Re: There's no word like Chennai in Tamil

by truthbetold Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:41 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:bEjAr is a madras tamil (which i suppose is the tamil equivalent of hyderabadi hindi) word which has a lot of telugu words and some possibly urdu words brought in by the muslims. it's considered somewhat of a street tongue and low brow tamil. many comic characters in tamil movies speak madras tamil.
No language or dialect is high brow or low brow. tambram tamil is high brow or low brow? Get off the high horse.

of course there is such a thing as high brow and low brow or desirable and undesirable accents and dialects in any language. why do you think folks who want to get into showbiz painfully and at high cost try to rid themselves of regional accents like the noo yOk or bostonian or southern accents in favor of a more neutral midwest accent? likewise in britain the cockney accent is usually associated with uneducated people. do you have a problem with all that too? these things are real and can't be wished away.

max,

is chris rock high brow by your definition? he is vey successful and popular.

by Guest Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:bEjAr is a madras tamil (which i suppose is the tamil equivalent of hyderabadi hindi) word which has a lot of telugu words and some possibly urdu words brought in by the muslims. it's considered somewhat of a street tongue and low brow tamil. many comic characters in tamil movies speak madras tamil.
No language or dialect is high brow or low brow. tambram tamil is high brow or low brow? Get off the high horse.

of course there is such a thing as high brow and low brow or desirable and undesirable accents and dialects in any language. why do you think folks who want to get into showbiz painfully and at high cost try to rid themselves of regional accents like the noo yOk or bostonian or southern accents in favor of a more neutral midwest accent? likewise in britain the cockney accent is usually associated with uneducated people. do you have a problem with all that too? these things are real and can't be wished away.

I don't know about your tamil accents or dialects. Let me give you examples of telugu accents and dialects. There's telangana (again different accents within: karimnagar, adilabad, nizamabad, warangal, mahaboobnagar, etc accents...all different) and then there's a broad catagory of Rayalaseema accents (again, kadapa, chittoor, nellore, etc accents are so different from each other) and then there are andhra accents (east godavari, west godavari, Krishna, vijayanagaram, bheemavaram, guntur/v'wada, etc accents which are distinct in their own right).
I don't know which part the standard accent in telugu movies comes from. Probably Vijayawada. Does it mean that Vijayawada accent is the one and only high brow and all the other accents and dialects which are not used by the main protagonists in the movies low brow? What kind of logic is that? When did movies becomes gold standards in deciding what's high brow and what's low brow?

by bw Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:02 pm

Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:bEjAr is a madras tamil (which i suppose is the tamil equivalent of hyderabadi hindi) word which has a lot of telugu words and some possibly urdu words brought in by the muslims. it's considered somewhat of a street tongue and low brow tamil. many comic characters in tamil movies speak madras tamil.
No language or dialect is high brow or low brow. tambram tamil is high brow or low brow? Get off the high horse.

of course there is such a thing as high brow and low brow or desirable and undesirable accents and dialects in any language. why do you think folks who want to get into showbiz painfully and at high cost try to rid themselves of regional accents like the noo yOk or bostonian or southern accents in favor of a more neutral midwest accent? likewise in britain the cockney accent is usually associated with uneducated people. do you have a problem with all that too? these things are real and can't be wished away.
I don't know about your tamil accents or dialects. Let me give you examples of telugu accents and dialects. There's telangana (again different accents within: karimnagar, adilabad, nizamabad, warangal, mahaboobnagar, etc accents...all different) and then there's a broad catagory of Rayalaseema accents (again, kadapa, chittoor, nellore, etc accents are so different from each other) and then there are andhra accents (east godavari, west godavari, Krishna, vijayanagaram, bheemavaram, guntur/v'wada, etc accents which are distinct in their own right).
I don't know which part the standard accent in telugu movies comes from. Probably Vijayawada. Does it mean that Vijayawada accent is the one and only high brow and all the other accents and dialects which are not used by the main protagonists in the movies low brow? What kind of logic is that? When did movies becomes gold standards in deciding what's high brow and what's low brow?

literary tamil is highbrow. agree?

