Pass Tamil CCL.
Claim your 5 PR points.

1. அட்மிஷன் சமயத்தில் உங்க குழந்தையோட தடுப்பூசி ரெக்கார்டை எடுத்துக்கிட்டு வாங்க.

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2. டெபாசிட் கொறைவா இருந்தா நீங்க எல்.எம்.ஐ. கட்டவேண்டியிருக்கும்.

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3. ஸ்பெஷலிஸ்ட் டாக்டர் உங்களை ரெண்டு வாரம் கழிச்சு பாப்பாரு.

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1. 01

   The English you already use is the penalty

   Hardly anybody in this cohort speaks a Tamil sentence with no English in it. நான் அப்பாயின்மென்ட் புக் பண்ணனும் is how the language actually lives in Melbourne and Sydney, and that is not a failure of anything. In the test it is a live scoring risk, because the marker is listening for whether the Tamil word was available to you and you went past it. மெடிகேர் and சென்டர்லிங்க் are names and stay names — you have to be able to say them to the actual clerk. வாடகை, வட்டி, காப்பீடு, சான்றிதழ் are ordinary words with ordinary Tamil, and reaching for rent, interest, insurance and certificate instead is where segments bleed a mark at a time.

   வாடகை ரொம்ப அதிகமா இருக்கு.

   Vaadagai romba adhigamaa irukku.

   "The rent is very high."The version most people would really say — ரென்ட் ரொம்ப ஹை-யா இருக்கு — means exactly the same thing and hands the marker two words you had and did not use.

2. 02

   லட்சம், கோடி, and the million that replaces them

   Tamil prices a house in லட்சம் and counts above it in கோடி, while the English side of the same dialogue is in hundreds of thousands and millions. Then the systems swap mid-conversation: a Tamil tradesperson in Australia says பத்து மில்லியன் for a liability limit and never பத்து கோடி, and the same speaker's family in Chennai is still in லட்சம். A candidate who tidies every figure into one system has changed a number the marker is counting. The compounding is a second problem on top of the first — 2,400 comes out as இரண்டாயிரத்து நானூறு, one chain with a linking form buried in the middle, and it has to arrive at conversational speed with the rest of the sentence still waiting.

   இரண்டாயிரத்து நானூறு டாலர் பாக்கி இருக்கு.

   Irandaayiraththu naanooru daalar baakki irukku.

   Two thousand four hundred dollars outstanding — and not to be smoothed into இரண்டரை ஆயிரம் on the way back into English.

3. 03

   நீங்க has two levels, and so does அவரு

   Respect in Tamil lands in three places at once and a candidate under pressure holds one of them. There is நீங்க against நீ. There is the honorific third person அவரு against அவன் and அவ. And there is -ங்க, the suffix that makes an ordinary spoken verb polite — வாங்க, சொல்லுங்க, கேளுங்க — which is the one that goes first and the one nobody hears themselves drop. A single warm turn from a nurse or a case manager is enough to pull a candidate down to நீ and take the -ங்க with it. On the third person the loss is quieter and just as expensive: a widow's husband is அவரு சொன்னாரு, and demoting him to அவன் சொன்னான் is the same mark gone by a different route, with the English identical either way.

   நீங்க இருபத்தி ஒரு நாளுக்குள்ள அப்பீல் பண்ணலாம்.

   Neenga irubaththi oru naalukkulla appeel pannalaam.

   Say it as நீ ... பண்ணலாம் and you have told the marker that these two people are intimates. Nothing in the English said so.

4. 04

   The exam is not asking for good written Tamil

   This is the trap that only fires on people who studied. Tamil keeps two registers — செந்தமிழ், which is what a newsreader and a novel use, and பேச்சுத்தமிழ், which is what a receptionist and a landlord use — and they part company in the verb endings, not merely in the vocabulary. Under pressure a careful candidate climbs: இருக்கு is replaced by a written-only form, சொன்னாரு becomes கூறினார், and a GP's front desk starts sounding like a bulletin. It feels like effort and it marks as register lost, because the English turn being carried was an ordinary person speaking to another ordinary person. Both Tamil communities here share this spoken middle ground, which is the other reason to stay in it.

   டாக்டர் இப்ப இருக்காரா?

   Daaktar ippa irukkaaraa?

   What somebody actually asks at a front desk. The bulletin version of the same question is correct Tamil and the wrong register for the turn it is carrying — and a NAATI examiner scores register.

5. 05

   குழந்தை அழுது, not அழுதாரு

   Tamil does not sort nouns by gender; it sorts them into உயர்திணை and அஃறிணை — people against everything else — and the verb agrees with the class rather than with whatever pronoun the English used. A baby is அஃறிணை: the baby is crying comes out with an அஃறிணை verb, never an honorific one, however tenderly the parent is talking about it. So is a company, a hospital, a fund and a tribunal, which is exactly why the medical and small-business segments are where this bites. English gives you no warning at all, because English says he, she and it and moves straight on. The reverse error is rarer and louder: putting a person into the அஃறிணை turns a patient into an object in front of the examiner.

   குழந்தை மூணு நாளா ஒழுங்கா சாப்பிடலை.

   Kuzhandhai moonu naalaa ozhungaa saappidalai.

   "The baby hasn't been eating properly for three days."The verb stays அஃறிணை the whole way through, whatever the English pronoun did.

Every one of these is written up beside the dialogue that triggers it, inside the course, by the interpreters who set the script. That is the only place a note like this changes what comes out of your mouth.

224

scripted dialogues, at exam length

16

community settings they cover

8

full mock papers, sat end to end

5,105

recorded lines, English and Tamil

And every Tamil line among them carries a Roman transliteration underneath it as standard — not as a preference buried in a settings screen, because for a good share of the people sitting this test it is the difference between a line they can study and a line they can only listen to.