Extended-Tamil script or Tamil-Grantha refers to a script used to write the

Tamil language Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Pudu ...

before the 20th century Tamil purist movement.K. Kailasapathy (1979)
The Tamil Purist Movement: A Re-evaluation
Social Scientist, Vol. 7, No. 10, pp. 23-27 Tamil-Grantha is a mixed-script: a combination of the conservative-Tamil script that independently evolved from pre-Pallava script, combined with consonants imported from a later-stage evolved

Grantha script The Grantha script ( ta, கிரந்த எழுத்து, Granta eḻuttu; ml, ഗ്രന്ഥലിപി, granthalipi) is a South Indian script, found particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Originating from the Pallava script, t ...

(from Pallava-Grantha) to write non-Tamil consonants. Some scholars posit that the origin of Tamil-Grantha is unclear: the script could also be a direct descendant of the Pallava-Grantha script which extensively developed during the

Middle Tamil Middle Tamil is the form of the Tamil language that existed from the 8th to the 15th century. The development of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil, which is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of p ...

period to write Middle-Tamil. The

Modern Tamil script The Tamil script ( , ) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, I ...

is a subset of Tamil-Grantha alphabet, retaining only the 18 consonants taken from

Tolkāppiyam ''Tolkāppiyam'', also romanised as ''Tholkaappiyam'' ( ta, தொல்காப்பியம், ''lit.'' "ancient poem"), is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. The surviving manus ...

-based

Old Tamil Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning from 300 BCE to 700 CE. Prior to Old Tamil, the period of Tamil linguistic development is termed as Pre Tamil. After the Old Tamil period, Tamil becomes Middle Tamil. The earliest records i ...

which generally was written using

Vatteluttu script ''Vatteluttu,'' popularly romanised as ''Vattezhuthu'' ( ta, வட்டெழுத்து, ' and ml, വട്ടെഴുത്ത്, ', ), was a syllabic alphabet of south India (Tamil Nadu and Kerala) and Sri Lanka used for writing t ...

. Tamil-Grantha has 36 consonants, hence covering all Indic consonants like Malayalam script. However, the Modern-Tamil standard allowed a few additional consonants from Grantha into its alphabet: ஜ (ja), ஷ (ṣa), ஸ (sa), ஹ (ha). But their usage is discouraged by Tamil purists and recommend to assimilate the sounds to approximate pure-Tamil phonology, respectively: ச (ca), ச (ca), ச (ca), க (ka). Another letter ஶ was also allowed in 2005 exclusively to write ஶ்ரீ ( śrī); however purists enforce the usage of திரு ( tiru) over ஶ்ரீ. In terms of utility, the major difference between Modern-Tamil and Tamil-Grantha is that the former is a phonemic script (where

voiced consonants Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...

are treated as

allophones In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...

of the

voiceless consonants In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...

, and no

aspirated consonants In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with the ...

), and the latter is a fully-

phonetic script Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...

. Hence, if one were to write only pure-Tamil-derived words in their text, it is enough (and minimally efficient) to use the Modern-Tamil script. However if one were to include non-South-Dravidian words in their text, using the pure-Tamil script can cause errors in pronunciations since the phonemic-transcription rules of Tamil Grammar does not apply to such vocabularies. So depending on the domain of text (and number of loan words), writers used either the minimal-Tamil script or extended-Tamil script. To write or transliterate

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

texts, the full Grantha script was used instead of Tamil-Grantha.

History

The Tamil separatist movement of the colonial era purged Grantha characters from use (calling " Grantha" an Aryan "pollution" of Tamil) and with support from

Dravidian parties Dravidian parties include an array of List of recognised political parties in India#State, regional political parties in the States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu, India, which trace their origins and ideologies either directly or ...

, mandated to exclusively use the reformed minimal-Tamil script. They also successfully "cleaned" Tamil textbooks by replacing Indo-Aryan vocabulary with pure-Tamil words, especially Sanskritic/Prakritic words that entered via Middle-Tamil; hence making Grantha characters almost useless in modern formal-Tamil. According to Kailasapathy, this was a part of Dravidian nationalism and amounted to regional ethnic chauvinism. Although the predominant amount of classical Tamil literature is written in

, Tamil-purists regard only

as the authentic source for

Tamil grammar Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the ''Tolkāppiyam'' (dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE). Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar '' Naṉṉūl'', which rest ...

and literature. Based on vocabulary, Tamil is classified into two registers: செந்தமிழ் (centamiḻ) meaning 'good' (or 'pure') Tamil and கொடுந்தமிழ் (koṭuntamiḻ) meaning 'horrible' (or 'corrupt') Tamil. Purists classify Middle-Tamil as belonging to the latter class, thereby enabling the Dravidian movement to call Tamil-Grantha as impure. Hence in present day, only a few religious texts have an inclination to choose Tamil-Grantha; all other domains have adapted to Modern-Tamil.

Digital usage

Since Modern-Tamil

unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

does not support all the missing consonants from Extended-Tamil, generally it is not possible to digitally encode it easily. It is possible to use fonts like ''Lopamudra'' and ''Agastya'' on top of Malayalam text to render it like Extended-Tamil. Or one can also use modified fonts that support rendering Grantha Unicode. There were proposals to reunify Grantha into Modern- Tamil Unicode; however, the proposal triggered discontent by some. Considering the sensitivity involved and rejection of the proposal by the

Tamil Nadu government Government of Tamil Nadu is the subnational government for the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is seated at Fort St George, Chennai. The legislature of Tamil Nadu was bicameral until 1986, when it was replaced by a unicameral legislature, like ...

, it was determined by the

Indian government The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the Government, national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy lo ...

that the two scripts should not be unified, except numerals.Government of India. (2010)
''Unicode Standard for Grantha Script''.
/ref>

Computing resources

''AksharaMukha''
- To convert Indic/Roman text to Extended-Tamil
''Agastya & Lopamudra''
- Download Tamil-Grantha Fonts

Non-Indic consonants

Tamil script can also be extended with (, , equivalent to

nuqta ় The nuqta (Hindi–Urdu: //, fa, , noqte; from ar, نقطة, nuqṭa, dot; sometimes also spelled nukta) is a diacritic mark that was introduced in Devanagari and some other Indic scripts to represent sounds not present in the original scri ...

) to represent phonemes of foreign languages, especially used to write

Islamic Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the mai ...

and

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

texts.

Notes

References

{{Reflist Dravidian languages Brahmic scripts