Re: Article on Finno-Ugric in the Economist

ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> > But they are not English-speakers, are they.
>
> They are. Indian English speakers, that is.

Even Indian English speakers know about number-agreement between subject
and verb.

> > > While the English alphabets has but 26 letters, the Tamil alphabets has
> > > 247 letters.
> > > http://child.ambalam.com/english/introduction.html
> >
> > "alphabets has"?
>
> Since a letter/akshar is called an alphabet in Indian English, that
> introduces the dilemma of what to call an alphabet. This writer seems
> to have improvised by calling it an alphabets.

Perhaps this usage is registered in a dictionary of Indian English.

> > I do know from elsewhere that Tamil is generally taught
> > in syllabary form rather than in consonant form, but that's only
> > feasible because it doesn't do conjuncts.
>
> It not only doesn't do conjuncts; it introduces prothetic and
> epenthetic vowels/ semivowels. Yeshu is spelt iyEsu, Prabhakaran is
> spelt pirapAkaran and Daniel is spelt DaniyEl. (<E> is what you would
> call [e:] and D is [d.]).

Which has nothing to do with why it's feasible to teach Tamil kids with
a syllabary.

All English words beginning with higher front vowels take y- in
Tamil-speakers. (K.P. spoke very good Yinglish, and I'm not talking
about Yiddish-tinted English!)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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