Talk:Sri Lankan Tamil dialects

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Jaffna Tamil vs Indian Tamil

Much of what this section says about Indian Tamil dialects doesn't seem right. For one thing, there is no one "Indian Tamil" dialect, and while some may display the features described by the section, not all do. Furthermore, this section also seems to misunderstand some features of Indian Tamil - for example, the shortened -i- and -u- (குற்றியல் இகரம், குற்றியல் உகரம்) are used as intensifiers, not as part of the nouns themselves.
In any event, these differences are relatively minor. There's a lot more in Jaffna Tamil that's worthy of mention as being genuinely different, for example the perfective tense ("sonnanan", "sonnavangal", etc.), the separate masculine and feminine plurals ("ivangal" and "ivalavai"), the medial demonstrative prefix ("uvar"), the retention of Old Tamil phonemes (ற், ற்ற, ன்ற), the kinship terms, and so on. -- Arvind 19:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Arvind's observation of use of perfect tense in Jaffna Tamil is very important as classic Tamil actually didn't have the notion of any perfect tenses or any of that sort. Short form of 'u' and 'i' may not be that big of importance but actually it kills the sweetness embedded in a word. For an example All Indians not just the Tamilians but in general for an example pronounce English 'BEST' as 'bestu'

and 'EGG' as 'eggu'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kalan95 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Other major difference I noticed is when pronouncing some words like 'amma' and 'annai' both mean mother, but pronunciation of 'a' in both words are quite different in Jaffna Tamil. 'Am' part of 'amma' in Jaffna tamil sounds like the 'um' as in English UMBRELLA while 'an' part of annai sounds close to 'an' part of English word 'AND'. On the other hand Tamil Nadu Tamil speakers' pronunciations of 'a' sound both 'amma' and 'annai' sound alike.