Plan your trip · Language

Basic Tamil for visitors to Arunachala

You do not need Tamil to visit Tiruvannamalai ~ but a handful of words works wonders. A little effort to greet people in their own language is met, almost always, with warmth and delight. Here are the useful words and phrases, simply written the way they sound.

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Tamil is the mother tongue of Tiruvannamalai, and one of the oldest living languages on earth ~ the language in which the saints sang Arunachala, and which you will hear all around you. English is widely understood in the tourist and ashram areas, so you will manage perfectly well without a word of Tamil. But a few phrases, offered with a smile, open doors that English never will ~ they say I have made a little effort to meet you where you are, and that is always felt. Below, the words are written as they sound to an English ear; don’t worry about perfect pronunciation, the effort is what counts.

Greetings & courtesies

Start here. “Vanakkam” ~ the lovely all-purpose respectful greeting, said with palms together ~ and “Nandri” (thank you) will carry you a long way on their own.

Useful everyday phrases

For the market, the auto, the cafe ~ the practical handful.

Words of the temple & the hill

The devotional vocabulary you’ll meet at Arunachala. (Many of these are Sanskrit-derived and understood across India; see also our glossary.)

Numbers & money