Review of the Literature: Standard Spoken Tamil.

For a review of the rather extensive literature on the question of the existence of a Standard Spoken Tamil, see Andronov (1962, 1975), Asher (1982), Bloch (1910), Britto (1986), Annamalai (n.d.), Shanmugam Pillai (1960), Vasantha Kumari (n.d.), and Schiffman (1979). Various studies by Zvelebil (1950-65) depict a range of dialect variation among the modern non-standard, essentially regional varieties of Tamil.

During a recent research visit in Singapore, the question was often put to me whether there is such a thing as ``Standard Spoken Tamil" (SST), and if so, what its main features might be, and how Singapore Spoken Tamil would compare with it. Since I have actually spent a significant part of my academic career investigating the question of SST, and I have evidence there in fact is such a thing, I have decided to address this issue directly in this paper. My belief that there is such as thing as SST is bolstered by my Singapore data, where, if anything, a wider use of SST koiné is evidenced than in general in India.

SST, as I and others believe it to exist, is based on the everyday speech of educated non-Brahman Tamils, and its most obvious public domain, as noted above, is the Tamil movies of the so-called ``social" type, other modern ``social" stage dramas, some radio broadcasting (radio plays etc.) and to some extent in television. This language is not the same as regional or social varieties of Tamil (Trichy-Tanjore Non-Brahman, or Mysore Brahman, or Ramnad Adi-Dravida varieties, etc.). In many ways it is closer to literary Tamil, though nowhere near identical to it. It is not invariant, i.e. there is some variation in it, but natural languages are variable, and given the absolute lack of formal standardizing pressures put on SST (it is subject to no Academy, no school system, no literary society's strictures) it is remarkably uniform. It is spoken by educated people of various castes and regions to each other, and people learn it by listening to the dialogues of plays and films, working on communicating with each other in college hostels, and other places where educated people come together and try to communicate in Tamil. Of course it is used mostly for informal purposes, but one also hears it used by educated people for certain high-register purposes, where LT has no functional register: for example, Tamil linguists trained in western linguistics will often begin a discussion in English, and gradually code-switch into Tamil with English loans. I have heard entire university level lectures on Tamil syntax presented this way, with sentences like

inda POSITIONle oru MORPHEME BOUNDARY ADMIT-pannaa, appram onga MORPHOPHONEMIC RULES-um CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE um AFFECTED- aa irukkum.

``If we admit a morpheme boundary in this position, then your morphophonemic rules and your constituent structure will both be affected."

Many teachers, moreover, whether they teach in Literary Tamil or in English, use SST to paraphrase what they say, since students will not otherwise always understand them. In Singapore schools that I have visited, Tamil classes are regularly conducted with SST as the language of `explanation' (in fact, the medium of instruction!) though SST is never the object of instruction. The assumption is that students actually understand SST (which may not always be the case in Singapore), complicating the pedagogical problematicity of this issue. In mainland (Indian) Tamil schools, children do already speak some kind of spoken Tamil from their home environment, though it is rarely the `standard' koiné. How students `acquire' standardized ST is a question that has not been examined or reported on except anecdotally, since most teachers do not recognize the extent to which they actually use SST in school settings, and because there is no prevalent notion that some forms of it might be more acceptable than others. That is, teachers do not `correct' children for `erroneous' use of spoken Tamil since they possess no overt knowledge of what that might be. In fact children probably acquire a regional koiné in elementary school, and then acquire the kind of SST forms I am examining when they come to live in college hostels (dormitories) as young adults.