How does one?

Go make an electronic story book in app form for a Tamizh story?

Would like to try my hand at making an animated story which my grandmother told us, which was told to her by her grandmother..

That means this story is at least a 100+ years old, probably older

The story is about an "eee" ஈ (housefly) who forgot its name and went asking different people/things if they knew its name.

Any suggestions for software, methods etc. greatly appreciated!

Would like to make this a weekend project of sorts.

While in grad school I helped create many educational self teach programs using a software called "Authorware Pro" on a Macintosh Quadra (yep, that was ages ago.. before internet days) and it was given good reviews by many students who used it.

It was difficult even to find these on google search and some of the pages open only on Internet Explorer and don't open on firefox. Was also sad to see my name not on the credits for some stuff I really put my heart and soul into, but I digress.. It does not matter now.

Things have come a long way since those days, what with Flash and Youtube and of course the internet!

Hopefully you will see an animated story titled:

"Kozhu Kozhu Kanne, en peyar enna?"

கொழு கொழு கன்னே, என் பெயர் என்ன?

(plump plump calf, what is my name?)

and the calf says "Theriyaadhe!" தெரியாதே ! (I don't know!)

and off he goes to the next person with the same answer till he finally gets his name!

Jr. and the little one absolutely love this story when my mom narrates it to them and my nephew thinks I am the greatest story teller in the world for my embellished version of this story!

This old dog is up for some new tricks!

So, please, point me toward the right tools..

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iPhone Tamil font

When reading articles in Tamil on the iPhone, the font is messed up. The same pages load okay on Firefox and internet explorer.

Considering that the fonts are in UNICODE, it does not make any sense on why this is..

If any of you iPhone Tamil news readers / Bloggers have figured out an answer, kindly let me know.

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Appa, she is kusu vutting!

Now that translates word for word from Tamlish to:

Daddy, she is farting!

When you have a household that speaks a mixed tongue, where words that are neither here nor there make up more than 30% of the vocabulary, life gets to be interesting.

The English speaking folks can only understand part of the conversation. The grand parents and relatives in India look puzzled in the video chats over the weekend because they are not sure if they heard things right. The only people who understand the kids and the parents in conversations are other kids raised in America or parents raising their kids in America who have the exact same mother tongue.

Yes. A tamlish kid speaks a different dialect than a Kannadlish or Telugish kid.

Much like a North Indian will perceive all south Indian languages to be similar sounding and lump them all as one, a Hindlish parent or kid might lump all these dialects as one.

That said, it is really funny when the parents also start talking like the kids!

Why we do it is beyond me. Maybe we think it will be easier to get through to them? We think it is cute? It makes sense being Tamil speaking people in America and somehow optimizes the total number of words that have to be spoken to convey the meaning in both languages simultaneously?!

We speak sentences like

"Appa, can you come pal thEch me?" = Daddy, can you come teeth brush me?

"Appa, the meen is kutty pOtting!" = Daddy, the fish is baby dropping!

etc.

Nakking (licking), kudiching (drinking), thodaching (wiping dry), etc. are one set of variants where the verb starts of in Tamil but ends up as some kind of gerund with the "ing" ending.

Then there are the variations like "doneaa?" which gets a response "donnu!" where the english word gets the Tamil ending added to it to convey question vs. answer, active or passive voice, or tense!

doneaa = are you done ?
Donnu = yes I am!

This is how a tamizh concept gets ported over to Tamlish

There is one more variant.

"Daddy, can you kadichy saap my tummy?" which kind of translates to :
"Daddy, can you bite eat my tummy?" which is their way of saying
"Daddy, can you blow raspberries on my tummy?"

Note that Kadichy is close to Kadichu (or bitten), but saap is shortened for Saaptu (eaten). Now when two action words are chained back to back, the second one gets chopped. An English concept now gets carried over to Tamlish!

Sometimes, we are misunderstood, but mostly we get the best of both worlds!

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