by Guest Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:11 pm

bw wrote:
Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
Kinnera wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:bEjAr is a madras tamil (which i suppose is the tamil equivalent of hyderabadi hindi) word which has a lot of telugu words and some possibly urdu words brought in by the muslims. it's considered somewhat of a street tongue and low brow tamil. many comic characters in tamil movies speak madras tamil.
No language or dialect is high brow or low brow. tambram tamil is high brow or low brow? Get off the high horse.

of course there is such a thing as high brow and low brow or desirable and undesirable accents and dialects in any language. why do you think folks who want to get into showbiz painfully and at high cost try to rid themselves of regional accents like the noo yOk or bostonian or southern accents in favor of a more neutral midwest accent? likewise in britain the cockney accent is usually associated with uneducated people. do you have a problem with all that too? these things are real and can't be wished away.
I don't know about your tamil accents or dialects. Let me give you examples of telugu accents and dialects. There's telangana (again different accents within: karimnagar, adilabad, nizamabad, warangal, mahaboobnagar, etc accents...all different) and then there's a broad catagory of Rayalaseema accents (again, kadapa, chittoor, nellore, etc accents are so different from each other) and then there are andhra accents (east godavari, west godavari, Krishna, vijayanagaram, bheemavaram, guntur/v'wada, etc accents which are distinct in their own right).
I don't know which part the standard accent in telugu movies comes from. Probably Vijayawada. Does it mean that Vijayawada accent is the one and only high brow and all the other accents and dialects which are not used by the main protagonists in the movies low brow? What kind of logic is that? When did movies becomes gold standards in deciding what's high brow and what's low brow?

literary tamil is highbrow. agree?

i don't know about tamil. i can talk about telugu. Grandhikam is literary telugu and vyavaharikam is everyday usage telugu. All the above examples that i gave are Vyavaharika telugu, including the standard movie accent telugu. Is Grandhikam > Vyavaharikam? nopes. Both are great and beautiful.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:15 pm

i think without intending to do so, i conflated two related but separate ideas about language in my earlier posts. there is definitely such a thing as highbrow tamil. it is neither the madras bashai nor any of the multitudes of dialects - madurai tamil, thirunelveli tamil, coimbatore tamil, and certain dialects peculiar to some castes like the tambrahm tamil. the only highbrow tamil is literary tamil as bw pointed out in an earlier post.

but there is also the notion of a desirable and an undesirable accent. madras bashai certainly falls into a category of an undesirable accent. it sounds terrible to my ears and it is not a coincidence that when people want to portray an uncultured and comical person in movies, they use the madras bashai. if you were appearing for a job interview for example, you certainly wouldn't be speaking in the madras bashai. there are such notions in all languages, not just tamil, and i already pointed out the many english accents that are considered undesirable. to me some of the sweetest dialects in tamil are the madurai and thirunelveli dialects. amongst the varieties of tambrahm tamil, my favorite is the palghat iyer accent. my favorite kamalahasan movie has him in two roles, one speaking in the palghat iyer dialect and the other in the infamous madras bashai. you can see them both here. this is one movie of kamal that is eminently watchable:

by bw Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:27 pm

Kinnera wrote:
bw wrote:

literary tamil is highbrow. agree?
i don't know about tamil. i can talk about telugu. Grandhikam is literary telugu and vyavaharikam is everyday usage telugu. All the above examples that i gave are Vyavaharika telugu, including the standard movie accent telugu. Is Grandhikam > Vyavaharikam? nopes. Both are great and beautiful.

i think literary tamil is highbrow because it is understood by only a few, mainly the scholarly sort. i don't think it is a question of greater or lesser when it comes to highbrow but something that is esoteric and not in colloquial usage.

there are accents and slang speak and the latter is definitely considered not very cultured in any language. madras bhashai will be in the category of slang, imo.

by Guest Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:29 pm

the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

by bw Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:31 pm

Kinnera wrote:the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

in the old movies, mainly the historical ones, yes. the regular movies feature a variety of accents, depending on the characters and context.

by bw Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:33 pm

bw wrote:
Kinnera wrote:the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

in the old movies, mainly the historical ones, yes. the regular movies feature a variety of accents, depending on the characters and context.

let me correct that - i think calling it "literary" is incorrect because they do make sure the common man understands most of it. it is more a watered down version of it, i guess.

by Guest Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:36 pm

bw wrote:
Kinnera wrote:the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

in the old movies, mainly the historical ones, yes. the regular movies feature a variety of accents, depending on the characters and context.

