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Difficult Words

Weekly Topic: A word in your native language which you find it hard to pronounce

Oct 3, 2022

Although I cannot say that I struggle in general there's one word that is quite tricky. 'Valnalellam' means 'throughout life', which is three words combined as one (val naal ellam). The reason why this is tricky is because each 'l' sound in the word is to be pronounced differently. Yes, in Tamil we have three different 'la' sounds. This can, however, be understood even when it is not pronounced perfectly. In the Tamil language, the words that we use while speaking take a whole different form of spelling when written (pure form). This word is the written form, and in daily conversations is it mostly said as Val naal ella.

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