LANGUAGE IN INDIA

A REVIEW OF
KEY WORDS OF A KINSHIP
AN INTERESTING EXPLORATION OF HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND THE TAMILS
A BOOK BY R. M. PAULRAJ

The publicity blurb for this interesting book, KEY WORDS OF A KINSHIP - PRIMITIVE ONENESS OF THE ENGLISH AND THE TAMILS, says:

The English people and the Tamils of South Asia spoke the same language and lived together in the distant past. They separated from each other more than three millennia ago and migrated towards their present homelands. Modern English and Tamil have preserved hundreds of words of everyday use that are essentially the same in the two languages. The branch of the Anglo-Tamil peoples that came to India certainly passed through the Indus river basin. For how long they lived in that region before being pushed out of it and traveled to the south is an intriguing question.

CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

The book is divided into four parts and each part consists of several chapters.

Part I: A SOUND BASIS

1. Introduction
2. Accommodative Nature of the English
3. Attempts at Re-anglicizing
4. Speech Sounds Peculiar to Tamil
5. Different Sounds in English
6. Euphonic Additions in Tamil Words
7. Superfluous 's' in English Speech
8. Metathesis
9. Representative Speech Sounds of the Two Languages

Part II: WHAT THE WORDS TELL

1. Clusters of Cognate Forms
2. Copious Derivatives
3. Cognate Affixes

Part III: A TESTIMONY OF OUR WORDS

1. The Joint Homeland
2. The Indus Barrier
3. Conclusions

Appendices

The hard work and scholarship of R. M. Paulraj is easily seen and felt when we read this detailed, well-written book. Paulraj concludes,

The presence of so wide a spectrum of cognate words in English and Tamil cannot be the result of a temporary co-habitation of two unrelated races at some point of time in the past. The coherent sameness of the phonetic compositions and significations of corresponding words in a wide range of aspects of daily life inevitably leads us to the conclusion that the English and the Tamils have in the distant past shared a common language and culture.

AN ENTICING INVITATION?

This is a book based on many correspondences between words in English and Tamil. Could these correspondences be incidental or accidental? Do these form a pattern to warrant and substantiate the conclusions are questions that an interested and serious reader may raise while seriously browsing through this book.

A great contribution to theory construction regarding external relations of the Tamils and English.

The book is published by Trafford Publishing Canada with offices in many nations. Copies are easily available through amazon.com. Interested readers may like to contact the author Paulraj through his e-mail address: rmpraj@yahoo.co.uk

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M. S. Thirumalai

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