Thursday, June 18, 2009

Project Madurai





For people who dont know about Project Madurai, here is the wiki page that gives all the information. Click here to go to their home page. In short, it is a project aimed at using the power of internet to spread the greatest language in the world, Tamil. (I am a Tamilian, what do you expect?) Greatness of Tamil cant be discribed in few paragraphs. Tamil manuscripts were recently discovered in Egypt and the inscriptions date back to 1st century BC. One of the oldest languages in the world is under threat. UNESCO lists Tamil as one of the few languages that could vanish in 50 years(source - Ananda vikatan). 


People gotta understand. Noone is forcing you to abandon English. Learn English, learn chinese, but not at the expense of Tamil. I recall a recent argument in Neeya Naana, where there were few tamilians who were born and brought up in Tamil Nadu, who sincerely felt, learning tamil was a waste of time. I was seriously upset, that there are people who find their own culture and language to be inferior. If you dont respect yourself and your culture, how will a third person respect you?

The project was started and supported by the Tamilians living abroad, not the people in Tamil Nadu who call themselves தமிழ் தாயின் புதல்வன். If you check the list of people who have contributed for the project, there are loads of people from the US, UK, etc. I also saw few professors from NUS including Dr. Ulrike Niklas, and prof Thinnappan, from the faculty of arts. And ya, Dr. Ulrike Niklas is not from Tamil Nadu. I am really impressed.

All the so called Sons of tamilnadu, please re think your strategy to save our mother tongue. Naming lousy tamil movies in Tamil is not going to spread Tamil.

Check out the list of the books that are available in pdf format. It ranges from agananooru, purananooru up until Jeyakanthan sirukathaigal. Only one thing is missing. If someone would take time in explaining the old tamil poems, it would be really helpful for people like me, who want to learn, but find the sangathamil and senthamil really difficult to understand.


thirukural

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