My First Words In Tamil

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Problem
I meet Tamil-speaking people all the time, in Singapore and in England at Toastmasters clubs. In Singapore on the trains and stations you hear announcement in English and Chinese and Malay and Tamil. The Tamil announcements end with what sounds like mandri or nandri.

Tamil is spoken in India and Sri Lanka. It is used in schools in Malaysia and Singapore.  It is also recognized as a minority language in South Africa and Mauritius.

Various origins of the meaning exist. My favourite is Tam is sweet and il is sound.

This month I met a Tamil woman and asked her to tell me the words for hello and goodbye and please and thank you and one to three four.

English words borrowed from Tamil
bank
catamaran
hospital
lantern
mulligatawni
rail

Here are my first ten words in Tamil:

English- Tamil
bread - rotti
food stall - Kadai (kedai in Malay)
fort - (kota in Malay) kottai
goodbye - Piriyavitai
hat - topi
hello - vanakkam
lion - singa
same - sama
sweet - tam
sweetness - tamil
thank you - mandri/nanri

one - oru
two - irantu
three - munru
four nanku
five - aintu

Ten - pattu

Tamil- English
il -sound
kadai - food stall (Kedai in Malay. Think of a food caddy. K for kiosk.)
mandri - thank you
rotti - bread (roti in Malay)
sama / saman (in Malay also sama) - same
singa - lion
tam - sweet
toppi (spelled topi in Malay) - hat (This is so like top hat that I just had to include it.)

Useful websites
You can learn Hindi and Indonesian from Duolingo but not Tamil.

Loan Words From Tamil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_loanwords_in_other_languages 

Learn Tamil
http://www.linguanaut.com/english_tamil.htm
memrise.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.