Tamil (; ' , ) is a
Dravidian language
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant imm ...
natively spoken by the
Tamil people
The Tamil people, also known as Tamilar ( ta, தமிழர், Tamiḻar, translit-std=ISO, in the singular or ta, தமிழர்கள், Tamiḻarkaḷ, translit-std=ISO, label=none, in the plural), or simply Tamils (), are a Drav ...
of
South Asia
South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical
Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...
. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...
, the sovereign nations of
Sri Lanka and
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
,
and the Indian territory of
Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to:
* Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India
** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry t ...
. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other
South India
South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...
n states of
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
,
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
and
Telangana
Telangana (; , ) is a state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India with a geographical area of and 3 ...
, and the Union Territory of the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
. It is also spoken by the
Tamil diaspora
The Tamil diaspora refers to descendants of the Tamil immigrants who emigrated from their native lands (Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Sri Lanka) to other parts of the world. They are found primarily in Malaysia, Arab states of the Persian Gulf, ...
found in many countries, including
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
,
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
,
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
,
Australia and
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
. Tamil is also natively spoken by
Sri Lankan Moors. One of 22 scheduled languages in the
Constitution of India
The Constitution of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme law of India. The document lays down the framework that demarcates fundamental political code, structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions and sets out fundamental ...
, Tamil was the first to be classified as a
classical language of India
Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians, both families together are sometimes known ...
.
Tamil is one of the longest-surviving
classical languages
A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...
of India.
[. "Tamil is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India" (p. 7).] A. K. Ramanujan
Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature and Linguistics. Ramanujan was also a professor of Linguistics at University of Chicago.
Ramanujan was a poet, scholar, ...
described it as "the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past".
The variety and quality of classical Tamil literature has led to it being described as "one of the great classical traditions and literatures of the world". Recorded
Tamil literature
Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from T ...
has been documented for over 2000 years.
[: "...the most acceptable periodisation which has so far been suggested for the development of Tamil writing seems to me to be that of A Chidambaranatha Chettiar (1907–1967): 1. Sangam Literature – 200BC to AD 200; 2. Post Sangam literature – AD 200 – AD 600; 3. Early Medieval literature – AD 600 to AD 1200; 4. Later Medieval literature – AD 1200 to AD 1800; 5. Pre-Modern literature – AD 1800 to 1900"] The earliest period of Tamil literature,
Sangam literature
The Sangam literature (Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam'';) historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cāṉṟōr ceyyuḷ'') connotes ...
, is dated from 300 BC until AD 300. It has the oldest extant literature among
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
. The earliest
epigraphic records found on rock edicts and '
hero stone
A hero stone (Vīragallu in Kannada, Naṭukal in Tamil) is a memorial commemorating the honorable death of a hero in battle. Erected between the second half of the first millennium BC and the 18th century AD, hero stones are found all over Ind ...
s' date from around the 3rd century BC.
[ at p. 610] About 60,000 of the approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the
Archaeological Survey of India
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is an Indian government agency that is responsible for archaeological research and the conservation and preservation of cultural historical monuments in the country. It was founded in 1861 by Alexand ...
in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages.
Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in
Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt.
The two earliest
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...
s from India, acknowledged and registered by the
UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil.
In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named ''
Thambiran Vanakkam'', thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The ''
Tamil Lexicon,'' published by the
University of Madras
The University of Madras (informally known as Madras University) is a public state university in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and among the most prestigious universities in India, incorporated by an a ...
, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.
Classification
''Tamil'' belongs to the
southern branch of the
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
, a family of around 26 languages native to the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
. It is also classified as being part of a
Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the
Irula and
Yerukula languages (see
SIL Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensi ...
).
The closest major relative of Tamil is
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
; the two began diverging around the 9th century AD. Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic split of the western dialect,
the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century.
History
![Keezhadi excavation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Keezhadi_excavation.jpg)
Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the
Proto-Dravidian language
Proto-Dravidian is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Dravidian languages. It is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian, although the date of divers ...
, which was most likely spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower
Godavari
The Godavari (IAST: ''Godāvarī'' od̪aːʋəɾiː is India's second longest river after the Ganga river and drains into the third largest basin in India, covering about 10% of India's total geographical area. Its source is in Trimbakeshwa ...
river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
complexes of South India.
Among Indian languages, Tamil has the most ancient non-Sanskritic Indian literature. Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (600 BC–AD 700), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present).
In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BC with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions.
There are a number of apparent
Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew
The importance of Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew is that linguistically these words are the earliest attestation of the Tamil language. These words were incorporated into the writing of the Hebrew Bible starting before 500 BCE. Although a numb ...
dating to before 500 BC, the oldest attestation of the language.
[Rabin, C. ''Proceedings of the Second International Conference Seminar of Tamil Studies'', p. 438] John Guy states that Tamil was the
lingua franca for early maritime traders from India.
