# Tamil: யாதும் ஊரே, யாவரும் கேளிர்



## Au101

A great Tamil poet, who I believe is called Kanniyan           Poongundran wrote a poem in Purananuru and the first line is:

"யாதும் ஊரே, யாவரும் கேளிர்"

The translation of this, I believe, is:

"To us all towns are one, all men our         kin."

However, I would just like confirmation, if that is possible, that I have indeed done this correctly and not missed anything out. Thanks.


----------



## palomnik

My Tamil isn't up to reading the classical idiom, but neither is anybody else's on this forum apparently, since nobody else is answering you. So here's my best shot:

*யாதும் -* anyplace
*ஊரே -* village, town
*யாவரும் -* anybody
*கேளிர்* - relation, kinship.

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin" sounds good to me.  But seeing as this is verbatim how Rev. Pope translated it, you can't be far from wrong.

Did you say that you were _translating_ this?


----------



## Au101

Thanks a lot Palmonik. No, I wish I was translating it, but I'm not nearly good enough, my pronunciation is very bad. Really, I probably need to go to Puducherry, but that's off the point. I had both the Tamil and its Englsih translation and this was the first line of each. My trouble was, the English was 13 lines long and the Tamil was 14 lines long, so I just wanted to make sure that the rest of it wasn't on the second line, or something like that, and that I did indeed have the phrase translated correctly.

Thanks once again.


----------



## palomnik

Au101 said:


> No, I wish I was translating it, but I'm not nearly good enough, my pronunciation is very bad. Really, I probably need to go to Puducherry, but that's off the point.


 
Don't despair.  I have yet to meet a non-native speaker of Tamil that can pronounce the language anything remotely like the way it actually sounds - myself included.

And I too am off the point, so I will close now before the moderators shut down this thread!


----------



## Illuminatus

I asked a Tamil friend of mine, and she has confirmed what you wrote:

_Any town is my town and any man is my kinsman._

*yaavum *- any
*ooru *- village/town/city
*yaavarum *- anyone
*kaelir *- kinsmen


----------



## Au101

Thanks a lot Illuminatus


----------

