A Contrastive Grammar of Hindi and Tamil (An Old and Rare Book)

Language: Text with Transliteration and English Translation
Pages: 632






















Preface

 

Multilingual
study is not a new thing in India, but it is a paradox that in a nation of so many
languages, many of which are well developed, the amount of theoretical
orientation in the field of bilingual or multilingual study is practically
negligible. So far, no serious attempts have been made to bring together any
two languages through a comprehensive syslematic
contrastive grammar. The present work, with its limitations, is a modest
attempt in this direction.

 

Hindi and
Tamil are two most important languages of India, genetically far apart from
each other and showing a lot of difference in their formal structures. Hindi as
the most widely used Indo-Aryan language of North India, and Tamil as the most
representative among the Dravidian languages spoken in South India, have
special importance among the languages of India.

 

It is
generally believed that Hindi and Tamil are structurally nearer to each other
than either Hindi and English, or Tamil and English. This, however, is true
only to a very limited extent, and should not lead one to the conclusion that
Tamil and Hindi are so near to each other, that the speaker of one does not
encounter serious problems while attempting to learn the other. Though there
are some similarities, especially in Syntax, the differences are nevertheless
alarming. This is true of all levels from phonology to semantics. While the
phonemic pattern of the two languages are quite different, creating extremely
difficult, if not unsurmountable, problems for the
speaker of one to learn the other, the differences in morpho