by Hannah from India

Just another sunny day at Dortmund, I was waiting for my German friend Robert who was leaving to Sri Lanka in a few weeks. He had called me few weeks back and told me he wanted to learn Tamil. My eyes popped in excitement when I heard the word Tamil. Tamil is my mother tongue, and I have not spoken it since quite a while since I came to Germany to become a South-North Volunteer in the Church of Dortmund in June 2018.

Tamil is the oldest surviving language of the world, it started around 2600 years ago during 600 BC and stands as one of the classical languages certified by the UNESCO.
Being the official language of Singapore and Sri Lanka wouldn’t come as a surprise, but did you know that Tamil is also one of the minority languages of South Africa? Hebrew, the language of the Jews, was derived from Tamil as well.

Would you believe if words like anaconda, mango, curry, serendipity, choir, catamaran were derived (from) / direct Tamil Language.

Having all this in mind, the vast syllabus of Tamil laid in front of me. I decided to teach Robert the basic words and cultural backgrounds. As we sat in the garden of the Volunteerhouse learning the Tamil language, we discussed various similarities and dissimilarities in our languages and cultures and thus ended the first Tamil class for Robert.

If anyone is interested to get an introduction into Tamil language, please do not hesitate to let me know.