Tamil basics...

from my experience in certain parts of tamil nadu when asking for directions ( when GPS takes a CL, SL etc). Right usually is left and left is right. Just watch his hands. Ask him to repeat, follow his hand. Body language works best. I have been seeing this happen for the past 20 odd years. Got to see it happen last week in Dindigul, from an auto driver.

This "crude" Tamil employs more words from classical Tamil (mei, sOr, thin etc) than the Tamil spoken by well-off people.

I appreciate the attempts in this thread, even if some of the transliterations are a bit funny. Cheri (as in OK) is not Hindi, it's a more Madurai-ish pronunciation of seri. Arai is half, ari is scratch.

The first time I heard a Tamil conversation with a lot of "OK"s in it, I asked my friend why he had been apologising so much . It really is close to the English "Sorry"! I suppose the o is a little bit more like a u, but given the flexibility of English pronunciation, it was an easy misunderstanding to have!

Hey guys,

I have collected the words from this thread, which I think might be helpful for my upcoming trip to Tamil Nadu into a convenient (for my android smartphone) PDF file.

It works great for me, using Aldiko to open it and scroll the few pages. I publish it here for the benefit of someone who might want to use it.

Please correct me, if you see any mistakes. Thank you for contributing to this topic.