Working on formatting

So, I changed the template today, but I am battling it because it is not set for the jump breaks to work properly.  On Google's Blogger help page it says I will need to change the html, and I did that, and it is still not showing jump breaks properly...

This post is mostly for testing to see when I get the html working properly.
There should be a link here that says read more/continue reading...

Continue reading...

An idea on verb conjugations...

I have been toying with how to make this work for a couple of weeks. You are no doubt familiar with those wonderful Barron's 501 (Insert language name here) Verbs books which exist for just about every language except Tamil. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to slowly create the exact same thing.

The advantage of something like this, is if you just can't remember for example the infinitive for a verb, maybe it is irregular, maybe it is too late at night, rather than spend time looking up the rules, you just look it up in the list.

There are a few roadblocks to making it perfect the first time through.

Formatting issues.
I will most likely have a single page with all the verbs listed with links to their conjugations.
I have seen people who have two blogs, one for meta links, the other for the content so that the main meta links don't get buried.  I could also just make each verb a google document and link to that as well. Google docs are more easily download-able and editable, although blogger has inbuilt indic transliteration, and google docs don't... which both being google, I can't explain.

Word order:
Would I sort verbs by class, and alphabetically within class? Would I sort them all alphabetically? By Tamil, by English? My 501 Spanish Verbs book is alpha by Spanish, but verb classes in Tamil are pretty important. But then, what of a word that can be two different classes based on whether it is being used transitively or intransitively? Does it go under both classes then, since the conjugations would be different? Or on the same page with notes specifying the unusual nature of it...

At this point, I would only be able to work with past, present, future, infinitive. That is still enough work though that I want to keep it organized in a way that I will not want to keep changing!

Spoken vs Written Tamil

Tamil has somewhat more distinct written and spoken forms than other languages. In English, we definitely have a more formal written register than what we use in daily speech, we slur words together like "going to" often becomes "gonna" (I hate that by the way), we use contractions in speech "don't" instead of "do not," etc. Tamil seems to be a bit more complicated than that.

Looking at the present tense:
The written form for I go is போகிறேன் (pOkiREn), spoken, you are more likely to hear "pOREn" dropping the "ki" entirely.  This seems the case for just about every present tense verb in spoken Tamil, but I have not asked enough sources to say this with certainty.

Looking at "you respective/plural"
நீங்கள் (neengal) adds the ending ஈர்கள் (eergal) to the written form of a verb: நீங்கள் போகிறீர்கள். (You go/are going).  In the spoken form however, we use "eengal" just like the ending of the pronoun itself.

Lesson Planning

I have 10 more of the Duke lessons left, which I would like to finish in about a month. The total set of 25 is supposed to equal about 1 semester's worth of study.

The general per week goals are:
2-4 Lessons completed for Grammar
1 movie or several dialogs from the Asher book for Listening Skills
1-2 readings

The third week of February I have some additional work deadlines, so I may be modifying Tamil learning goals for that week down to some review of previous lessons as opposed to doing anything new.