So the accent of the main protagonists is high brow and everyone else's is low brow or is everything low brow because it is not literary tamil?

PS: i think i'll rest it here cuz this could go on and on and on...

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:39 pm

bw wrote:
bw wrote:
Kinnera wrote:the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

in the old movies, mainly the historical ones, yes. the regular movies feature a variety of accents, depending on the characters and context.

let me correct that - i think calling it "literary" is incorrect because they do make sure the common man understands most of it. it is more a watered down version of it, i guess.

there are some old movies that use somewhat more literary tamil, movies like parAsakthi for which MK wrote the screenplay. this guy was a terrible politician, but knew a decent amount of tamil and wrote well. wish he had stuck to that.

by bw Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:42 pm

Kinnera wrote:
bw wrote:
Kinnera wrote:the standard tamil in movies is the high brow literary tamil?

in the old movies, mainly the historical ones, yes. the regular movies feature a variety of accents, depending on the characters and context.
So the accent of the main protagonists is high brow and everyone else's is low brow or is everything low brow because it is not literary tamil?

PS: i think i'll rest it here coz this could go on and on and on...

i don't know a whole lot about current tamil movies but i don't think there is any such pattern to it. accents have nothing to do with it, imo. highbrow is only if they speak like what's written in the literary text. tambram speak is just another accent and nothing to do with "highbrow". i think max has clarified that as well.

anyway, i too have nothing more useful to say on this.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 8:45 pm

here is an example of a desirable (to my ears) tamil accent. this is nellai (nellai = thirunelvEli) kaNNan talking about bharathi's poetry. he uses a mix of formal (you could call it watered down literary tamil) tamil and the very pleasing thirunelveli tamil. i love the thirunelveli dialect. it is very sweet. at the opposite end of the desirability spectrum from the very horrible madras tamil.

by truthbetold Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:06 pm

Max

Why do keep labeling a dialect as low brow or horrible or undesirable?

Nobody gets up everyday to speak in an undesirable dialect. The people who use it think it is ok. It is not as if they are stupid or lazy to learn another dialect. Education, TV, and more importantly economic interaction will sort out different dialects.

by Ponniyin Selvan Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:10 pm

I think people are conditioned to think in a certain way by mass media and some kind of politics is involved too. I was born in Chennai and grew up there. It is only in movies we can hear the peculiar bhashai termed as "madras bhashai" spoken that no one actually speaks in madras/chennai. Tamil film industry is dominated by folks from outside Chennai/Madras, mostly from the southern and western districts. They have a natural tendency to ridicule the local folks. There are caste factors at play too and there was a research article in Tamil that I read , I'll try to find it and post the link. Film industry is /used to be dominated by Thevars/Brahmins/Gounders etc.. and the caste groups that form the majority in and around Chennai or the Paraiyars/Vanniyars/Fishermen et.al who form the working class of Chennai.

It is like the Bollywood movies portraying any Tamil character as an awkward Brahmin with a paunch and weird accent.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:15 pm

truthbetold wrote:Max

Why do keep labeling a dialect as low brow or horrible or undesirable?

Nobody gets up everyday to speak in an undesirable dialect. The people who use it think it is ok. It is not as if there are stupid or lazy to learn another dialect. Education, TV, and more importantly economic interaction will sort out different dialects.

there are accents in all languages that are considered undesirable. if that isn't the case why do people consciously strive to change the way they speak and pay money to unlearn an accent? why are there accent eradication classes in the united states?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/nyregion/21accent.html?

by truthbetold Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:26 pm

max

have you heard of accent reduction courses in telugu or tamil?

