QCAA Tamil (SEE) flashcards
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- Diglossia in Tamil
- The coexistence of a formal written register (senthamil) and a colloquial spoken register (kodunthamizh), differing in verb endings, pronouns and lexicon. Task register must match the skill being assessed.
- Uyir and Mei letters
- Tamil has 12 vowels (uyir) and 18 consonants (mei). Combined with 216 vowel-consonant forms (uyirmei), plus the ayudha letter, they make up the basic Tamil script inventory.
- Pulli (virama) function
- The dot placed above a consonant that cancels its inherent 'a' vowel, producing a bare consonant sound, as in க் or ந். It is essential for writing consonant clusters and word-final consonants.
- Inherent vowel rule
- A Tamil consonant letter with no vowel sign attached automatically carries the vowel 'a'. Adding a vowel sign replaces that inherent vowel, as in க becoming கா or கி.
- Vallinam, Mellinam, Idaiyinam
- The three Tamil consonant classes by articulation: hard (க ச ட த ப ற), soft/nasal (ங ஞ ண ந ம ன) and medial (ய ர ல வ ழ ள). Spelling and sandhi rules depend on class membership.
- Tamil case system
- Tamil marks grammatical relations with eight cases (வேற்றுமை), each with its own suffix, covering nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative and vocative functions.
- SOV word order
- Tamil's default clause order is subject–object–verb, with the finite verb at the end agreeing in person, number and gender with the subject. Word order shifts signal emphasis or topic.
- Null-subject property
- Tamil finite verbs encode person, number and gender, so the subject pronoun may be omitted when recoverable from context. Pronoun use is therefore pragmatically marked, often for contrast or emphasis.
- Sandhi (புணர்ச்சி)
- Rules for how adjacent morphemes change when combined. இயல்பு sandhi leaves forms unchanged; விகார sandhi alters sounds, as when மரம் plus கள் becomes மரங்கள்.
- Minimal pairs in Tamil
- Word pairs differing by one phoneme that change meaning, such as கல் (stone) and கால் (leg), or அரிசி (rice) and அரசி (queen). Used to test listening discrimination.
- Retroflex vs dental nasals
- Tamil distinguishes ன (alveolar), ந (dental) and ண (retroflex) nasals. Their correct use is lexically determined, not predictable, so spelling accuracy depends on memorised word forms.
- Tamil numerals
- Tamil has its own digit forms ௦ to ௯. Exam tasks may require reading or writing Tamil numerals, and dates and amounts may appear in either Tamil or Arabic digits.
- Agglutinative morphology
- Tamil builds words by stacking suffixes onto roots, each carrying one grammatical function such as tense, person or case. One Tamil word may correspond to a whole English phrase.
- Register in speaking tasks
- Oral tasks specify formal or informal register. Formal uses நீங்கள், plural verb agreement and polite lexicon; informal uses நீ and colloquial verb forms. Register mismatch reduces marks.
- Inference in listening
- Listening items often require inferring speaker attitude, relationship or setting from prosody, honorific choice and discourse markers rather than from explicitly stated content words.
- Cohesive devices in writing
- Tamil links sentences with connectors such as ஆனால் (but), எனவே (therefore) and அதனால் (because of that), plus participial clauses. Their correct use distinguishes coherent extended writing.
- Sangam literature
- A corpus of classical Tamil poetry dated roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE, comprising the Ettuthokai and Pattuppattu anthologies, divided into akam (love) and puram (public life) themes.
- Tolkappiyam
- The oldest extant Tamil grammatical and poetic treatise, organised into iyal (grammar), porul (poetics and meaning) and yappu (prosody). It defines the thinai landscape categories of Sangam poetry.
- Thirukkural structure
- A work of 1330 couplets by Thiruvalluvar, arranged in three books: arathuppal on virtue, porutpal on wealth and statecraft, and kamathuppal on love. Each couplet uses the kural venpa metre.
- Akam and Puram
- The two great divisions of Sangam poetry: akam treats inner, personal experience, especially love, while puram treats outer, public themes such as war, kingship and ethics.
- Thinai landscape categories
- Sangam poetics classifies settings into five landscapes - kurinji (hills), mullai (forest), marutham (farmland), neythal (coast) and palai (wasteland) - each linked to a mood and phase of love.
- Alvars and Nayanmars
- The twelve Alvars, Vaishnava poet-saints, and sixty-three Nayanmars, Shaiva poet-saints, composed devotional bhakti hymns in Tamil that reshaped religious and literary culture.
- Pongal festival
- A four-day mid-January Tamil harvest festival: Bhogi, Thai Pongal, Maattu Pongal and Kaanum Pongal. It gives thanks for the harvest and honours cattle and family.
- Puthandu
- Tamil New Year, observed on 14 April. It is marked by viewing the kani, a decorated arrangement of auspicious items, and by preparing festive foods and wearing new clothes.
- Bharatanatyam
- Tamil Nadu's classical dance form, combining nritta (pure movement), nritya (expressive dance) and natya (drama). It draws narrative content from Tamil and Sanskrit devotional literature.
- Carnatic music trinity
- Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, three eighteenth-century composers whose works form the core repertoire of Carnatic music, much of it in Telugu and Sanskrit as well as Tamil.
- Tamil diaspora
- Communities of Tamil speakers in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, the Gulf, Europe, North America and Australia, with varied registers, loanwords and naming practices.
- Honorific pronouns
- Tamil encodes respect through pronoun choice: நீ (informal singular), நீங்கள் (polite or plural) and தாங்கள் (high honorific). Intercultural tasks assess whether the choice suits the relationship.
- Tamil naming order
- Tamil names traditionally place the father's name or village name before the given name, sometimes with an initial. Family names are not universal, so name order varies across regions and diaspora.
- Virundhompal
- The Tamil cultural value of hospitality, literally the duty of feeding guests. It appears repeatedly in classical literature and is used to interpret characters' actions in intercultural texts.
- Code-mixing in Tamil
- The routine blending of Tamil with English words and syntax, common in urban and diaspora speech. Intercultural tasks may require identifying when code-mixing marks informality rather than incompetence.