Tamil Amudham -Tamil Learning Resources

This is intended as a
community service out of
love for the community
children to succeed. Tamil
Amudham does not take
responsibility for any of
these external web sites.
Please use your judgement
in pursuing each of them.
Please let us know your
experiences (good or bad),
so we all can benefit.

Resource 1: Tamil Virtual University - www.tamilvu.org - This web site has dictioneries,
Thesaurus, Sanga kaala ilakkiyangal etc. Most importantly, young children and those young at heart can
learn Tamil through stories, puzzles etc.

Tamil Virtual University in Tamilnadu have helped the following centers in USA to start a Tamil Learning
Center. If you are interested in starting one in your town, please let us know. We will put you in touch with
the Director of the Tamil Virtual University.

1. California Tamil Academy
20532 Deerpark Ct.
Saratoga, CA 95070, USA

2. Sishyaa Education Center (USA)
School of India, Tamil School in New York,
40, Hillside Ave, Williston Park, NY, USA

3. Tamil School,
Tamil Association of Greater Delaware Valley
1421, Knightsbridge DR. Blue Bell, PA 19422, USA.

4. New Jersey Tamil Arts & Cultural
Society
23, Boxwood Circle, Edison, NJ, USA

5. Fremont Chinmaya Mission
Bala Vihar Tamil Classes
Fremont, CA, USA

Useful Web sites to explore

www.tamilnation.org

www.tamilvu.org

Resource 2: Children like to do repetitive things. So, try the following suggestion of mine
(Balanethiram): Open MS Word and open a new document. Create a table with the entire alphabet of
Tamil (all the 247 letters). With your cursor inside the table cell for a letter, choose insert audio from the
top pull down menu and record your pronounciation of the letter and save. Do this for each letter and
save the file. To keep the file size manageable, keep separate files for uyir ezhuthu, mei ezhuthu etc.
Then you can ask your child to go to any cell and click on the audio icon to hear. He/she can associate
the letter with the respective pronounciation. If you don't have tamil font installed in your computer,
read below and make use the next resource.

Resource 3: Writing tamil text in MS word or other PC desktop application: Right click with your
mouse on the Boopalam font link below and choose "Save target as" or "Save link as" from the menu.
Save the font file in your computer at a location where you can find it later. Similarly save the keymap
file too. If you want to use resource 2 above, then save the sample file also.

Open your control panel folder in your computer and open the font folder in it. Drag the Boopalam font
file into it. Now you have the tamil font available for all your application. After this, now if you open the
keymap file, it will give you which keys on your key board will type what letter in tamil. If you open the
sample file, it will give a flavor of what is talked in Resource 2 above.

For advanced users, there are other fonts available such as Murasu etc. which we will talk about later.

Keymap for Boopalam

Boopalam Font

Sample file to look at

Resource 4: Various commercial Tamil Learning Software have been produced by Mr Raja Seshadri of
Minneapolis, MN. For example, TruTamil(r) TTGames1 software has been developed to introduce Tamil to
the beginning student. The objective is to teach the Tamil alphabet, basic reading, writing principles,and to
build a starting vocabulary of sight reading. The programs use the TruTamil(r) fonts. Kalvi is another Tamil
Learning Software. For details contact: Raja Seshadri, Visesh Businessoft, 9764 Oliver Ave. N.,
Minneapolis, MN 55444 - Phone: (612)-425-8586; Fax: (612)-493-2678; Email: myguru@mcimail.com
Caution: Check for compatibility with your operating system (Windows XP/2000 etc.)

Resource 5: Visual Tamil - An informational, educational program that runs on PC Windows. Includes
many cultural entries with graphics and sounds, suitable for older children and adults. Also some Tamil
word games suitable for those who know Tamil fairly well. This information is also a few years old. So,
please check and report the latest info. Price: $35 + $2 S/H. (few years ago).
Publisher: Indus Valley Software, 625 Ellis St., Suite 102, Mountain View, CA 94043.
Phone 415-988-6519, 408-978-9635, 1-800-91-INDUS; Email: balamcat@netcom.com
Caution: Again check for compatibility with your operating system (Windows XP/2000 etc.)

Resource 6: Kural, Kattam and other software. Kural plays Thirukkural on your computer screen.
Kattam is a Tamil Game. For details and purchase contact: elangos@hotmail.com Their web site is:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Gulf/8000

Resource 7: Saarathy Tamil Keyboard Driver
The first ever effort in India to provide a keyboard driver in open source format Enables usage of 200 plus
TAM fonts and 50 TAB fonts offered by Panacea Availability of 250 plus fonts is a boon for publishers and
the general public Tamilnadu's gift to all of India, Saarathy can be extended to all Indian languages. This is
offered free by a Tamilian at their web site: http://www.pdsoftware.in
(Don't worry, there does not seem to be any catch. This person seems to be passionate about offering it
free he does not even seem to charge for the CD to put this on).

Resource 8: R4U Tamil Word Processor- This is also offered free by the same company as in
Resource 7 and at the same web site. The following is what the company says about this:

Panacea’s R4U is a full-fledged feature-rich word processor that gives the user complete control over the
task of creating Tamil documents. Designed to be simple and user-friendly, this menu-driven utility comes
with a host of in-built unique features along with many standard features.

