Tanglish

Tamil English - code mixing

1. Kanthimathi K
TANGLISH (TAMIL AND ENGLISH MIX)
–SPREADING ROOTS

2. Tamil
Tamil -Dravidian family language
Dialect –according to Geography -Madurai Tamil, Chennai
Tamil, KovaiTamil, Tirunelveli Tamil
Variety –high and low (Centamiland Koduntamil)
Standard spoken Tamil (Educational –Textbooks)

3. Tanglish
code mixing, Tamil-English or English-Tamil (intrasentential)
code switching (intersentential)
borrowing inspiteof the available equivalents
The use of English accent while speaking in Tamil (Anglicized
Tamil)
The use of Tamil accent while speaking in English (Tamilized
English)

4. Features
Tamil agglutinative language
Lexical insertion -English
Mixing of nouns, verbs
Compound verbs -paNni, paNnu, cei, aag
Eg: balance PaNni’, ‘skid aaki’, ‘help PaNnu’
Commonly used
Noun/Verb/Adjective + PaNni/aaki/PaNnu
Noun/Verb/Adjective slot has an English item

5. Tanglishgrammar?
paduthifying, konjifying, pichify, maams, apps, goingaa,
comingaa, playingaa, goda
comingaa? Sir is comingaa?
syntactically Tamil but contain several English words
a new hybrid language system -hybrid grammar

6. Reasons of Tanglishuse
Difficulty in pronunciation
Discourse specific
Prestige
modern
Spontaneous
Suitable
to express better
it is easily understood
Popularised by media

10. Growing in popularity
Media (RJ, VJ) advertisements, movies
Novels, lyrics, newspaper articles
Among the youth
The new generation is learning a mixed language –tanglish
Tanglish-acceptable and has great influence-attitude positive
Tanglishhas become both the aspirationaland fashionable
language