CHENNAI: Learning Tamil was not an easy task for over 200 students of MNTS Tamil School in Minnesota, USA, until they were handed out a pocket-sized book making a tall claim — Read Tamil in 32 hours! While many misjudged the book by its size, the school’s Tamil course director Sivanandam Mariyappan was resolute to complete the learning process with just three letters and eight gestures as mentioned in the book.
A few months on, the new learning method proved effective as students picked up lessons faster. Amazed, Sivanandam reached out to retired professor Natesan from Pollachi, the author of the book, whose dislike for the Tamil word ‘Ta’ makes people fondly call him Nasan Ayya. With his guidance, Sivanandam’s organisation, Menporul Technologies Inc, went on to fund Read Tamil — an application to make this free resource accessible for a larger section of people.
Launched in 150 countries in September 2020, the app’s Android version has already crossed over 10,000 downloads and garnered good reviews in Google PlayStore. While Tamilians have set their foot across the globe, there has been an obvious decline in the number of people familiar with the language. Read Tamil application was designed to address this issue, says Sivanandam. Developed by Thulir Soft in Chennai, the application is predominantly used by Tamil immigrants.
“Ayya curated the 32-card system for Read Tamil. Nearly two decades ago, he had prepared 32 hand-made cards to teach BEd students, who in turn helped late bloomers learn the language. A few years later, the cards took the shape of a pocket- sized book and found many takers,” explains Sivanandam. Usually, the LSRW (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) method is adopted to teach languages across the world, but this is not applicable for phonetic languages like Tamil, the professor says.
“In the name of languageteaching, people are so used to coaching the content and it does not benefit the learners. There are some steps in teaching any language — introduction to writing and pronouncing letters, joining letters to form words (sorkalanjiyam), forming context-based phrases (thodar), and basics of literature. Such learning will help a person write poetry in any language within five years,” he says.
Global takers
For 37-year-old software consultant Vasanth Velladurai, the application came in handy when he had to teach his two children aged three and six their mother tongue. “Paadi pazhaguvom in the app’s first slide helped my son familiarise with the letters in a sing-song way. The self-learning app launched during the lockdown allowed him to explore and learn from the structured sequence of letters and words without much assistance,” says Vasanth, who is also the president of Stockholm Tamil Sangam in Sweden.
He eventually introduced the app for over 25 Tamil-speaking kids, who are being taught through the Sangam for an hour during the weekends. “The language instructors have been provided with the app’s desktop version, which is projected to teach a larger group.” Similar initiatives are also taken by the Indonesia Tamil Sangam, says Angayarkanni Elanselvan, a Maths teacher who settled in Indonesia 20 years ago. For the past five years, she has been volunteering to teach Tamil through the Sangam.
“During the pandemic, kids started using this visually appealing app to brush up their memory. Naturally, they became fond of it, and they rely on it to clear doubts in the absence of instructors.” Many parents and students heap their praise on Nasan Ayya for his efforts and contribution to the Tamil community. Ten-year-old Harini from Jakarta says, “As a beginner in learning Tamil, the app helped me improve my vocabulary and understand how to write each letter in an easy manner.”
Not a regular app
Managing director of Thulir Soft, D Narayanan, finds this project to be easily the most challenging one, which was pulled off by his team in six months. “The initial plan was to develop the app only for iOS and wrap up the works in two months. But, the process involved numerous technical troubles when the Android version was brought on the cards.
We had to upgrade the technology to simplify the learning process for users of the tutorial- type app which has letters, pictures, voices, and GIFs all on one screen,” he details. After a series of tests and trials by Tamil school teachers, the free education app’s iOS version was released in December 2020. The upcoming versions will allow users to select from a range of world languages to learn Tamil, making the language accessible across boundaries, he says.
Upcoming versions
After a series of tests and trials by Tamil school teachers, Read Tamil’s iOS version was released in December 2020. The upcoming versions will allow users to select from a range of world languages to learn Tamil, making the language accessible across boundaries, says D Narayanan, MD, Thulir Soft.