two new publications on (modern) Tamil

[Tieken, H.J.H.]

My colleagues who are involved in teaching (modern) Tamil might be interested to know that recently two highly useful books have come out. The first is a new edition of the Cre-A dictionary. Below I quote from the publication announcement:

 

"In 1992 Cre-A published the first edition of kriyaavin tarkaalat tamizh akaraati (tamizh-tamizh-aankilam) which met the needs of students, teachers and users of the Tamil language. It was received enthusiastically by the Tamil community around the world. Drawing on our experience in dictionary making, we have now brought out a revised, expanded version of this dictionary with a wider coverage. It is a result of eight years of work, using larger language resources and sharper focus arising from Cre-A:'s twenty years of engagement with dictionary making in Tamil. Among the important features of this new edition are:

 

- a broadened conceptual framework for standard written Tamil

 

- an exposition of grammar of modern Tamil as reflected in the Dictionary, by Dr.E. Annamalai and Dr. A. Dhamotharan

 

- a database of contemporary Tamil which is four times larger than that used for the first edition

 

- significant addition of new words and senses

 

- a wider selection of words from Sri Lankan Tamil

 

- substantial increase in the number of illustrative sentences/phrases

 

- more pictorial illustrations than in the first edition.

 

More details and sample pages are in the brochure sent as an attachment to this mail. We would appreciate your support and if you could bring this information to your friends interested in contemporary Tamil.

 

with best wishes,

 

S.Ramakrishnan

Editor"

 

The email address of Cre-A is crea at vsnl.com <mailto:crea at vsnl.com> .

 

The second book is a new reader published by Mozhi (27, 3rd East Street, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 600041, mozhitrust at yahoo.com <mailto:mozhitrust at yahoo.com> ). Below a quotation from the publication announcement:

 

"A Contemporary Tamil Prose Reader

A New Reader.

There is a felt need for a prose reader for those who learn Tamil as a second or foreign language. Although course materials are available for the teaching of Tamil at the beginner's level and to some extent at intermediate level, there is a dearth of reading material for advanced students who have obtained some proficiency in Tamil. After Asher and Radhakrishnan's reader of 1971, this new reader fulfils the need of the learners.

The present reader contains a selection of 23 texts of contemporary prose, 15 of creative writing and 8 from non-fiction, thereby providing a cross-section of the myriad Tamil writings.

The Reader is organized as follows:

There is a short note on the author and the theme of the text. Each text is punctuated by notes in English. Difficult lexical items and culture specific items are explained in the notes. Points of grammar are given in an identifiable way. After each text, an English translation follows. The aim of providing translation is only an aid to step into the Tamil expressive system. A glossary of words of all the texts is appended at the end.

 

Features

1.	The persons who are responsible for the preparation of this reader have rich experience in teaching Tamil to foreign students and scholars; and also in conducting Tamil courses to other Indian language teachers.
2.	The selection is based according to a range in themes (from plain to emotional), on grammatical features (from common to uncommon) and on style (from popular to academic).
3.	Out of the 23 texts 7 are by women writers. A text from a Srilankan writer is also included.
4.	A practical solution is found to grade the texts. For grading, the morphology of words, patterns of sentences, features of style, currency of words, familiarity of themes are weighed in terms of relatively easy to relatively difficult axis.
5.	The Reader opens with a traditional folk tale and closes with a contemporary writer's long story of pathos and humour.
6.	The translations of the texts have been revised with inputs from native speakers of English.
7.	In the glossary, words are given with textual context and with their English translation. The glossary is exhaustive and runs into more than 170 pages.
8.	The original texts are reproduced as they are found in print form except for punctuation and word spacing. Consistency is maintained in splitting and joining words."

 

 

Herman Tieken