Creepy russian linguist12/20/2023 ![]() ![]() It was widely believed that Soviet diplomats and scholars in India knew the country better than most Indians.ĭwindling Russian specialists of MalayalamĪmong the younger generation in Russia, it’s easy to count specialists of Indian languages on my fingertips. He belonged to an era when the Soviet Union set the gold standard when it came to specialists in every walk of life. Unlike some of Russia’s great Indologists such as Eugene Chelyshev, a Padma Bhushan awardee, the Malayalam scholar is largely forgotten in Russia and India. His last book, 'Dravidian Historical Linguistics' was published in 1999.Īndronov died due to aged-related illness in 2009. The 242-page 'A Grammar of the Malayalam Language in Historical Treatment' is probably the most comprehensive Malayalam grammar book ever written by a non-Malayali. It gives a Russian linguist great insights into Malayalam and simplifies what looks like a very complicated language for someone with a European background.Īt the age of 65, in 1996, Andronov’s first book about the Malayalam language for English-speakers was published. In 1993, his 203-page book in Russian titled 'Malayalam Language' was published. ![]() Russians interested in learning Malayalam and other Indian languages would study under Andronov and then come for exchange programmes in India to perfect their diction and conversational skills.Įven after Perestroika, Glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a near stoppage of funding for the study of Indian languages, Andronov laboured on. It was in the 1970s and 80s that Indo-Soviet friendship peaked, leading to many young intellectuals devoting a lot of time and effort to unfold the mysteries of India and its languages. They also probably used the dictionary to achieve a high degree of proficiency in Russian.Īndronov would dedicate three decades to pursue his passion for Malayalam. One can safely assume that the husband-wife duo of Moscow Gopalakrishnan and Omana would have made full use of it while translating Russian literature to Malayalam. A glance at the dictionary, which was meant for the pre-internet age, is a delight for those who are fans of the great literary traditions of Russia and Kerala. It contains words that are no longer used even by purists of Malayalam or Russian. The 38,000-word dictionary (published in 1971), which I had a chance to personally see at the library of the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Mumbai, is a true labour of love. In the late 1960s, Andronov teamed up with fellow Tamil scholar Vladimir Makarenko, widely accepted as one of Russia’s greatest linguists, to work on a Russian-Malayalam dictionary. Andronov also published a Russian-Tamil dictionary in 1965. A young Tamil language scholar from the city of Voronezh told me that the book was out of print and the minuscule community of Russians who are still learning Dravidian languages photo copy one of the surviving copies. His first book titled 'Conversational Tamil and its Dialects' was published in 1962. Before setting his eyes on Malayalam, Andronov mastered Tamil. ![]()
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