Talk:நடு

IPA and Declension issues, with respect to குற்றியலுகரம்

Tamil has two types of final 'u's, [u] and [ɯ]. The two have a phonological and semantic distinction as much as two completely different vowels, and a distribution which cannot be predicted phonetically under the current manner of dealing with Tamil in declension, conjugation and IPA. But currently Wiktionary seems to favour Tamil orthography over Tamil grammar and phonology in terms of dealing with it; Modern Tamil does not distinguish the two in writing but the difference is indispensable in both pronunciation and grammar, and the loss in distinction in writing is due to medieval orthographic quirks which led to the loss in representation of the புள்ளி (which was used to distinguish the two), which was not entirely restored to its original and systematically complete form after the introduction of printing.

Words ending in [ɯ] show typical elision of the final vowel in the presence of a subsequent vowel, whereas an [u] shows sandhi with [v].

Words ending in [u]: நடு (middle), பரு, மகடூஉ, and words borrowed from Indo-Aryan languages with an original final [u], like குரு, தரு etc.

Words ending in [ɯ]: நடு (to plant), விடு, பாடு, மாடு etc., which otherwise behave as consonant-final words, with a final குற்றியலுகரம் to prevent the occurrence of a final stop consonant, which is not allowed under Tamil phonotactics.

Thus, I propose that, for purposes of conjugation and declension, Tamil words ending in [ɯ] be defined as consonant-final words, eg.: *விட்,*பாட்,*மாட் etc, with ு added in the end when final. This also greatly simplifies the IPA representation (the word in this page, in fact, has two pronunciations, [n̪aɖu] for etymology 1 and [n̪aɖɯ] for etymology two, which also explains the peculiar declension that has been represented by overriding the template here. I do hope this, or some other, means is utilized throughout to clearly distinguish உகரம் from குற்றியலுகரம், which are two entirely different sounds which used to be differentiated through the presence of a புள்ளி over the latter in ancient manuscripts, and is dealt with in Malayalam by representing the latter through chillus and புள்ளி-equivalents instead of ு.

Anish Bharadhwaj Lakshmanan (talk) 06:59, 29 March 2023 (UTC)