This document provides a contrastive analysis of the English and Indian languages, specifically focusing on differences in parts of speech, gender, case markers, plural formation, and false cognates between English, Hindi, Tamil, and other Indian languages. Some key differences highlighted include: - Indian languages have gender assigned to inanimate nouns while English does not. - Case markers in Hindi are written separately unlike Dravidian languages which suffix case markers. - Plural formation in English can include suffixing -s, changing internal vowels, or using entirely different words, while Indian languages use suffixes. - False friends exist between Indian languages where the same word can have different meanings.

1. Contrastive Study of English
and Indian Languages
Contrastive Study of English
and Indian Languages
Thennarasu Sakkan

2. Contrastive analysis is a systematic branch of applied
linguistics which deals with the linguistic description of the
structure of two or more different languages.
The concept of contrastive analysis was first introduced by
Charles Fries in (1952), and fully described by Robert Lado in
his book Linguistics across Cultures (1957).
Such descriptive comparison serves to show how languages
differ in their sound system, grammatical structure and
vocabulary.

3. This type of analysis can be used in language teaching
among others, to point out the areas where the similarities
and contrast between the two languages are present.
These differences are the main cause of difficulty in the
learning of the second language.
In contrastive analysis, we study the structures of two
languages from two different families (i.e., the source
language and the target language) in order to determine the
points where they differ.

4. Word classes
Declinable
Noun
Adjective
Verb
Pronoun
Differences are preposition and postposition, definite and
indefinite article (the, a, an),
Indeclinable
Adverbs
Post-Position
Conjonction
Interjection
parts of speech
noun, pronoun,
adjective, verb,
adverb, preposition,
conjunction and
interjection.

5. Gender
Names of males are masculine and names of females are
feminine.
But the names of inanimate objects and collective nouns are
also either masculine or feminine.
English
Fruit (neu)
flower (net)
tree (neu)
house (neu)
Hindi
phal -fruit (mas) kali: 'bud' (fem)
phu:l - flower (mas) laTa: 'creeper' (fem)
per - tree (mas) mez 'table' (fem)
ghar - house (mas) du:ka:n 'shop' (fem)
samu:h - society (mas) sarka:r - government (fem)
Tamil
Fruit (neu)
flower (net)
tree (neu)
house (neu)

6. Case markers in Hindi
Accusative (-ko 'object')
dative (-ko 'to')
instrumental (-se 'by, with')
genitive (-ka:, -ke, -ki: 'of')
locative (-me 'in, at')
Case marker in Hindi is written separately unlike Dravidian
languages. Example;
Govind [ke] ek bha:i: hae. 'Govind has a brother'
kōvintaṉ[ukku] oru cakōtaraṉ uṇṭu. 'Govind has a brother'
English
of
with
in
to
from
at
Plural without plural with
case-marker case-markers
ghar 'house‘ gharo: 'in the house'
laRke 'boys‘ laRko: ko 'boys (obj)'
laRkiya: 'girls‘ laRkiyo: se 'by the girls'
kita:be: 'books‘ kita:bo: me: 'in the books'

7. zero morpheme to a few nouns, i.e., the plural is identical
to the singular, 'fish, deer, sheep'.
change of vowel in the following nouns: 'foot - feet, man -
men, woman - women, tooth - teeth, louse - lice, goose -
geese, mouse - mice'.

8. The feminine gender of nouns is formed in the following
ways:
I. By suppletion, an entirely different base, i.e., 'boy - girl,
man - woman, king - queen, lord - lady, uncle - aunt,
cook - hen', he goat - she goat, etc.
II. By adding the suffix /-ess/, e.g., 'host - hostess, actor -
actress, lion - lioness, waiter - waitress, tiger - tigress, prince
- princess, etc.

9. III. By placing a word before or after, as in, milk man - milk
lady, stepson - stepdaughter, grandmother - grandfather,
stepbrother - stepsister, etc.
IV. By other endings as, 'hero - heroine, administrator -
administratrix , executive - executrix , fox - vixen, sultan -
sultana.
Dual and noun taking tense
Compare this construction ‘I love you’ in your mother
tongue

10. Add some False FriendsAdd some False Friends
mati means 1.estimate 2.value(sth.); respect,
3.knowledge/moon in Tamil but whereas mati in
Malayalam means ‘enough’.
camcāram in Tamil means ‘wife’ but whereas samcāram
in Malayalam means ‘speech’ If a Malayali says that
“(uṉṭē) samcāram sariyilla” which means ‘Your speech is
not good/true’. But whereas in Tamil “samcāram sariyilla”
which means ‘(your) wife is not good’.

11. maadu means 'do' in Kannada but whereas maadu in Tamil
means 'cow’;
nalla in Tamil means good but whereas nalla in Telugu
means ‘black’.
6. kuñci in Tamil means ‘young ones of birds/fish’, but whereas kuñci in
Malayalam means ‘child' e.g. ‘ kuñci evadiyō pōyi’ – child has gone
somewhere.
7. paṇi in Tamil means ‘1.chillness; mist; thin fog/2.dew/3.snow;
4.work’, but whereas paṇi in Malayalam means ‘fever’ e.g. 'avaṉuku
nalla paṇi uṇṭu.’

12. See noun and verb
inflections in English
and Tamil
See noun and verb
inflections in English
and Tamil

13. List some word-forms
of both categories
List some word-forms
of both categories

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