The highlights include seamless switching between Tamil and English typing, ability to insert tables,
images and assorted elements, paragraph formatting, and keyboard and layout options.

The combination of clean interface, wealth of features and ease of use make R4U the ideal choice for the
creation of Tamil and multi-lingual documents.

Resource 9: Pathippu-250 200 TAM fonts - 50 TAB fonts Downloads are free at
http://www.pdsoftware.in/pathippu.html Panacea's Pathippu 250 is a collection of 250 TAM and TAB fonts
which we are dedicating to the Tamil-speaking community. The unique feature of this collection is that the
source code for all the fonts is made available, so that any interested developer can modeify it to create
new fonts. This feature opens up a world of immense possibilities as as far as font development is
concerned.

Resource 10: Mugavari is the Address book in Tamil offered by the same company as in earlier
resources. Again it is free. Panacea's Mugavari is a simple utility for assembling names and addresses in
Tamil. It comes with multi-faceted search options and provides the facility to print address lists and mail
merge.

Resource 11: Pulavan - Paalam Tamil-Tamil Dictionary English - Tamil Dictionary This is also offered free by the same company as above at
the same web site. Panacea’s Pulavan Tamil-Tamil Dictionary is a comprehensive compendium of Tamil words with meanings and cross-
references. The basis for this work is the Kazhaga Agaraathi of the Saiva Siddhantha Trust.

The dictionary is organized in a pattern that facilitates easy search, quick reference and context-sensitive search. With a single click, one can
search for a word's meaning. A unique feature of this package is the option of syllabic search, so far not provided by any software vendor.
Syllabic search allows the user to search for words in which a particular syllable occurs. This software will be of great use to everyone – from
the casual user to research scholars..

Panacea’s Paalam is a useful collection of English words with Tamil meanings.

Resource 12: BBC Tamil Service
If the student attains some proficiency in reading Tamil, the following BBC resource can be used to improve it further. (BBC might not have
intended that way. This is my suggestion for Tamil learners).
BBC World service has Tamil Osai and that has daily news bulletin and Seithi Arangam. Both these are updated daily and are available in audio
at the BBC site ( www.bbc.co.uk/tamil ) One can go to that site and click on either "Seithi Arikkai" or "Seithi Arangam". If the "Oli" is clicked,
you can hear the audio of the news. It is verbatim of the text that is also provided at the site. As the news audio goes on, one can follow the text
and improve the reading skills and speed. The same goes for Seithi Arangam also.

Resource 13: University of Pennsylvania has a Tamil Learning Resource Developmental projects going on
for a long time. They have a nice web site with a lot of learning resources. When I tried them out, I notice that it
does not work well with Mozilla Firefox. It may be friendlier with Netscape browser. But, Internet Explorer
seems to work just fine. Children can learn not only to read and write but also can listen to pronounciations.
Strongly suggested as a good site. Web link: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb

Resource 14: South Asia Outreach Project. This project encourages multi-lingual learning. Click on this to
download the Acrobat file describing it (right click with your mouse and choose "Save target as"). To go wtih it,
there is a list of books available at Tulika Books site (click on the link to go to their web site. These books cost
about $8 each.

Resource 15: International Broadcasting Corporation in Tamil has some nice program. This is European based one for Srilankan Tamils.
Their program Siruvar Pulam is a great quiz program for children. At least one listen is strongly suggested for every parent of Tamil speaking
population. Archives are at this site: IBC Radio (This works with Real Player). Congratulations to these great kids who keep up with their Tamil.

Resource 16: You can read and write e-mail in Tamil. It is very easy. There is a free software ekalappai2.0 available that will make your life
easy. Follow the steps below:
(1) Right click on your mouse on the name ekalappai and choose "save target as". Then save the file in a place where you can reach.
(2) After it is downloaded, go to that file in your computer and double click on it. It will install in your computer. If prompted, restart the computer.
(3) Now you are ready to read Tamil fonts in your computer. Click on the following two links to see which key in your computer maps to which
Tamil letter. Karpagam Elangovan has been kind enough to prepare this for you.
http://karpagamelangovan.blogspot.com/2006/03/tamizh-unicode.html
http://karpagamelangovan.blogspot.com/2006/04/tamil-unicode-letters-table.html

To read and exchange thoughts in Tamil, go to Tamil Marumalarchi Iyakkam Group based in Michigan, USA at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/TMI-WORLD

Resource 17: Ancient Tamil Texts in electronic format: Click on the following link to view ancient tamil texts online in Tamil. It is not clear
what font is used. Please check it out and share your experiences.

G.Chandrasekaran http://www.chennailibrary.com http://www.chennainetwork.com
Thamba Minnool Pathipagam Email: a...@chennailibrary.com Phone: +91-94440-86888

www.chennailibrary.com

Resource 18: Project Madurai - This is long running project pioneered by Dr. Kalyanasundaram to archive all the ancient Tamil Texts
electronically. It originally used Mylai font developed by Dr. Kalyanasundaram and now uses TSCII (Tamil Script Code for Information
Interchange) font. It is a pure voluntary effort and the documents are shared in html as well as in PDF formats. Click here to go to the web site:
http://tamil.net/projectmadurai/

http://tamil.net/projectmadurai/

Food recipe of all kinds in Tamil
(no fonts to download)
www.arusuvai.com