The englishman who came to India to sell his wares did not demand accent reduction from his customers. It is only when Nehrus and gandhis went to england seeking education and employment, englishmen imposed accent requirements. One reason is it helps the nehru or gandhi to make himself understandable to the locals. (that is not a problem with madras tamil, I am assuming). The other is just because they can. They are the ones deciding who is can come into their society and who will get employment.

I was told that united states accents have moved closer to standard english with the advent of TV, university education and intensified economic interaction between different parts of the nation. Dan rather and shaffer are both from texas have texan accent but modified it enough for the northerners to find it acceptable.

by Hellsangel Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:28 pm

Talking of accents:

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:28 pm

truthbetold wrote:max

have you heard of accent reduction courses in telugu or tamil?

The englishman who came to India to sell his wares did not demand accent reduction from his customers. It is only when Nehrus and gandhis went to england seeking education and employment, englishmen imposed accent requirements. One reason is it helps the nehru or gandhi to make himself understandable to the locals. (that is not a problem with madras tamil, I am assuming). The other is just because they can. They are the ones deciding who is can come into their society and who will get employment.

I was told that united states accents have moved closer to standard english with the advent of TV, university education and intensified economic interaction between different parts of the nation. Dan rather and shaffer are both from texas have texan accent but modified it enough for the northerners to find it acceptable.

i am not sure why this bothers you so much. there would be some reason for dudgeon if i held people's accents against them and blamed them for having specific accents. i was just expressing an opinion on what accents in tamil i find desirable and what i find undesirable.

my own english accent is readily identifiable as an indian tamilian accent, not the most desirable of accents i am sure. and i haven't made a conscious effort to change it.

by truthbetold Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:38 pm

Max,

being different is not same as being bad or low. Yes. there are differences. some of the accents will die off. But i would not insult hyderabadi hindi/urdu/deccani because it is not as beautiful as harvansh rai bachchan's urdu poetry.

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed Aug 27, 2014 9:43 pm

truthbetold wrote:Max,

being different is not same as being bad or low. Yes. there are differences. some of the accents will die off. But i would not insult hyderabadi hindi/urdu/deccani because it is not as beautiful as harvansh rai bachchan's urdu poetry.

not sure which of my posts conveyed an insult. i think i've explained myself quite clearly. i have nothing more to add.

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:06 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:
bw wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:madras bashai:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madras_Bashai

aside: max, i hit on you, i mean, i sent you a pm. did you get it?

*in high brow thamizh mode*
maRumozhi ezhuthiuLLEn.

Badhilurai viduthulaEn...is more appropriate.

by Kayalvizhi Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:07 pm

I will put some substance in this long winding thread

Commander Tamilarasan Memorial Day Meeting will be held in Chennai on september 7.

The banner says "Tamil Sovereignty Retrieval Conference".
Organized by Oppressed Tamil Nadu Liberation Movement.

I ask all those who live in Chennai or nearby areas to attend this conference if police do not ban the meeting.

Enlarge this image Reduce this image Click to see fullsize
There's no word like Chennai in Tamil - Page 2 10544417_1506196386286291_599056917651656554_n

There's no word like Chennai in Tamil - Page 2 10544417_1506196386286291_599056917651656554_n

_________________

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:13 pm

Kayalvizhi wrote:I will put some substance in this long winding thread

Commander Tamilarasan Memorial Day Meeting will be held in Chennai on september 7.

The banner says "Tamil Sovereignty Retrieval Conference".
Organized by Oppressed Tamil Nadu Liberation Movement.

I ask all those who live in Chennai or nearby areas to attend this conference if police do not ban the meeting.
_

Why was this commander denied more than 3 idlies for breakfast ?

by Hellsangel Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:37 am

nevada wrote:How about bEjAr, a word that I have heard Tamilians use many times. It seems somewhat similar to the urdu bEzAAr but doesn't have the same meaning.

http://www.shabdkosh.com/kn/translate?e=%E0%B2%AC%E0%B3%87%E0%B2%9C%E0%B2%BE%E0%B2%B0%E0%B3%81&l=kn

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