Languagle #31: Tamil
அகத்தின் அழகு முகத்தில் தெரியும்
Agathin azhagu mugathil theriyum
"The beauty of the inner self shows in the face."
What it means
What a person is like inside shows on their face. It is a traditional Tamil saying: kindness, worry and anger all show, whatever someone tries to hide.
How to say it
A-gat-thin A-zha-gu MU-gat-thil THE-ri-yum
The zh in azhagu is ழ, Tamil's famous sound: curl your tongue back and say a soft r. The th is a soft t made with the tongue against the teeth, never the th in 'thin'.
Word by word
- அகத்தின் A-gat-thin: of the inner self (அகம், the inside, the heart)
- அழகு A-zha-gu: beauty
- முகத்தில் MU-gat-thil: in the face (முகம், face)
- தெரியும் THE-ri-yum: shows, can be seen
அகம் and முகம், heart and face, rhyme, which is what makes the proverb stick.
Where it was found
In Tamil a proverb is a pazhamozhi (பழமொழி). This one is from Wikiquote's list of Tamil proverbs.
Similar sayings
- English: The eyes are the window to the soul
How to recognise Tamil
Tamil has fewer letters than other Indian scripts, and it marks a consonant with no vowel after it by putting a dot on top (்). That dot turns up constantly, in words like ம் and ல். Malayalam letters are curlier and use a small curved stroke instead of the dot. Telugu and Kannada letters wear a little tick on top, like a check mark. Tamil also avoids stacking letters on top of each other, which most Indian scripts do.
About the Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken by around 80 million people, mainly in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in Sri Lanka, with large communities in Singapore and Malaysia, where it is an official language. It has one of the longest continuous literary traditions of any living language, with Sangam poetry dating back around two thousand years. Its script has fewer letters than most Indian scripts because it does not write the difference between some sounds.
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