Tamil words that do not translate
A dhow, a kottu roshi, a khachapuri — words a dictionary can only give as a description in brackets, because the thing is not part of everyday life here. All such Tamil words are collected here: 42 words with an explanation of what it is and what it is for.
Words and what stands behind them
A flat clay oil lamp with a spout: oil goes in, a cotton wick rests in the beak. Lit at the household shrine in the evening and set out in rows for festivals. Costs pennies and is sold by the dozen.
A cup of fermented rice batter baked in a round pan: the edges thin and crisp, the bottom soft and thick. Eaten at breakfast and at dinner, with sambol or an egg inside.
A dark dense flatbread of rice flour with palm sugar, fried in oil. The dough must stand a day, or nothing comes of it. Made for Deepavali, and the skill of making it is a mark of a good housewife.
The classical dance of frozen poses, counted footwork and a language of gestures that retells whole stories. Studied for years, with a debut arranged as an event. The feet beat the rhythm on anklets of little bells.
The autumn festival of lights: new clothes, an oil bath before dawn, sweets for the neighbours and little lamps all over the house. The name folds together dīpa, 'lamp', and avali, 'a row'.
A thin, crisp crepe from the same batter as idli, baked on a large hot griddle. Can be the size of a tray. With potato filling inside it is called masala dosa.
The gateway tower of a temple, covered from base to top with painted figures of gods and beasts, tier upon tier, narrowing upward. Visible for kilometres, it serves the city as a landmark. The more gopurams, the grander the temple.
Nests of rice noodles, pressed through a sieve onto a woven disk and steamed. Served in stacks with curry, or with coconut milk and sugar. In English: string hoppers.
A white, spongy steamed cake made from fermented rice-and-lentil batter. Bland on its own, it is eaten dipped in sambar and coconut chutney. The standard breakfast.
The water of a young coconut, drunk straight from the nut through a cut hole. Literally 'young water'. After drinking, the nut is split and the soft flesh scraped out with a piece of shell.
City and peninsula in the north of Sri Lanka, the capital of Tamil culture on the island: chalky soil, palmyra palms, temples and a fiery cuisine of its own. The name goes back to yazh, an ancient harp from the city's founding legend.
The cooking of the island's north: hotter than the south, with spice powder roasted dark, plenty of black pepper and palmyra products. The Jaffna crab curry is famous across Sri Lanka.
A thin rice liquor, sometimes with coconut milk and greens. The food of the sick, the food of the poor and the breakfast of many. The English congee and this word share one root; it went out of Tamil into the world.
A November evening when rows of clay lamps are set along every step and wall of the house. No fireworks, no noise — only flame. One of the oldest festivals, mentioned in poems two thousand years old.
A pattern of rice flour a woman lays at the doorstep every morning before sunrise, letting the flour run between her fingers. By evening feet and ants have erased it, and the next day it is drawn again. Feeding the ants is part of the point.
Roti chopped up on a hot plate with two blunt blades, with vegetables, egg and meat. The clang of the blades on the iron is heard a quarter away. A shared food of Tamils and Sinhalese, and the argument over whose it is, is eternal.
A Hindu temple: a courtyard, a tower over the gate, an inner sanctuary not everyone may enter. Shoes come off at the gate, and men often take off their shirts too. Literally 'the king's house' — the deity lives there like a monarch.
A crisp twisted braid of rice flour with lentils, pressed out in a spiral and fried in oil. Made for festivals and kept in a tin for weeks. The name comes from the verb 'to twist'.
A long wooden oboe with a flared bell, the loudest wind instrument — played with no microphone. Sounds at weddings and in temples, heard across the whole quarter. Always played in a pair with the thavil drum.
The jelly-like translucent flesh of a young palmyra fruit, like a big droplet. Inside is sweetish water. Eaten with a spoon in the heat; sold by the road in clusters of fruit, opened with a machete.
A Jaffna chowder: crab, shrimp, fish and vegetables in a hot broth thickened with palmyra-root flour. Eaten by hand from a big bowl, the whole family at once — more an event than a meal.
The fan palm of the island's north: it gives sap, fruit, root, leaf and timber. Sugar, wine, flour, baskets and rafters are made from it. For Jaffna it is what the coconut palm is for the south.
