Week 3 with Tamil

வணக்கம்!  Hello!

This is my third weekend of Tamil and according the random of rules of this project, it should be the penultimate. Next week should see me starting Polish...

So, how is life with Tamil? Well, as per, work has been very busy, so I'm not exactly making the tearing fast progress that you might expect. BUT, I have now had two lessons from Italki with two different teachers from Tamil Nadu in India. The first sent me some really helpful phrase lists with romanised and Tamil script, but then made me read them out over and over for an hour, which wasn't very productive. The second, who I had a lesson with at 8am this morning used a powerpoint with phrases BUT also had be go through the sounds of the key vowels and consonants several times and did fun things that got me thinking, like asking me to come up with questions around the key question words, even though she hadn't taught me any verbs yet! I also managed to remember to record the lesson, which will make a huge difference - pronunciation is tricky. But I've already listened to to the recording once and I can feel myself getting into parrot mode and getting a bit more of a grasp on things, in a way that three weeks with Colloquial Tamil just hasn't done.

I am also now the proud owner of a Tamil - English dictionary from Collins, which was made for English learners and so isn't ideal for me, but I love performative spending on language learning. There aren't many other accessories to buy, unless I splash out on some books and items made for diaspora kids.

In terms of culture, I have been eating a watching some things... last week I ordered kotthu roti, pol roti with coconut sambar and mutton rolls from a local hipster Sri Lankan street food place. It was delicious, and shortly afterwards my copy of Sri Lanka the cook book arrived, so now I can theoretically make some of the tasty things we ate. I am still on a major Indian cook book buying jag, and just got a Meera Sodha one. Although she is Gujarati, she seems to have quite a few Sri Lankan recipes. One (not Sri Lankan) one I tried today was dosa made with besan / chickpea flour, to go with some lime dhal I had made. The Dosa were do badly made - thick like flat Yorkshire Puddings - so I think there future is being cut up for kotthu roti! I need to learn more about food in Tamil Nadu. So far I am relying on a Madhur Jaffrey Flavours of India eprisode on Iplayer and a copy of the accompanying book which I managed to find on Amazon marketplace.

There are plenty of Tamil films on Amazon and Netflix, but as I don't understand them, I have sidestepped them so far in favour of general films on Indian culture - A Suitable Girl, Indian Matchmaker -which I am finding very interesting. I also saw part of Bollywood film Chennai Express, but literally had to turn it off because I found the depictions of people from Southern India pretttty mind blowing. Maybe I should go back and watch it in order to understand things better.

So far, things challenge has me super-interested in Tamil and Indian languages but pretty lukewarm about switching to Polish. Though I am sure I will fall in love with it as soon as I get to use the amazing Vittles Guide to the Polski Sklep.

Things I still want and need to do during Tamil time:
-Chat with the lovely people who are excited I am learning Tamil
-Read my book 'The Biography of Tamil'
-Order from amazing local Sri Lankan restaurant Sambar Express and try idli
-Finish ore of Colloquial Tamil

In other news, I am still taking two classes of Spanish a week and feeling more and more frustrated by my crappy pronunciation and grammar. Earlier, inspired by Tamil class, I started shadowing a Mexican youtube video on fitness. I can't decide if this will help more than doing exercises in my sentence builder book. Who knows. I am just sick of not being able to join the Instagram group chat each week because I'm not used to second person plural conjugations. I joined the 30 day speaking challenge again in August and have only barley managed to do weekends so far, but I am keeping it casual and doing speeches pretty much off the cuff. Which reminds me, I have to do one on weight loss tonight...

Two weeks with Tamil

So, I'm two weeks into Tamil. I have done 5 chapters of Colloquial Tamil, found some amazing Tamil you tubers and instagrammers and learned a little more about Tamil culture around the world. I've also managed to find 3 Tamil speakers through social media who have wished me well and who I have exchanged a couple of words with.

 I also made a first foray into written Tamil which has been really exciting! I have always admired how it looks but with over 200 letters, I wasn't sure I would even get them to them in a month. In the end a lovely person on instagram triggered it by replying to me in Tamil on instagram comment. I couldn't translate it in app so I had to work out how to use the Tamil key board on iPhone to type the message into Google Translate. Suddenly, by doing it, all the different letters started to make more sense and i got a little flash of insight into the patterns - so very satisfying!

 I'm enjoying myself but I also only have a tiny bit more Tamil than I did last week and I'm getting a bit distracted learning about more general culture in India - so I need to refocus. Therefore, I have booked a italki class in Tamil tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Tamil resources:
Verb table Colloquial 
Tamil audios

Tamil Youtubers
Steffi Ulagam 
Nandini

Day one with Tamil

Vannakum to my first day in Tamil!

I spent a lot of time reading about the culture and relationships of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan Tamil communities. The answer... it's complicated, probably more so than I can get a handle on through a bit of googling. I found this article on Tamil community relations in India and Sri Lanka and this article on Chinese and Indian influence in northern Sri Lanka very interesting.

My other task this morning was (importantly) figuring out what Tamil foods I could try locally. Mutton rolls look promising.

I then remembered about the language and did the first chapter of Routledge Colloquial Tamil. I can see why these books don't get the best reviews, you have to be pretty intrepid to pick up all the words that get thrown at you later. The word for sugar cane juice comes up in a random dialogue once and you're meant to remember it forever. Right.

This chapter taught how to introduce ourselves, pronouns, suffixes and the future conjugation for some useful verbs like eat and drink. Interesting the future tense is used to describe habitual actions. Third person pronouns and conjugations are used to be polite, so that all feels familiar although learning new endings literally sends me to sleep - I actually had to have a couple of naps during this chapter.

Written language is being introduced very gradually and in a way that's more focused on recognising words on signs than writing, so it looks like I might be illiterate in Tamil by the end of the month! Recognising the spoken verb conjugations and working out what they are is pretty hard. But oh well, it's day one....

The challenge of retaining this information and adding to it is on!