What is Vallinam letter?

[Guest guest]

Narayan Joshi wrote in IC:

 

>Dear Mrs Sugrutha,

>Thanks for giving the reference to the site. I wiil look into

>that.You said that there is aleady a strong syllable "tha"

>(vallinam) in your name and you do not want another. Could

>you kindly explain a little more about "vallinum".

>Now sound /k/ is unaspirated sound

>sound /kh/ is aspirated sound

>sound /g/ is voiced sound

>sound /gh/ is voiced and aspitated

>Does "vallinum" mean aspirated sound? Could you please give us

>Tamil words for sound properties described above. Thanks.N.R.Joshi.

 

Dear Dr. Joshi,

 

Greetings. Acc. to Tamil grammars like Tolkappiyam,

Nannul (12th century), etc., Tamil has only 30 letters

(12 uyir, lit. "life, soul" and 18 mey "body").

This small set, combined with letter forms with no conjuncts,

has helped tamil script to be written widely in e-lists

(eg., using bilingual standards such as TSCII encoding).

This is hard to do for other Indian language scripts.

 

The vallinam letters are k, c, T(retroflex t), t, p, R.

They are called vallinam because, val- means "strength, hard".

Linguists say Sanskrit bala comes from this Dravidian vala.

The strength/power of the tamil consoanants is that its

pronunciation differs depending on the context of occcurence

tho' entirely predictable. Wrote about the vallinam letters

pronunciation some years ago.

http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9803&L=indology&P=R6044

 

Please note that vallinam letter, c sounds like s in between vowels

(intevocalically) and as j after nasals like -nj-.

And, vallinam letter, k sounds like h in between vowels, and as

g after nasals like -ng-. The letter -k- sounding some sort

of -h- intervocallically has been discussed by Tamil scholars

extensively. Including the late Kanchi Paramacharyar

Chandrasekharendra Saraswathi. Intervocalicaly, the vallinam

k is an unvoiced fricative (something like a h sound).

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-11/msg00003.html

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-11/msg00025.html

http://www.services.cnrs.fr/wws/arc/ctamil/2002-11/msg00013.html

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan