![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() His survey of transliterations between Tamil and English in South Asia delineates key areas of disagreement in the graphic representation of initial, geminate, and postnasal stops glides and oral, nasal, and long vowels (Schiffman 1999, 12–20), and he attributes the nonconventionality of transliteration schemes to the phonological and morphosyntactic idiosyncrasies of colloquial Tamil, the variety spoken by most Indians (Britto 1986 Annamalai and Steever 2015). In the opening quote, sociolinguist Harold Schiffman laments the absence of conventions for transliterating colloquial Tamil into English, highlighting the predicament of business owners who cannot print “correct” bilingual outdoor signs in Roman script due to this lack of standard. Among other insights, these examples reveal patterns of similarity and discontinuity suggestive of how transliteration practices are entangled with language politics at transnational or global scales. Analyzing multilingual signage in the neighborhoods of these three francophone cities-the only known ones in the world to display linguistic landscapes that include both French and Tamil-supplements existing scholarship on the history of Tamil print culture (Venkatachalapathy 1994 Blackburn 2006). The signs encompass (1) French words translated into Tamil, (2) Tamil translated into French, (3) Tamil transliterated into Roman, (4) French transliterated into Tamil, (5) English transliterated into Tamil, and (6) French translated into English yet transliterated as Tamil script. Featuring diverse signs composed in Tamil, French, and often English and printed in both Tamil and Roman scripts, these linguistic landscapes represent complex permutations of translations (defined as the conversion of meaning from one linguistic code to another) as well as transliterations (defined as the conversion of words from one script system to another). The three francophone cities of Puducherry, Paris, and Montreal, although divided by geography, politics, and history, share similar “linguistic landscapes” (Landry and Bourhis 1997 Gorter 2006 Shohamy and Gorter 2009), or publicly viewable signs, located in neighborhoods where Tamil-speaking communities regularly engage with francophone and anglophone communities. This is unfortunate, but scholars and others have not been able or willing to agree on a standard transliteration. typically do not mark differences in vowel length, retroflexion, or other distinctions. To make matters worse, popular transcriptions, such as those used in public signing, transliterations of person names, etc. ![]() Authoritative sources … use different transliterations, especially for some of the laterals and rhotics, where true confusion reigns. Unlike some Indian languages, Tamil does not have a single standard transliteration system. Montreal’s transliterations embody the diaspora’s future, emphasizing vibrant entrepreneurial activities in grassroots literacy, whereas signs in Puducherry featuring ornamental displays of French offer opportunities to connect with a past in which Tamil and French once coexisted in colonial handbooks and streets. Embodying the present, Paris provides the grounds for reproducing the linguistic community through adherence to International French, despite its paucity of transliterations. Thus, transliterations into Tamil, French, or English recalibrate the chronotopes of francophone Tamil settlements. Signs that project the image of a Tamil francophonie depend on structures of addressivity that animate graphic artifacts and potentially lead to new encounters between francophone Tamils. The interdiscursive ethnohistory of outdoor signs and other transliterated graphic artifacts from four urban neighborhoods in Puducherry, Paris, and Montreal is based on linguistic, ethnographic, and archival analyses of disparate sociohistorical contexts in which businesses and organizations promote or devalorize printing in Tamil and Roman scripts. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |