currylangs

[currylangs]

heyy. i wanted to know what all are the rituals for a christian wedding in kerala ?? ur blog has been v informative thank you soo much for this.

Hi, For the most part Christian weddings have similar set up to western weddings in that the brides do wear white, nowadays brides tend to wear dresses instead of sarees, although with sarees there is trend towards gold color the past few years. 

What probably sets Malaylali Syro-Malabar Christians from the west and even other Christians of India is the use of Minnu or Thali, or as it is known in the North as mangal sutra. I could be wrong but I have never seen other Indian Christians with a Minnu. But this locket is much smaller and has a cross on it, I would say it’s smaller than the average pinky nail lol. Also I wanna say this is very much a Syro-Malabar tradition, because I have a few Malayalee non-syro Christian friends and they did not have this during their ceremonies. It’s one of the things adopted from Hindu marriage traditions seen in Syro-Malabar Christians. 

Because arranged marriages are more common, so proposals aren’t really a thing, so the rings are plain gold bands, with the other’s name engraved on the outside, the couple exchanges it during the wedding ceremony. Oh and the husband gives wife his first gift which is a saree, that is blessed during the ceremony by the priest. This saree is worn during the reception and referred to as the Manthrakodi, a silk saree with heavy kasavu (gold or silver thread work), often Kanchipuram is picked. Don’t worry the girl picks what she likes way before the wedding, also so she can get the blouse stitched in time. Manthrakodi is also a Syro-Malabar tradition. 

There is a lot of wedding videos of different Christian weddings on Youtube, you can watch and see the different rituals. 

[currylangs]

how do u call dad , mom, brother and husband in malayalam ??

Hi, this was covered in our first vocab posts, which covers gender, family terms/relationships 

We have quiet an extensive vocab, grammar, and even some activities for those who are looking to learn. I will link below the different types of post we have under Malayalam. Just a heads up Malayalam is a difficult language to learn but not impossible, the hard part is because it is a tonal language. Meaning behind words can change drastically, even as native speaker I still make mistakes, so be patient with yourselves and practice. 

Lessons

Grammar 

Vocab

[currylangs]

what are some traditions followed by christian malayali's?? also is bapitised name same as formal name??

Hi, Christian traditions can vary from one denomination to another as it is in the west, with added layer of being a Malayali but I can only speak about Malayali Catholics, because I am one.

You can look to the Easter and Christmas cultural post to get a little bit of history and traditions on what we practice and why. One thing to keep in mind is you cannot compare Western or even northern Indian Christianity to that of Kerala (maybe even extend it to Tamil Nadu, since St. Thomas did travel there too). Our traditions did not start with european christianity, it is heavily influenced by Jewish and Syrian Christian beginnings. So, our traditions are result of absorbing Jewish, Syrian, and Hindu practices. 

As for baptism, again just for Catholics. Our baptismal name is different than official/formal name, it often becomes the middle name. Our baptismal name is usually our grandparents name, this is the most common practice within our community. Paternal grandparents get the priority so the first girl and first boy in the family, then maternal grandparents for the second born girl and boy, but this does not mean you have to do it this way. There are plenty of people who choose other names or pick a saint’s name for added protection for the child and perhaps influence a certain trait in the child. There is a patron saint for nearly everything.

Just as it in the west, only good standing Catholics can be god parents. For Malayalees usually these are family members, grandparents getting priority here again in the same way, in my case it was my grandma and my eldest uncle, as my grandpa had passed when my dad was still young. As my cousins are getting married and having children, god parents can be anyone in the family not necessarily their parents.

I hope this was informative, and feel free to add on to this post about other practices of Catholics and other Christian denominations of Kerala. 

[currylangs]

Hey! I just found your blog. Where are y'all from? And thank you for promoting our culture!

most of us live in the us!

[currylangs]

any useful apps/resources for learning tamil? i can understand informal spoken well but formal spoken is difficult because of lack of exposure, i don’t have a lot of confidence speaking, and i can’t read/write. where should i start?

imo, start with learning how to write tamil, it’s not that difficult, just memorisation. i haven’t found any apps for tamil, but pebbles tamil is a youtube channel aimed at small children to learn tamil, so if you lack vocab that’s a place where you can go. upenn has free tamil grammar resources, as well as a bunch of other unis that have tamil courses - i’d rec trying to find a pdf or a course outline for those, they do a really good job teaching formal tamil (usually written). also, if comprehension is your main goal i would recommend going on youtube, finding a video in tamil, and slowing it down. you can refer to https://currylangs.tumblr.com/post/176389398600/iv-never-been-able-to-speak-my-mother-tongue this ask as well (sorry idk how to do the linky thing on tumblr lmao) and check the tamil tag for any resources we have up on the blog. hope this helped!

-aryan

[currylangs]

resources for bangla

Free/accessible resources

wikipedia

a notebook

youtube channels (pebbles live, namaste nepal)

langblr accounts (currylangs, banglanotebook for vocab lists)

teach yourself bengali textbook https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2ks4ce8gp3lgk8p/AAAhmf2cN2-BQDpTBGPDv8Nia/TY%20Bengali?dl=0&preview=Teach+Yourself+Bengali.pdf

Paid resources

italki

mango languages

children’s books or poems (i have a collection of these, send an ask if you would like to read a story or poem scanned from the anthology)

bengali movies

How i personally use these resources:

practice writing the alphabet in a notebook, similar to character tracing notebook. I use wikipedia to check the letter shapes, and then watch a youtube video or use the book to check specifics about stroke order or word structure.

[currylangs]

hi! there are a few mistakes in the tamil post, for the words colours, pink, and orange. (நிறங்கள், இளஞ்சிவப்பு, செம்மஞ்சள்) have a good day ❤️

wow i can’t spell i just looked over those fjskfkslfkd sorry i’ll go fix those rn

thank you !

- aryan

[currylangs]

Your Tamil resources have textbooks but don’t really have them in Tamil script + easy grammar structures so I was wondering if you had any resources that might help with learning Tamil grammar? And at basic level?

hi! so upenn has tamil grammar resources, as well as the lessons on our blog and the tamil nadu government has free pdfs of tamil textbooks used in school that teach grammar, although iirc the tn books are monolingual.

hope this helps, sorry for the late reply!

- aryan

[currylangs]

hi! I'm trying to learn tamil by myself and while I can understand most basic phrases from listening to my parents talk, I basically have no other foundation. I'm working on learning the alphabet right now but do you have any resources/apps/ebooks/etc you recommend for starting with grammar and vocab?

apart from our blog, which has grammar and vocab lessons, i actually used the psle oral exam app as well as some of their textbook pdfs for tamil, plus the american tamil academy’s pdf’s. for listening, i would recommend a lot of kids youtube, and while it’s really slow, a lot of the time they teach you proper vocab (pebbles tamil is good), you can watch it in 2x speed if you want.

so sorry for the late reply!

-aryan

[currylangs]

Hello! I absolutely love this blog! I was wondering if you knew of any resources for how to actually write the Bengali alphabets? Whenever I try it looks off and I was thinking there might be a structure to follow. Thanks!

I learned stroke order from this youtube channel and this textbook. Writing isn’t going to look the same as print, so don’t be discouraged when .

Sorry for the late response!

- Snow

[currylangs]

I’m trying to learn Telugu to speak with my Indian coworkers/friends and your grammar explanations (like verb conjugations) have made it so much easier, thank you so much

Thank you! We’re glad we can help!

[currylangs]

Could you talk about the conjugation and use of the verb “to be” in Telugu please?

Telugu doesn’t have any equivalent to the word “to be”! I’ve only really seen that show up in Indo-European languages 

[currylangs]

telugu vocab: bugs

పురుగు [purugu] - bug (also used for worm) క్రిమి [krimi] - insect (also used for bacteria, usually in the plural form) కీటకము [keetakamu] - insect చీమ [cheema] - ant ఈగ [eega] - fly తూనీగ [tuneega] - dragonfly జిర్రపురుగు/జిల్లపురుగు [jirrapurugu/jillapurugu] - cockroach దోమ [doma] - mosquito  సీతాకోకచిలుక [seethakokachiluka] - butterfly సాలీడు [saaleedu] - spider తేనెటీగ [teneteega] - bee/honeybee కందిరీగ [kandireega] - wasp/hornet చెదలు [chedalu] - termites పేను [penu] - lice (singular) తేలు [telu] - scorpion (also a conjugation for “to float”) వృశ్చికము [vruschikamu] - scorpion

[currylangs]

colours in tamil

hi y’all

here are the colours u can use when describing things in tamil! i left the romanisations off bc by now u should know tamil script (if u don’t pls go check our script lessons)

colours - நிறங்கள்

dark colour - இருண்ட நிறம்

light colour - வெளிர் நிறம்

blue - நீலம்

black - கருப்பு

brown - மழுப்பு

grey - சாம்பல்

green - பச்சை

red சிவப்பு

yellow - மஞ்சள்

dark blue - கருநீலம்

violet - ஊதா

pink - இளஞ்சிவப்பு

orange - செம்மஞ்சள்

khaki - காக்கி

gold - தங்கம்

silver - வெள்ளி

feel free to reblog with more!

- aryan

[currylangs]

wouldn’t fever be ஜொரம் (joram), not “jeeram”? or is that maybe a dialect difference?

lmao sorry im dumb and i spelt it wrong, i’ll fix it rn! thank u!!

- aryan

[currylangs]

diseases in tamil

hi

so i know it’s been ages since we posted and this isn’t really the greatest topic for our return but!! it is useful!! so if u are sick or u know someone who is sick then u can use this vocab to talk about it and hopefully it gets better !!

anyway here we goooo

நோய் - disease

புற்று நோய் - cancer

வாந்திபேதி - cholera 

சளி - phlegm

ஜொரம் - fever

இருமல் - cough

நீரிழிவு - diabetes

சீதபேதி - dysentery

வரிப்பு - fit

தலைவலி - headache

மாரடைப்பு - heart attack

விக்கல் - hiccough

சொறி - itches

காமாலை - jaundice

மூலம் - haemorrhoids

வாதம் - rheumatism

பெரிய அம்மை - smallpox

சுளுக்கு - sprain

get well soon :)

[currylangs]

hi i just came across this blog but i'm just ??? so happy this exists like especially seeing content about Telugu, my mother tongue was like really surprising and i was actaully crying of laughter while trying to read the whole 'jughead scene translation' but ily you're all doing amazing

aaa thank you!! also thank you for appreciating our movie/tv show translation posts lol because they take the longest for us to make