Sourashtra-An Introduction

Hi all,
I am a sourashtrian.I want to share something interesting about my language to all of you.

ABOUT LANGUAGE AND PLACE:

       Saurashtra is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the sourashtrian community of GUJARAT who migrated and settled in South India. There are three group of migrants living Tamil Nadu. First migrants came to Salem Second migrant group settled Tanjore and surrounding places and third later migrants settled Madurai and surrounding places.There are saurashtrians even in Trichy, Kumbakonam,etc.Madurai and Trichy in Tamil Nadu has the

 highest number of people belonging to my
 community and also remains as our cultural
center.We are also called as "Patnūlkarar".
 We have got this name "Patnūlkarar" because once upon a time ,we were brought from Gujarat to south by the kings to weave silk dresses for them. Patnūlkarar in Tamil means "silk weavers". Within sourashtrian community we call our language as "Palkar". Now-a-days we can find many sourashtrians in all fields.

AN INTERESTING FACT:

Saurashtra itself a mixture of 100 languages,"sau" means hundred(100) "rashtra" means "regions" and mostly of MARATHI,HINDI,TULU AND TELUGU.

MY EXPERIENCE:

Lets see A Small Conversation.

 Our conversation usually starts like this.....
X: So , what language do you speak at home..English?
Me: No..
X: Hindi?
me: No..
X: Let me guess then...Tamil?
Me: No ...It is Sourashtra ..
X: Isn't that in Gujarat? But you said your native is Madurai..
Me: Yea ..but we are not Gujarati's..we are Sourashtrians....and our mother tongue is Sourashtra.
X: Really? I haven't heard of such a language before. Tell me,what does it sound like?
Me: It is like a mixture of many Indian languages like Hindi ,Marathi, Tamil,Sanskrit, Bengali,etc..
X: Oh, I see! Talk something in your language...What is "What is your name ?" in Sourashtra?
Me: It is " Thor ('th' as in 'thorough') naav kaaya(last 'a' as in 'about')?"

Here X is any person(usually my classmate) I have met till now.
The above conversation has repeated many times.
      X usually finds it difficult to pronounce the words. At school,usually ,the very first words they would like to know are the Sourashtra words for monkey, donkey, fool, idiot, mad etc..which they can use to call their friends.

     I feel pronunciation is very important in every language as this is what gives it individuality. With a little different way of tongue movement you can make Tamil sound like English or English like anything else. But pronunciation,as I understand and feel, is the backbone of Palkar, because a tiny change can completely change the meaning or even make it sound disrespectful.

DIFFERENT SLANG'S: 

We can see a difference in slang between the saurashtrians in Kumbakonam,Tanjore and those in Madurai.


Let me give you some examples of our language,
Let us consider 'A' for 'aa' and 'a' for normal a as in ask.

 hAi (yes),
rhA (wait),
nhA (no),
KAm (work),
Pillal (children),
gAye (cow),
Bottal(cloths),
dhoodh(milk),
Mhotto(big or huge or elder)

        Most of you must have watched the Tamil thriller movie "Athey kangal". There is a song in that movie just before the climax where the hero ,heroine and their friends sing this song"Pombalai oruthi irundalam"...which has these lines sung by the heroine and co..." Dhaak kerares, Dhaak kerares,Dhaak kerares" to which the hero and his group. reply "Dhakkunoko,Dhakkunoko,Dhakkunoko". Well, that was Sourashtra. Dhaak means fear. The girls say that they are scared and the hero tells them not to fear.

          Though the language is largely only in spoken form even though the language has its own script. The lack of schools teaching Saurashtra script and the language is often cited as a reason for the very few number of people who actually know to read and write in Saurashtra script.However in Madurai people follow our script.There are even saurashtrian colleges as per my knowledge. Latin, Devanagari or Tamil script is used as alternative for Saurashtra Script by many Saurashtrians. Sourashtrians are ancestrally Brahmans by birth.

This is how the origin of my language makes it interesting.