A dark, hard sugar boiled down from palmyra sap and set in the shape of half a shell. Smells of smoke and molasses. A piece is tucked behind the cheek and washed down with tea instead of sugar in the cup.
Rice flour with grated coconut, packed in layers into a tube and steamed. Comes out as a cylinder broken apart by hand. In the north of the island eaten with fish curry, in the south with banana and coconut milk.
The harvest festival in mid-January, and the dish cooked for it: rice with milk and palm sugar in a new pot, out in the open. The milk must boil over the rim — at that moment everyone cries 'Pongalo Pongal!'
A flower garland of jasmine and marigolds strung on a thread. A guest is greeted with it, a portrait of the dead is adorned with it, it is hung on the image of a deity and exchanged at a wedding. Women weave jasmine into the braid.
The dot on the forehead between the brows. Colour and shape say a lot: a red round one for a married woman, black for a girl, a sticker of any colour to match a dress. Men wear it after temple, but rarely.
A thin, sour, peppery broth with tamarind, pepper and garlic, almost without substance. Drunk from a cup at the end of a meal or poured over rice. Considered a cure for a cold and served hot.
A stew of overcooked lentils with vegetables, tamarind and its own spice mix. Sour and hot, poured over rice or served with idli and dosa. Every house keeps its own proportions, and people argue about them.
Six metres of cloth without a single seam, wrapped round the body: a skirt with pleats in front and the end across the shoulder. The way of draping differs by region and community. Worn to school, to the office and to a wedding.
Literary Tamil: the language of books, news and school essays, differing from the spoken one not in style but in grammar — its own endings and its own words. People write in it, but even a professor does not speak it at home.
A martial art with a bamboo staff one and a half human heights long: circular sweeps, spins overhead and a circling step. More than two thousand years old, shown at festivals as a spectacle.
Boiled peas or beans with grated coconut, mustard seed and curry leaf. Handed out at the temple on festival days and sold on the beach in a paper cone. Simple, everyday food.
A language with over two thousand years of unbroken literature, one of very few in the world. Official in Sri Lanka, India and Singapore. The sound ḻ in its very name exists almost nowhere else: not l, not r, not zh.
A cord with a gold pendant the bridegroom ties round the bride's neck at the central moment of the wedding. Removed only in widowhood. Its shape shows which community the woman is from — each has its own.
A barrel-shaped drum: one head is struck with a stick, the other with fingers wearing ring-shaped thimbles. Plays paired with the nadaswaram and sets the rhythm of the whole wedding procession.
A wooden temple chariot several storeys tall on massive wheels, hauled through the streets by ropes on festival days. Pulling it counts as merit, and everyone grabs a rope.
A book of 1330 couplets on virtue, wealth and love, written about two thousand years ago. It holds not one name of a god or a king, and therefore everyone quotes it. The lines are known by heart and slipped into arguments.
A savoury doughnut of ground lentils with onion and chili, deep-fried, with a hole in the middle. Crisp outside, soft inside. Sold in stacks in tea shops and eaten with chutney or just so.
A white cloth a man wraps round his waist down to the ankles. The hem is hitched up to the knee for walking fast or working, and let down as a sign of respect — in the temple and before elders. Worn with a shirt or without.
White sacred ash, applied in three horizontal stripes on the forehead after a temple visit. The mark of Shiva's devotees. Handed out in pinches by the sanctuary; refusing is awkward, and wiping it off at once is impolite.
An ancient Tamil harp, out of use for more than a thousand years and known only from poems and sculpture. Attempts are made to reconstruct it from descriptions. The name of Jaffna comes from it.
Why such words are in the course
These are a language's ID marks: they cannot be translated because the thing they name is not part of everyday life here, and they are exactly what you hear on day one. There are few of them on purpose — 42 words out of 4052 words in the course. A course where every seventh word is a local curiosity would teach local studies, not a language.
Every word here has its own page, with pronunciation, a look at the spelling and an example of use.
Frequently asked
Why can't these words simply be translated?
A translation assumes the thing exists here too and is just called differently. Not in this case: “a dhoni is a boat” is true and useless — there are many kinds of boat, and a dhoni is known by its tall curved prow and by being the only way between the islands. An explanation answers the question about the thing, not the word.
Do you have to learn them?
Not before everything else. But you will meet them early: local food is offered on the first day, and a festival is named without explanation. Knowing what stands behind a word is more useful than being able to translate it.