Tamil phonology

Tamil phonology

The Tamil alphabet distinguishes 12 vowels and 18 consonants. These combine to form 216 compound characters. There is one special character ("aaytha ezutthu"), giving a total of 247 characters.

Vowels

The vowels are called "uyir ezhuthu" ("uyir" - life, "ezhuthu" - letter). The vowels are classified into short and long (five of each type) and two diphthongs.

The long ("nedil") vowels are about twice as long as the short ("kuRil") vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about one and a half times as long as the short vowels, though most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.

References

Bibliography

*citation
last = Keane
first = Elinor
year= 2004
title=Tamil
journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association
volume=34
issue=1
pages=111-116


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Tamil language — Tamil தமிழ் tamiḻ Pronunciation [t̪ɐmɨɻ] Spoken in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, where it has offi …   Wikipedia

  • Tamil-Kannada languages — Tamil Kannada is a hypothetical inner branch (Zvelebil 1990:56) of the South Dravidian I (SDr I) subfamily of the Southern Dravidian languages that include Tamil and Kannada. (It must be noted that there have been slight differences in the way… …   Wikipedia

  • English phonology — See also: Phonological history of English English phonology is the study of the sound system (phonology) of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In… …   Wikipedia

  • Navajo phonology — is the study of how speech sounds pattern and interact with each other in that language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of… …   Wikipedia

  • Sri Lankan Tamil dialects — The Sri Lankan Tamil dialects or Ceylon Tamil dialects form a group of Tamil dialects used in the modern country of Sri Lanka by Sri Lankan Tamils that is distinct from the dialects of modern Tamil Tamil Nadu and Kerala states of India. Tamil… …   Wikipedia

  • Modern Hebrew phonology — Main article: Hebrew language For assistance with IPA transcriptions of Hebrew for Wikipedia articles, see WP:IPA for Hebrew. This article is about the phonology of the Hebrew language based on the Israeli dialect. It deals with current phonology …   Wikipedia

  • Iyengar Tamil — are dialects of the Tamil language spoken mostly in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and the adjoining areas in South India. Iyengars are followers of the Visishtadvaita philosophy propounded by Ramanuja. The Sri Vaishnava Paribhashai uses many archaic… …   Wikipedia

  • Standard Chinese phonology — The phonology of Standard Chinese is reproduced below. Actual production varies widely among speakers, as people inadvertently introduce elements of their native dialects. By contrast, television and radio announcers are chosen for their… …   Wikipedia

  • Old Chinese phonology — The phonology of Old Chinese describes the language reflected by the rhymes of the Shijing and the phonetic components of Chinese characters, corresponding to the earlier half of the 1st millennium BC. Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the… …   Wikipedia

  • Ottawa phonology — Main article: Ottawa language Ottawa (also spelled Odawa) is a dialect of the Ojibwe language spoken in a series of communities in southern Ontario and a smaller number of communities in northern Michigan. Ottawa has a phonological inventory of… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”