Talk:Kural (poetic form)

I'm skeptical about the current definition of Kural esp. on narrative and venba. Could the contributor bring any citations/justifications? Anyway, I should confirm it myslef:-) --Rrjanbiah 10:39, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm sure about Venpa but not too sure about narrative. I've done some elaborate study on this and have written a paper related to this:

L BalaSundaraRaman, Ishwar S, Sanjeeth Kumar Ravindranath.

Context Free Grammar for Natural Language Constructs -- An Implementation for Venpa Class of Tamil Poetry. Tamil Internet Conference, Chennai, India, 2003.

About narrative, I don't know the exact equivalent of cheppalosai. May be, sermonising tone will be good. What do you think?

-- Sundar 11:02, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

Now, I remember those Venpa stuff:-) Your research paper is really nice. But, narrative is bit odd (Narrative poetry). I think, sermonising tone is better; but if I'm right, செப்புதல் means telling. Anyway, what about the following explanation:

Kural is one of the most important forms of traditional Tamil poetry.

Kural is a very short poetic form, exactly in 2 lines. The first line should consist 4 words, and the second line should consist 3 words. It should also conform to the grammar for Venpa.

Writing a kural is considered as a tough work as the grammar is very rigid. And so, nowadays, it is hard to see any contemporary kurals.

A typical example for kural is Tirukkural by Tiruvalluvar which is considered to be the ancient Tamil literature work.

--Rrjanbiah 13:54, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your appreciation of our paper. Your suggestion regarding Kural is good. I'll make suitable changes.

-- Sundar 05:14, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)

The description of kuraL as a poem of two lines of 4 and 3 "words" seems incorrect. The building block in question is a "ceer" which is not the same as a word - can a better term be substituted? Rsata 21:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Expansion Notes

Rationale

I'm making a few notes about my recent expansion of this article so that my rationale will be as transparent as possible; this way other editors can better improve my work, or better argue against it, as the case may be.

As I state in the mainspace, this description of kural structure does not reflect its conception in authentic Tamil prosody. However, I've made every effort (and I hope you'll correct me if I've failed) to ensure that the structure I'm describing in Western terms is prosodically equivalent to the authentic Tamil verse. I see this as analogous to classical Arabic verse, which is also described by its practitioners in terms of units that tend to hover just below, and just above, the level of "syllable" ... yet which can be accurately described in terms of syllables. I trust this will be taken, not as imperialism, but rather as an effort to be comprehensible to our readers (and even my "simplification" will surely be incomprehensible to some ... possibly a "for dummies" section is needed, too!).

Authentic Tamil prosody absolutely should be described in English Wikipedia, but I believe this should appear in Tamil prosody, not under specific verse forms -- imagine the amount of remedial prosodic background that would have to be repeated on every single Tamil verse form page before we could get to the actual structure of the specific form in question.

But there are real risks in my strategy: for example, when I cite a source in support of an assertion about syllables, that source typically is not explicitly talking about syllables at all; rather I'm combining what it says about eluttu and acai and "translating" that into syllable-talk. This can be done precisely, which is my justification of why my work does not constitute WP:OR. However, it will certainly be good if other editors check my work. The benefits from this procedure? I think the only other options are (1) a massively detailed authentic Tamil prosodic description that will be incomprehensible to almost all readers, (2) a very brief and superficial description that in the end will not be terribly accurate, or (3) don't talk about the structure. In my view, my path is at least better than these. Phil wink (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Formal Paraphrase

@Rasnaboy: What I'd like to do next is provide 1 or more formal paraphrases of kural couplets; this is an English version that duplicates -- as exactly as is possible in English -- the formal properties of the original, so that non-Tamil-readers can have some level of primary experience of the rhythms and effects we're talking about. While literal exactitude must be sacrificed to form when necessary, these formal paraphrases can remain surprisingly faithful: perhaps my proudest moment is "Chaos! Chaos!" at the bottom of Spenserian stanza. A closer analogue for kural is this (which I'm also quite proud of, but was not used in mainspace):

PERSIAN
زلف آشفته و خوی کرده و خندان لب و مست
پیرهن چاک و غزل خوان و صراحی در دست

TRANSLITERATION
zol-'āšofte-vo xoy-karde-vo xandān-lab-o mast
pīrhan-čāq-o qazal-xān-o sorāhī dar dast

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Hair tousled, perspiring, smiling-lipped, and drunk,
shirt torn, singing songs, and wine-flask in hand

FORMAL PARAPHRASE
Hair a right mess, in a haze, sweltering, lips smiling, and pissed,
Shirt in new tatters with brash singing of songs, flagon in fist

As will be necessary with Tamil, this formal paraphrase replaces long/short with stressed/unstressed. But given that, it exactly duplicates both the meter and rime of the original, and you can see that it remains very faithful to the content. I'm not sure this is exactly the formatting we'll want for kural, but you can see where I'm going.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose 1 to 3 kural and provide me a literal translation as well as an exact map of their individual prosodic structures, which I can then reproduce in English. Ideally, we might have 1 of each of the types that Niklas lists:

1. enticai-ceppal: only vencir-ventalai occurs throughout the stanza;
2. tunkicai-ceppal: only iyarcir-venlalai occurs throughout the stanza;
3. olukicai-ceppal: vencir-ventalai and iyarcir-ventalai both occur within one stanza. (p. 181)

Also, ideally, the concepts in the couplets will not be very exotic, as common ideas are more likely to give me more room to play with synonyms. We can do the work here on the talk page, or (since this will naturally result in some back-and-forth) we might move our sausage-making to my User:Phil wink/Translation workshop. Let me know what you think. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)