nas-cbv-2-62-147-132-158.dial.proxad.net [62.147.132.158]) by postfix3-2.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2947418287 for ; Sat, 25 May 2002 11:34:03 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 2219 invoked by uid 1001); 25 May 2002 09:33:58 -0000 Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 11:33:58 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey Cc: Marc Ramirez , Brad Knowles , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Aryan and Dravidian (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c)) Message-ID: <20020525093358.GA2031@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020525045236.GA1722@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525052539.GA1871@lpt.ens.fr> <20020525150643.E84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020525150643.E84264@wantadilla.lemis.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.6-PRERELEASE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 25, 2002 at 15:06:43: > > > And while we're on that subject :) the "l" in "Tamil" is not an "l", > > but a sound which doesn't have an exact equivalent in other > > languages (except Malayalam). It's something between an "l", an > > unrolled "r" and a "y" -- perhaps something like the Japanese "l/r" > > sound. It's sometimes transliterated "zh" in English but that's > > even more unlike the true sound than "l". > > But I didn't know that. Considering the amount of contact I've had > with Tamil people (I used to speak English with a Tamil accent), that > surprises me. I wonder if that's one of the differences between India > and Malaysia. Interesting. It is a very common letter in Tamil, looks something like this: _ | / \ | | | L__|_/ __/ different from the "l" letter (actually, the two "l" letters, one "l" as in "tall" with the tongue nearer the teeth, and one "l" as in "gold" with the tongue deeper inside the mouth). Lots of words use it, eg fruit (palam/pazham), way (vazhi), etc. However, people from Karnataka (local language Kannada), when speaking Tamil, often substitute "l" for this sound. Perhaps that's what happened in Malaysia. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message