In 2004, a number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware
urn
An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...
s in
Adichanallur
Adichanallur (Tamil: ஆதிச்சநல்லூர்) is an archaeological site in Thoothukudi district in Tamil Nadu, India that has been the site of a number of very important archaeological finds. Korkai, the capital of the Early Pandya ...
. Some of these urns contained writing in
Tamil Brahmi
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamizhi or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil.Richard Salomon (1998) ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptio ...
script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin.
Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in
Keezhadi
Keezhadi ( ta, கீழடி, kīḻaṭi) is a village near the village of Silaiman, on the border between Madurai and Sivagangai districts, in Tamil Nadu, India. The Keezhadi excavation site is located in this area: excavations carried out b ...
. These sent to Beta Analytic in
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at ...
,
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
for
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) is a form of mass spectrometry that accelerates ions to extraordinarily high kinetic energies before mass analysis. The special strength of AMS among the mass spectrometric methods is its power to separate a r ...
(AMS) dating. One sample containing
Tamil-Brahmi
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamizhi or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil.Richard Salomon (1998) ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptio ...
inscriptions was claimed to be dated to around 580 BC.
Legend
![Tamil Inscriptions](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Tamil_Inscriptions.jpg)
According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form
Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil) was created by Lord
Shiva
Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one of the major traditions within Hindu ...
.
Murugan
Kartikeya ( sa, कार्त्तिकेय, Kārttikeya), also known as Skanda, Subrahmanya, Shanmukha (), and Murugan ( ta, முருகன்), is the Hindu god of war. He is the son of Parvati and Shiva, the brother of Ganesha ...
, revered as the Tamil God, along with sage
Agastya, brought it to the people.
Etymology
The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate the
Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed
Tamil Sangams
The Tamil Sangams (Tamil: சங்கம் ''caṅkam'', Old Tamil 𑀘𑀗𑁆𑀓𑀫𑁆, from Sanskrit ''saṅgha'') were assemblies of Tamil scholars and poets that, according to traditional Tamil accounts, occurred in the remote past. ...
, which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these
Tamil Sangams
The Tamil Sangams (Tamil: சங்கம் ''caṅkam'', Old Tamil 𑀘𑀗𑁆𑀓𑀫𑁆, from Sanskrit ''saṅgha'') were assemblies of Tamil scholars and poets that, according to traditional Tamil accounts, occurred in the remote past. ...
is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name is found in
Tholkappiyam, which is dated as early as late 2nd century BC.
The
Hathigumpha inscription
The Hathigumpha Inscription is a seventeen line inscription in Prakrit language incised in Brahmi script in a cavern called Hathigumpha in Udayagiri hills, near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, India. Dated between 2nd-century BCE and 1st-century CE, it ...
, inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by
Kharavela
Kharavela (also transliterated Khārabēḷa) was a monarch of Kalinga in present-day Odisha, India, who ruled during the second or first century BCE. The primary source for Kharavela is his rock-cut Hathigumpha inscription. The inscription is ...
, the Jain king of
Kalinga Kalinga may refer to:
Geography, linguistics and/or ethnology
* Kalinga (historical region), a historical region of India
** Kalinga (Mahabharata), an apocryphal kingdom mentioned in classical Indian literature
** Kalinga script, an ancient writ ...
, also refers to a ''Tamira Samghatta'' (''Tamil confederacy'')
The
Samavayanga Sutra
Samavayanga Sutra (c. 3rd-4th century BCE) is the 4th amongst the 12 Angas of the Jaina canon. The sutra is believed to have been composed by Gandhara Sudharmaswami. This ancient manuscript is the holy book of the Svetambara sect. This tex ...
dated to the 3rd century BC contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'.
Southworth suggests that the name comes from > "self-speak", or "our own speech".
Kamil Zvelebil
Kamil Václav Zvelebil (November 17, 1927 – January 17, 2009) was a Czech scholar in Indian literature and linguistics, notably Tamil, Sanskrit, Dravidian linguistics and literature and philology.
Life and career
Zvelebil studied at the Cha ...
suggests an etymology of , with meaning "self" or "one's self", and "" having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of < < * < *, meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature.
The Tamil Lexicon of
University of Madras
The University of Madras (informally known as Madras University) is a public state university in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and among the most prestigious universities in India, incorporated by an a ...
defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from ''tam'' — "sweet" and ''il'' — "sound".
Old Tamil
![Mangulam inscription](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Mangulam_inscription.jpg)
Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BC to 700 AD. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the
Brahmi script
Brahmi (; ; ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system of ancient South Asia. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as 'lath' ...
called
Tamil-Brahmi
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamizhi or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil.Richard Salomon (1998) ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptio ...
. The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the ''
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 ...
'', an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BC.
Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as
Sangam literature
The Sangam literature (Tamil: சங்க இலக்கியம், ''caṅka ilakkiyam'';) historically known as 'the poetry of the noble ones' (Tamil: சான்றோர் செய்யுள், ''Cāṉṟōr ceyyuḷ'') connotes ...
. These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BC and 5th century AD.
Middle Tamil
![Tanjavur Tamil Inscription2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Tanjavur_Tamil_Inscription2.jpg)
The evolution of
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 ...
into
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 ...
, which is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century,
was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar
plosive into a
rhotic. In grammar, the most important change was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb ' (), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an
aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ' (). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – ' () – which combined the old aspect and time markers.
Modern Tamil
The
Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows a number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic.
Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with the introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the
syntactic argument structure of English. Simultaneously, a strong strain of
linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the
Pure Tamil Movement
( ta, தனித்தமிழ் இயக்கம், , Independent Tamil Movement) is a linguistic-purity movement in Tamil literature which attempts to avoid loanwords from Sanskrit, English and other languages. The movement began in ...
which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil.
It received some support from
Dravidian parties
Dravidian parties include an array of regional political parties in the state of Tamil Nadu, India, which trace their origins and ideologies either directly or indirectly to the Justice Party and the Dravidian movement of C. Natesanar and Per ...
. This led to the replacement of a significant number of
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 ...
loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain.
Geographic distribution
Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a state in southern India. It is the tenth largest Indian state by area and the sixth largest by population. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu is the home of the Tamil people, whose Tamil language ...
,
Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to:
* Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India
** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry t ...
, (in India) and in the
Northern and
Eastern
Eastern may refer to:
Transportation
*China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai
*Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways
*Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991
*Eastern Air Li ...
provinces of
Sri Lanka. The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
,
Telangana
Telangana (; , ) is a state in India situated on the south-central stretch of the Indian peninsula on the high Deccan Plateau. It is the eleventh-largest state and the twelfth-most populated state in India with a geographical area of and 3 ...
,
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
,
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
,
Maharashtra,
Gujarat
Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...
,
Delhi
Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders ...
,
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as
Colombo
Colombo ( ; si, කොළඹ, translit=Koḷam̆ba, ; ta, கொழும்பு, translit=Koḻumpu, ) is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. According to the Brookings Institution, Colombo m ...
and
the hill country. Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century AD. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
districts of
Chittoor
Chittoor is a city and district headquarters in Chittoor district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is also the mandal and divisional headquarters of Chittoor mandal and Chittoor revenue division, respectively. The city has a popu ...
and
Nellore
Nellore is a city located on the banks of Penna River, in Nellore district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It serves as the headquarters of the district, as well as Nellore mandal and Nellore revenue division. It is the fourth most p ...
until the 12th century AD. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as
Kolar
Kolar or Kolara is a city in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is the headquarters of Kolar district. The city is known for its milk production and gold mines. It is also known for Someshwara temple and Kolaramma temple.
History
The Wes ...
,
Mysore
Mysore (), officially Mysuru (), is a city in the southern part of the state of Karnataka, India. Mysore city is geographically located between 12° 18′ 26″ north latitude and 76° 38′ 59″ east longitude. It is located at an altitude of ...
,
Mandya
Mandya is a city in the state of Karnataka. It is the headquarter of Mandya district and is located from Mysore and from Bangalore.
Sugar factories contribute to the major economic output. It is also called Sugar city (which in Kannada mean ...
and
Bengaluru.
There are currently sizeable
Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
,
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
,
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
,
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, Indonesia, Thailand,
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
, and
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
. Tamil is used as one of the languages of education in
Malaysia
Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...
, along with English, Malay and Mandarin.
[Tamil Schools](_blank)
Indianmalaysian.com. Retrieved 28 July 2013. A large community of
Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in
Karachi
Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former c ...
,
Pakistan
Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...
, which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus
[Sunny, Sanjesh (21 September 2010]
Tamil Hindus in Karachi
''Pakistan Hindu Post'' as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka.
[Raman, B. (15 July 2002]
''The Hindu Business Line'' There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in
Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in
Réunion,
Guyana,
Fiji,
Suriname, and
Trinidad and Tobago
Trinidad and Tobago (, ), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago, and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated south of ...
have Tamil origins,
but only a small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
it is now being relearnt by students and adults.
Tamil is also spoken by migrants
from Sri Lanka and India in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
(especially
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
and
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
), the
United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at t ...
, the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
, and
Australia.
Legal status
Tamil is the
official language
An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the
22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India. It is one of the official languages of the union territories of
Puducherry Puducherry or Pondicherry may refer to:
* Puducherry (union territory), a union territory of India
** Pondicherry, capital of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry district, a district of the union territory of Puducherry
** Puducherry t ...
and the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
. Tamil is also one of the official languages of
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
. Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with
Sinhala.
