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Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Pronunciation advice - Koodankulam

The proposed nuclear power plant in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu is facing a serious protest from the people there. The name of the place is Koodankulam. It is pronounced as coo-dunk-cull (rhymes with bull)-um or कूडंकुळम् If you can read Tamil, this would read as கூடங்குளம். 

The name of the district is Tirunelveli - pronounced as तिरुनेल्वेली. Tea-rue-Nell-vale-ee is a good approximation, if you can pronounce 'tea' with the soft French 't' and shorten the vowel sound of 'rue' to the vowel sound of 'book', then you will be bang on. But otherwise this is a good approximation for a non-native speaker. For those reading it in Hindi, to get it bang on, the pronunciation of 'नेल' rhymes with the English 'bell'. Or else, the sound is in between नेल and निल. Actually closer to the latter.

Don't worry even the mighty Britishers could not get it right and hence changed the name to Tinnevelly!

1 comment:

Tintu said...

This project was under construction for the last 10 years and villagers never had the qualms against the project, hence it one really fails to understand the real motive behind this orchestrated protest.
If the anti nuke protesters are so sincere and wedded to their cause, come what may, then let them surrender their electricity connection first....atleast it would save few units then and provide power to other much needed consumers who want this project to come up fast and answers all the elctricity problems plauging the state of Tamilnadu.