March 15, 2012

Learning a new script

Having studied in KV, I am severely handicapped when it comes to my reading and writing skills in regional languages. So when tamil speaking friends at work took to learning to write kannada, i asked myself whether I was happy with just my English and Hindi script knowledge. I knew that I was happy with my passable kannada reading skills that serve the purpose of reading signboards and bus routes. Since I know that level of kannada, reading telugu movie posters is also not a big deal. The challenge of course, is with Tamil.

In the pre-google era, I would call my parents to read out the name of the interesting movie or serial playing out on Sun TV. Whenever I had to write out a comment in tamizh, naa english script ae vechchi sammaaLippen. But now, I want to learn the language. Simply because I want to read those lovely stories that Amma used to read out from Kumudam and Kalki. Because I want to be able to use right sounding tamizh words effortlessly like Gopinath does in Neeya Naana. Because I want to read Ponniyin Selvan. I have heard people raving about the novel like they rave about Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. I know that for a beginner, Ponniyin Selvan is far far away. But I like a good challenge. So I am at it, starting today :) It all  looks like jalebi right now, but very soon I should be able to make sense of the alphabet. Best thing is that the Tamil alphabet does not have so many letters!
P.S. Watch this space for an update in the form of the review of Ponniyin Selvan :)

4 comments:

  1. All the best! "It all looks like jalebi right now" was cool :D Jalebi and kodubaLe :D

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  2. Good luck, Aparna. I know that you can definitely make it. It requires a little effort for you to learn Tamil. Pls don't read any tamil news papers(you would end up in mess up- that much worse :))

    Ponniyin Selvan is too heavy, but good to read :)

    ~Shiv.

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