More On The Second Person In Malayalam
I had a post here on what I thought were severe difficulties with the second person pronouns in Malayalam, my native language.
It appears eminent writer O.V.Vijayan had a somewhat different take on the matter:
"Malayalam language is full of terms of respect and affection for addressing elders. One often sees words like achchan (father), amma (mother), ettan (elder brother) echi (elder sister) and so on used purely as honorifics to address elders or to refer to them"
(from the author's note accompanying a collection of the English translations of some of his stories).
It appears eminent writer O.V.Vijayan had a somewhat different take on the matter:
"Malayalam language is full of terms of respect and affection for addressing elders. One often sees words like achchan (father), amma (mother), ettan (elder brother) echi (elder sister) and so on used purely as honorifics to address elders or to refer to them"
(from the author's note accompanying a collection of the English translations of some of his stories).
posted by R.Nandakumar @ 10:23 PM
9 Comments:
At 4:51 AM,
ശബ്ദശക്തി വ്യാഖ്യാകാരഃ said…
Dear friend
I am trying to develoupe a Morphological Analyser for Malayalam Language Do you can provide some help for this project
Jaganadh.g
jaganadhg@gmail.com
At 10:06 AM,
R.Nandakumar said…
hi jagannadh,
i am no expert in language studies. neither am i knowledgeable about 'linguistic software'. all i can do right now, as an interested layman, is to wish you the best in your efforts.
At 10:29 PM,
Two Minds said…
Anamika, in general there are severe problems with every second person, Mallu or not :-<)
Excuse for the PJ.
At 8:01 PM,
Mosilager said…
കൊള്ളാം, വിഷു ആശംസകള്. മലയാളത്തില് എഴുതിയാലോ?
At 6:10 AM,
R.Nandakumar said…
not a bad pj there, vandamme!
At 8:39 AM,
Ananya said…
That was interesting.
I was also under the same impression that some languages do not have words for aap; e.g konkani. But I feel these languages had. However with the changing social structures and parents becoming friends these words became redundant.
One sees social culture where mother-grandama-aunts are addressed as Tu or tum but not father-grandpa-uncle.Do not take this as a lament from feminist.
There are also some families where all elders , even siblings are addressed as AAp.
At 8:54 AM,
Ananya said…
That was interesting.
I was also under the same impression that some languages do not have words for aap; e.g konkani. But I feel these languages had. However with the changing social structures and parents becoming friends these words became redundant.
One sees social culture where mother-grandama-aunts are addressed as Tu or tum but not father-grandpa-uncle.Do not take this as a lament from feminist.
There are also some families where all elders , even siblings are addressed as AAp.
At 8:37 AM,
Ananya said…
OOPS....posted the same comment twice..
At 11:25 PM,
R.Nandakumar said…
thanks ananya for visiting.
the problem with malayalam second person is NOT not having respectful terms of address - the mallu 'tangal' actualy means the same as 'aap'. some dysfunctional social habits and practices led to the usage of the available second person words to be (oddly) unnacceptable. this has led to rather ridiculous difficulties in conversation and social dealings.
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