There is one version for this. Tamil doesn't have many consonants compare to Telugu or Kannada.Telugu/Kannada/Sa
This was one of the views expressed in one of the forums: My reply is pasted below:
This view is incorrect. Consider my claim from the following angle. If Tamil language consonants are half in number of Telugu or Sanskrit language, why should Tamilians call themselves has half mouthed. The word was explained to mean half mouthed with the root meaning in Tamil. 'Arai' in Tamil is half (Ara in Telugu also means half), but Vai (or va) in Tamil means mouth but Vai (or va) in Telugu has no meaning, in Telugu the equivalent word is " noru" for mouth. So if Tamils were to be called as half mouthed in Telugu it should have been 'aranoru" not aravai or aravam or aravodu. Consequently it is a baseless claim.
In addition to this Telugu or Sanskrit (which is a dead language) though has double the consonants, the words in the respective lexicons is only one third of what it is in Tamil. Grey Anatomy cannot be written in Telugu, but it is not the case with Tamil. Telugu language has lots of adopted words directly from Tamil and also from Sanskrit. If one removes all the adopted words from Telugu it will reduce to one forth (if not one tenth) of what it is, in that case will it be correct to call Telugu as kalbashiyar (meaning quarter language people).... I know it is incorrect and does not make sense. This explanation is just to claim that the view point expressed for Tamils being called as "Aravollu" was wrong.
I agree to the fact that Tamils call Telugu as Gults (it is just a reverse pronunciation of the word Telugu - pls dont go by English spelling, just see the way it is derived ... T E L U GU...GULTU)
There are various reasons why Tamils are called as Arivars:
- Ancient Siddhars were called as Arivars and the word Aravu came from this root word meaning people with knowledge (referring to Siddhas as Gnanis, Gnan means knowledge)
- The second possibility is that, the word came form the inquisitiveness of Tamils. It is noteworthy here that Tamils have classified the sixty fore art forms and mastered them. Those who mastered these art forms were called Siddhars. In Tamil the word for Inquisitiveness is "Aaruvam". From this word aaruvam the word aravam could have possibly come into usage.
- Tamil land was always fertile for agriculture ( more so those days it was so fertile that Tanjavour was called Granary of India) There is a recorded history, that in Tanjavore they used elephants to separate paddy from the hay instead of bulls. The people who are in agriculture use Aruval ( a billhook). The word Aruval bearing farmers could have been called as Aruvolu by people who saw them with bill hook. Similar to the way we see some Gujaratis call themselves batlivala (when they are in bottles business) rassivala (when they are in ropes business) , daruvalla (when in wines business),etc thus "aravolu" for agriculturists is apt.
- It was also believed that Tamils were Nagas (Aravam in Tamil stands for Snakes) and thus the word Aravolu.
- Tamil God Murugan is also another reason for the language being called as Aravam. Informatively Lord Murugan is also called Saravanan in Tamil. The sound Sa and Aa in Tamil in many occasions get interchanged, for example : Samayal for cooking is also called Amayal, Sabai for court is also called Avai. In the same way Saravanan can also be called as Aaravanan. Saravanan is shortened many a times to be called as Sravan. Sravan now stands reduced to Aravan. Lord Murugam (Aravan) can also be the root word for the word Aravam, as it is believed Lord Saravanan is the Lord of Tamils and he has initiated the process of fostering the Tamil language long ago during Samgam periods.
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I see this observation by non-Tamils regarding 'missing consonants' in many forums and get amused. I believe this is purely due to ignorance.This 'consonant missing' comparison doesn't make any sense.
Comparing Tamil Phonetics with Sanskrit is similar to comparing Telugu Phonetics with Hebrew. Telugu doesn't have letters for many sounds that are found in Hebrew. Does that mean Telugu script is incomplete? You will say a loud 'No'. I hear that. Similarly, Hebrew is missing many consonants that are found in Telugu. Does it mean its a inferior language? No, Hebrew is one of the oldest languages in the world.The simple reason being - Telugu is Dravidian language while Hebrew is a Semitic language. So, its unfair to expect Telugu to have letters for Hebrew sounds and vice versa.
Similarly, its unfair to expect Tamil script to have letters for Sanskrit sounds, as Tamil is a Dravidian language, while Sanskrit is an Indo-European language. Now, why Telugu being a Dravidian language have letters for Sanskrit consonants? That's because Telugu land borders Indo-European language territory. It accepted the influence of Sanskrit and tweaked its script to include more consonants. This happened many centuries before. So, the present day Telugu speakers have no knowledge of this. But, ancient Tamil people did not heed to Sanskrit influence and the Tamil script remained independent to the extent, we still keep letters denoting non-Tamil consonants such as ja, ha, sha, ksha etc separate without mixing it with the original script and call them 'Grandha' letters.
The beauty of the Tamil script is - it can be used to easily identify loan words from other languages, as the Tamil script is meant to represent Tamil language only. So, we have a strong tendency to find equivalent Tamil words rather than loaning words from other languages.
