Manish has a post up on this YouTube video of a South Indian movie where the male lead has an out of control bouffant. The weird thing is that whenever I hear South Indian languages I always get a weird feeling like I'm listening to aliens chattering in an Indian accent. Myself, I can speak Bengali with about an 8 year old level of fluency, and so Hindi (an Indo-European language like Bengali) doesn't sound too weird and I can make out many of the words...but when I hear people going off in Tamil or something it is really strange (the languages of South India are Dravidian, not Indo-European). Imagine people speaking Japanese with a strong French accent, and you get what I'm talking about.
Samples: This shit is Bengali. This is Hindi. And here is Malayalam (ignore the midgets). And you thought Britney Spears was a freak show.
why you gotta go mocking me like that?
I do have to say that transitioning between Telugu (south indian language) and English can give me a weird feeling of linguistic vertigo, partly because I can think in either language. And if I happen to be thinking in telugu but trying to talk in English, my grammatical constructions can get some weird looks.
you think in telugu? interesting. i never think in bengali.
dunno how much you know about dravidian grammar but it's very free form. It's also one of those where in many cases subject and object can be dropped from the sentence with meaning preserved. Basically, telugu is a bunch of verbs with the occasional noun thrown in.
I don't think that people use subjects and objects in their thought processes nearly as often as they use verbs, so in some ways, thinking in English actually takes work.
'ellali inca' translated literally 'go now'. But if you include the implied nouns its 'we have to go now'. The former seems a lot more 'natural', IMO. Which is probably why I slip into Telugu...
dravidian languages sound to me like brown languages which have been put through syllable randomizers. the accents are right, but i recongize nothing. in contrast for north indian languages many of the words are pretty clear and the sentence structure can be recognized in vague outlines.
Well, Tamil is a classical language older than latin, greek, egyptian or even sanskrit. It is potentially the oldest language still in significant use. And it is like no other indian language (other south indian languages are derivatives of sanskrit and/or tamil).
So no wonder it sounds like an alien tongue to you :D
I too can think in either tamil or english or hindi (thanks chitrahaar and assorted hindi soaps and movies ), but i dont have the problem of translating the thought into a different language.
Well, Tamil is a classical language older than latin, greek, egyptian or even sanskrit.
not true.
other south indian languages are derivatives of sanskrit and/or tamil
Incorrect. Check out the tree of Dravidian languages(Please google). At present linguists divide Dravidian languages into four branches. North, Central, South-I and South-II. Tamil is part of South-I. So you have three other branches independently originating from Proto-Dravidian. And in South-I, Proto-Tulu branches before Proto-Tamil-Kannada.
One thing that could be claimed confidently is that Tamil became literary language before any other Dravidian languages.
First of all Tamil is a classical language, like Sanskrit. So its obvious there will be too little smilarities. Doesn't English sound alien to you from Bengali.
Doesn't English sound alien to you from Bengali.
english is my first language, bengali is my second, so i can't make a judgement.
also, there are weird indo-european similarities between english and bengali which i've always noticed. the numbers are obviously, but also words like grass or rage.
Well, Tamil is a classical language older than latin, greek, egyptian or even sanskrit.
so what about chinese and gang? common dude, there's a limit to everything.