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Orthographic Knowledge, Reading and Spelling Development in Tamil: The First Three Years

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Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography

Part of the book series: Literacy Studies ((LITS,volume 17))

Abstract

Tamil (tamiḻ) is a South Dravidian language with a contained orthography in contrast to the other more extensive akshara orthographies of South Asia. In this chapter we briefly describe the Tamil orthography, introducing the rich vocabulary available in the language to describe the symbol set. Similar descriptions are given for Tamil phonology and morphology. We also focus on Tamil teaching before presenting research findings on early literacy development. Our survey data suggest that important milestones in the journey to mastery of word reading and spelling include learning about the native and grantha consonants and unconnected diacritic markers, especially those with ambiguous visual elements such as the thunaikaal. A discussion on writing routines, diglossia and children’s spontaneous writing is also included.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We represent Tamil phonemes and akshara sound values using the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association (IPA), 1999.

  2. 2.

    We use the Tamil Lexicon Notation (1939) collated by the University of Madras to represent Tamil linguistic terms. See Appendix for the linguistic terms written in Tamil along with their IPA transcription and a simple definition.

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Acknowledgement

This book chapter is funded by a seed grant on early literacy research to Balambigai Narayanan from The Promise Foundation, and a research grant to Sonali Nag from Brasenose College, University of Oxford. This chapter has gained from the critical comments received from Narayanan Srinivasan and K. Umaraj.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Sonali Nag

  2. The Promise Foundation, Bangalore, India

    Sonali Nag

  3. Department of Speech, Hearing & Communication, National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities(Divangjan) (NIEPMD), Chennai, India

    Balambigai Narayanan

Authors
  1. Sonali Nag
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  2. Balambigai Narayanan
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Correspondence to Sonali Nag .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    R. Malatesha Joshi

  2. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Catherine McBride

Appendix: Tamil Linguistic Terms with the Tamil Lexicon Notation (Madras Notation) and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Appendix: Tamil Linguistic Terms with the Tamil Lexicon Notation (Madras Notation) and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A table has 23 entries for Madras Nations and the International Phonetic Alphabets with their meanings.

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Nag, S., Narayanan, B. (2019). Orthographic Knowledge, Reading and Spelling Development in Tamil: The First Three Years. In: Joshi, R.M., McBride, C. (eds) Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography. Literacy Studies, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05977-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05977-4_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05976-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05977-4

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