Tamil Alphabet Chart - Learning Tamil Through English/hindi (Page 32 of 38) in pdf

LESSON 10

Making Complex Tamil Sentences

We have seen how to Make our Own Basic Tamil sentences in all three tenses (lesson 6). We have

seen interesting tables, basic Tamil verbs (Tables 13 & 21) and a Pictorial Tamil Dictionary (Table

19. We also briefly saw how to make imperatives, interrogatives and negative expressions, which we

will use extensively in the following lessons.

Let’s now see how to make a bit complex Tamil sentences with the use of several ‘Postpositions’

(case suffixes). Similar to the tenses (Lesson 6), this is another very important chapter. Please make

sure you understand its every word properly. Again, do not start this lesson without finishing

previous lessons well. Review this lesson at least twice. So we begin ...

BEFORE GOING AHEAD PLEASE UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING

i. As we learned before (Lesson 6.1), the Tamil nouns are divided into three genders. (i) all human male

noun words are Masculine Gender, (ii) the human female noun words are Female Gender, and (iii)

all other words are Neuter Gender.

ii. Masculine and Feminine noun words are together called the Rational Nouns. The Neuter noun words

are called Irrational nouns.

iii. In grammatical mumbo-jumbo, the ‘form’ taken by a noun (or pronoun) to show its ‘relationship’ in

the sentence is called the ‘case’ of that word. Big deal.

iv. The noun (or pronoun) itself (singular or plural), without any modification and without attaching any

suffix to it, is called the ‘Nominative’ case of that noun. This case is reserved for the doer (‘subject’)

of the action (verb) in sentence.

v. In addition to this Nominative relationship, there are seven more relationships or ‘cases’ of the nouns

and pronouns. As said in previous point, the Nominative nouns do not require any modification, it

means the other cases do need some kind of modification before attaching the case suffix to them.

This modified form of any noun (or pronoun) is called the ‘Oblique’ case or the ‘Inflectional Base’

of that noun.

vi. The addition of any of the eight case suffixes to the oblique/inflectional base of a noun is called

Declension of that noun.

vi. The Plural Nominative is always formed by attaching the ‘Plural’ Tamil suffix to the Singular

kal < k<` The plural Inflectional base of a noun (but

Nominative. Most common plural suffix is க

may not be of some pronoun) is always same as its Plural Nominative.

vii. All Tamil noun end only in one of the six vowels (ஆ, இ, ஈ, உ, ஊ, ஐ) or in one of the eight

consonants (

). Tamil nouns do not end in any other Tamil

character.

RangaRakes

Tamil Alphabet Chart - Learning Tamil Through English/hindi Page 32