Use of –la in Simple Sentences among Indian Ethnic group in Malaysia

Abstract

Language is the ability of expressing ideas or thoughts of one’s own. It varies according to the social structure of a local speech community. Moreover it expresses a group identity. The group can be a community, ethnicity, class or caste. A group of people who live in Malaysia speak Tamil and they are called as Indian ethnic group. This group includes Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam speakers. They form 7.1% (National Census, 2000) of the total population. In Indian ethnic group, Tamil forms the largest subgroup (5.7%). Although other language speakers are included in Indian ethnic group, it represents Tamil speakers. This group (subgroup) use –la when they speak Tamil language. Its literary meaning is ‘dear’ in English. According to Baron (1986) the minority language in a larger social group differs in pronunciation, usage, etc. Since Tamil group is living with Malay language speaking people, the usage of –la came to exit and is unavoidable. –la is used in simple sentences in different contexts. The different contexts are identified such as usage of simple sentences between friends, students, husband and wife, parents and children and immigrants. For example: vaa-la naaam poovoom. ‘come dear, we shall go’ (used between friends) The major objective of this paper is to analyse the usage of –la linguistically in simple sentences.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s2p122