Tamil contributions to the English language
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| Tamil is, according
to some, the oldest continuous living language in the world. Its earliest
known inscriptions date back to 300 B.C., and its ancient classical literature,
the renowned cankam poems, are dated back to 100 B.C. (although
Tamil tradition ascribes a period of some 10,000 years to their formation).
Did you know that there is a
Tamil word in the Bible? King Solomon's ships traveled to exotic lands
and famously brought back "ivory, apes, and peacocks" (3 Kings 10:22).
In the Hebrew text, the word used for 'peacock' is tukki, which
comes from the Tamil word for peacock: tôkai. This shows the
great antiquity of the Tamil civilization.
Here are several words that the
ancient and noble Tamil language has given to English: |
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| candy — Thanks
to Tamil for this sweetness! Originally there was the phrase sugar-candy,
from French sucre-candi, from Italian zucchero candi, from
Arabic sukkar qandî. It meant 'candied sugar', i.e. sugar
that, when cooked at the right temperature, forms a ball when dropped into
cool water, as candymakers know. The Arabs got the word from Persian qand,
from Sanskrit khaNDu. Sanskrit got the word from Tamil kaNTu,
meaning a ball of candied sugar, related to kuNTu, 'ball', the origin of the word kundalini. The word
kaNTu may have originated in the autochthonous MuNDa languages of India, belonging to the Austroasiatic family.
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| catamaran
— the light watercraft that is nowadays so popular wherever water sports
abound is named from the Tamil words kaTTu 'tie' and maram
'wood, tree': simply two trees tied together. |
| chapati —
the name of the Indian whole-wheat tortilla came through Hindi, but its
origin is Tamil cappaTTai, from cappa 'thin, flattened out'.
It may be coincidental, but it also looks similar to the Tamil word câppiTu
'eat'! |
| cheroot —
this variety of cigar is called by the Tamil word curuTTu meaning
'rolled up', from the word curuL 'roll, scroll, curled leaf'. |
| coolie — menial
laborers are called coolies after the Tamil word for 'wage, hire': kûli. |
| corundum —
the hardest mineral next to diamond, corundum (aluminum oxide) forms rubies,
sapphires, and topaz; its name comes from a Tamil word for 'ruby', kuruntam,
which may have come from Sanskrit kuruvinda. |
| curry — Tamil
Nadu is a land where vegetarian food prevails; the Tamil word for 'vegetables',
hence dish made of vegetables, is kari, and the delectable
dishes of Tamil Nadu are so flavorful they have given their name to Indian
food in general. |
| ginger - Traced
back through Greek zingiber to Sanskrit srngavera, the name
of ginger (Zingiber officinale) is really of Dravidian origin. The
Tamil name for ginger is iñci, and vêr means
'root'. The word iñci was probably ciñci in
early Proto-Dravidian, which could explain the Sanskrit form. While srngavera
became associated with srnga, 'horn', nevetheless clearly the word
is not Sanskritic in form, but Dravidian, and the Sanskrit etymology was
invented later. Ginger is native to South India. |
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| kundalini - In Tantric yoga, kundalini is the Serpent Energy, a form of
feminine Shakti power coiled at the base of the spine, which can be uncoiled so that it ascends up the spinal column
through the cakras to the crown of the head in the process of spiritual perfection. The word has entered English
because of widespread interest in yoga and occult power. The Sanskrit word kuNDalini is the feminine form of
kuNDalin 'coiled', from the word kuNDala 'ring, coil'. Sanskrit got the word and the concept of coiling, as
of string coiled into a ball, from Tamil kuNTu 'ball'. It is related to another Tamil word for ball, kaNTu,
the origin of the word candy.
