மெனு தாறீங்களா?

In short

• ▶
  மெனு தாறீங்களா?

  meṉu tāṟīṅgaḷā?

  could we have the menu?

Why it looks that way

'May I' is not translated: one asks 'will you give' — tāṟīṅgaḷā. You know meṉu; in a small eatery there is none, and the dishes are recited aloud

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• ▶
  வணக்கம், மெனு தாறீங்களா?

  vaṇakkam meṉu tāṟīṅgaḷā

  Hello, could we have the menu?

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• இங்க என்ன நல்லா இருக்கும்? — what is good here?read “iṅga eṉṉa nallā irukkum?”
• எனக்கும் அதே — the same for meread “eṉakkum adē”
• ரெண்டு கோப்பி தாங்க — two coffees, pleaseread “reṇḍu kōppi tāṅga”
• இன்னும் கொஞ்சம் தண்ணி தாறீங்களா? — could we have more water?read “iṉṉum koñcam taṇṇi tāṟīṅgaḷā?”
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