Tanglish

Some interesting characteristics of Tanglish that I have observed in the language of college students are described here. The usage of words like paduthifying, konjifying, pichify, maams, apps, goingaa, comingaa, playingaa, goda, is commonly observed among college students. The use of ‘–fying’, an English suffix is a mix of ‘–fy’ and ‘–ing’. The affix ‘-fy’ is used in line with English words like simplify, classify, beautify etc. The use of ‘–ing’ indicates the continuous tense. The Tamil word is shortened and ‘-s’ is added. The ‘s’ doesn’t indicate the plural. For example ‘mama’ (maternal uncle) and ‘appa’ (father) are shortened and modified to ‘maams’ and ‘apps’. Words like comingaa, playingaa, planingaa are used as questions. Instead of saying ‘Are you coming?’, ‘comingaa,’ a single word, is used to convey the same question.  Similarly, questions like ‘Water is comingaa?’, ‘Sir is comingaa?’ in place of ‘Is the water coming?’, ‘Is sir coming?’ are also used to a great extent among college students. These questions are syntactically Tamil but contain several English words.  The secret to Tamilizing English words is to add an "u" sound at the end. For example, instead of pronouncing bridge with the consonant ending, speakers pronounce it as bridgeju (biridju). The word not only ends with a vowel, but is also resyllabified. Some recent coinages in Tanglish are – Nashtalgia, Chancey illa Chennai, Bulbu vaanguniya, Freeya vidu.