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| madras — many
fabrics are named after the city they were made in or exported from; the
lightweight cotton fabric is woven all over India, but the especially colorful
variety made with brightly hued dyes takes its name from the capital city
of Tamil Nadu, which may come from an Arabic word meaning 'academy, place
of study' (compare the Hebrew word for study: midrash). However,
the native (and official) Tamil name for Madras is cennai. |
| mandala —
the Sanskrit word for 'circle' is maNDala, and it comes from the
Tamil word muTalai 'sphere', from the root muTa- 'to bend,
curve'. Another word from the same root is muTTai 'egg'. |
| mango — this
sweetly fragrant, succulent tropical fruit (Mangifera indica) is
called mân in Tamil; the Tamil word for 'unripe fruit'
is kây, so mân-kây became mangga
in Malay and then mango in English via Portuguese. Why do we call
the mango after its unripe version? Maybe because of commerce: fruit merchants
shipped green mangoes because of their longer shelf life, to ripen later,
and the non-Tamil merchants were used to hearing "mân-kây",
so that became the basis of their word for them. When Tamilians eat mangoes,
they call them mâm-palam, using the word for ripe fruit. |
| mulligatawny
— the Tamil name for this spicy soup simply means 'pepper water', which
says it all: miLaku means 'pepper' and taNNîr means
'water'. |
| orange — this
word can be traced back through French une orange, Spanish naranja,
Arabic nâranj, Persian nârang, and Sanskrit nâranga
to the Tamil word nâru- 'to be fragrant, to sprout
up'. However, the present-day Tamil word for orange is ârañcu.
Borrowed back from English—it's gone full circle! |
| pariah — there
is a tribe of drummers in Tamil Nadu and Kerala called paraiyan,
who were classified vis-à-vis the caste system as "untouchables"—their
name has become generalized for all social outcastes; it comes from the
Tamil word parai 'drum', also 'to tell'; drumming and communication
go together in ancient cultures. The great sage tiruvaLLuvar, the
author of the highly esteemed poetic classic tirukkuraL,
was of this tribe. |
| patchouli
— one of the world's most darkly mysterious and alluring fragrances is
made from the root of a plant, Pogostemon patchouli, that grows
in South India: paccai or paccu means 'green' and ilai
means 'leaf'; even though nearly all plants have green leaves, this one
is singled out for being named after its green leaves. Variant forms of
this compound name are pâcilai and paccuLi. |
| poon — this
is the strong, lightweight wood of a tree (Calophyllum sp.) of southern
India and Sri Lanka, useful in shipbuilding, called pûna in
Singhalese, from the Tamil word punnai. In the ancient cankam
poetry, the flowering punnai tree is invoked by a forlorn
lover pining for the absent beloved. |
| tatty—A tatty
is a screen woven of cooling vetiver grass, sprinkled with water
and hung over open windows in the tropics, to serve as a fragrant natural
air conditioner. The Tamil word for this screen is taTTi, from the
verbal root taTu- 'to hinder, block, prevent, screen, partition'. |
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vetiver —
the Tamil name of this aromatic herb (Vetiveria zizanioides), veTTivêr,
is derived from the phrase meaning 'root that is dug up' (because of its
usefulness): veTTi- means 'cut, engrave, dig' and vêr
means 'root'.
(Note on pronunciation: in Tamil,
the stop consonants become voiced after nasals, so
-nk, -ñc-, -mp-, and
-nt- are pronounced
-ng- -ñj-, -mb-, and
-nd-.)
There are many other words traceable
back to ancient Dravidian (which is like saying Old Tamil, for Tamil is
by far the most archaic of all Dravidian languages), loanwords into Sanskrit
and other Indic languages, including anaconda, beryl, cot, cowrie, gherao,
gunny, hartal, kala azar, kamala, mongoose, mugger (crocodile), nelumbo,
nullah, pundit, ragi, Romany, tank, toddy. I should also mention words
that came from Malayalam, the language that originated as a branch of Tamil:
areca, atoll, betel, cachu, calico, catechu, coir, copra, jackfruit, teak.
Other Dravidian contributions include dhole from Kannada and bandicoot
from Telugu.
Perhaps most fascinating of all
is the discovery that the name India itself is of Dravidian origin.
It came from Persian hind, from Sanskrit sindhu, meaning
the River Indus and the province of Sindh. Linguistic archaeology has recently
uncovered the presence of Dravidian speakers in Sindh in prehistoric times.
The Proto-Dravidian word for 'date palm' is cintu, the source of
the name of Sindh and the Indus, hence of India. Date palms are still grown
in Sindh as they were in prehistoric times. The modern Tamil word for date
palm, derived from this ancient Dravidian word, is întu.
See "Reconstructing Social Context from Language: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Prehistory" by Franklin C.
Southworth, in The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture, and Ethnicity, edited by
George Erdosy (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995), p. 270, note 17. |
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