As all languages have, TM also has its fair share of similar words, if mispronounced change the whole
meaning.
My daughter was trying to learn kannada and was getting foxed by their "hula", "huli", "holu", "hulli"!
For those of you who do not know kannada....
Hula is Insect
Hulli is Sambar
Holu is the vegetable in the sambar
Huli is tiger
There...... make one mistake and you may end up with an insect in your sambar!
In Thanjavur Marathi, we have a lot of similar sounding words. Here are a four of them....
Saena .... Festival
Sena (also said 'shena') ...Cowdung
Mohra...Mustard Seeds
Mohri.... Drain
Daanth...Teeth
Daansch.... Mosquito
vhela/... seive
vela/... Time
Sann is festival...but the n that we use is as in Aanni/ Paanni / Lonni and not as Namdeo/Nandaa/Nagpur. Shenn is cowdung and Shenni/ Govarya are cowdung cakes used as firewood .
ReplyDeleteMohiri is mustard seed. we do not say mohira..no ! and Moree is actually a small washing place usually near the kitchen or near the back yard .For tooth or teeth ,singular or plural,we say dAt as the sound in English or Damodar.For mosquito we use dAs..this d sound is like in darkness,unlike Damoder.There is no ch in our dAs .!Velanni is a seive and Vell is time !
ReplyDeleteA mosquito is also called machchar as in Hindi because of Hindi movie influence.
ReplyDeleteVery true, Shri Sirdeshpande. But our language due to being isolated sometimes lost the finer nuances of pronunciation. Someone known to me regularly used to say "shen" for "sann". He was Kannada speaking... I still have not figured out whether he used to say that deliberately to irritate his Thanjavur Marathi wife!!
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