It was once given nominal official status in the Indian state of
Haryana
Haryana (; ) is an Indian state located in the northern part of the country. It was carved out of the former state of East Punjab on 1 Nov 1966 on a linguistic basis. It is ranked 21st in terms of area, with less than 1.4% () of India's land a ...
, purportedly as a rebuff to
Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising a ...
, though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by
Punjabi, in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in
Tamil as the medium of instruction. The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
to provide education completely in Tamil language by the Tamils who settled there 200 years ago.
[Natarajan, Swaminathan (6 March 2014]
Myanmar's Tamils seek to protect their identity
BBC Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the
Parliament of Canada. Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the
Constitution of South Africa
The Constitution of South Africa is the supreme law of the Republic of South Africa. It provides the legal foundation for the existence of the republic, it sets out the rights and duties of its citizens, and defines the structure of the Gover ...
and is taught as a subject in schools in
KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as a subject of study in schools in the
French overseas department of
Réunion.
In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the
Government of India
The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...
and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations,
Tamil became the first legally recognised
Classical language
A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...
of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous
President of India
The president of India ( IAST: ) is the head of state of the Republic of India. The president is the nominal head of the executive, the first citizen of the country, as well as the commander-in-chief of the Indian Armed Forces. Droupadi Mur ...
,
Abdul Kalam
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (; 15 October 193127 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace scientist and statesman who served as the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied ph ...
, who was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the
Indian Parliament
The Parliament of India ( IAST: ) is the supreme legislative body of the Republic of India. It is a bicameral legislature composed of the president of India and two houses: the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the ...
on 6 June 2004.
[India sets up classical languages](_blank)
BBC. 17 August 2004.
''The Hindu''. 28 October 2005.
Dialects
Region-specific variations
The
socio-linguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
situation of Tamil is characterised by
diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled ...
: there are two separate registers varying by
socioeconomic status, a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example, the word for "here"—' in ''Centamil'' (the classic variety)—has evolved into ' in the Kongu dialect of
Coimbatore, ''inga'' in the dialect of
Thanjavur
Thanjavur (), also Tanjore, Pletcher 2010, p. 195 is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is the 11th biggest city in Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is an important center of South Indian religion, art, and architecture. Most of the Gr ...
, and ' in some
dialects of Sri Lanka. Old Tamil's ' (where ' means place) is the source of ' in the dialect of
Tirunelveli
Tirunelveli (, ta, திருநெல்வேலி, translit=Tirunelveli) also known as Nellai ( ta, நெல்லை, translit=Nellai) and historically (during British rule) as Tinnevelly, is a major city in the Indian state of Tam ...
, Old Tamil ' is the source of ' in the dialect of
Madurai
Madurai ( , also , ) is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Madurai District. As of the 2011 census, it was the third largest Urban agglomeration in ...
, and ' in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear "" meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India,
and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include
Central Tamil dialect
The Central Tamil dialect is a dialect of Tamil spoken in the districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Karur and Tiruchirapalli in central Tamil Nadu, India and to some extent, in the neighbouring Cuddalore and Pudukkottai district
P ...
,
Kongu Tamil
Kongu Tamil or Kovai Tamil is the dialect of Tamil language that is spoken by the people in Kongu Nadu, which is the western region of Tamil Nadu. It is originally known as "Kangee"` or "Kongalam" or "Kongappechu or Kongu bashai or Coimbatore T ...
,
Madras Bashai,
Madurai Tamil
Madurai Tamil (மதுரை தமிழ்), known as Madurai Bashai, is the dialect of Tamil spoken in the region of Madurai and over a vast geographical area of South Tamil Nadu, the area once ruled by the Pandiya kings. It differs substa ...
,
Nellai Tamil,
Kumari Tamil
Kumari may refer to:
Places
* Kumari, Nepal, a town in central Nepal
* Kumari (Afyon), a city in Turkey
* Kumari (Kutahya), a town in Turkey
* Kumari (island), an island in Estonia
Religion
* Kumari (goddess), in Hinduism
* Kaumari, one o ...
in
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
;
Batticaloa Tamil dialect,
Jaffna Tamil dialect,
Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and
Malaysian Tamil
Malaysian Tamil ( ta, மலேசியத் தமிழ் மொழி, Malēsiyat Tamiḻ Moḻi), also known as Malaya Tamil, is a local variant of the Tamil language
Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by ...
in Malaysia.
Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
.
Loanword variations
The dialect of the district of
Palakkad
Palakkad (), formerly known as Palghat, historically known as Palakkattussery is a city and municipality in the Indian state of Kerala. It is the administrative headquarters of the Palakkad District. Palakkad is most densely populated municipal ...
in Kerala has many
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from
Kanyakumari district
Kanniyakumari district is one of the 38 districts in Tamil Nadu state and the southernmost district in mainland India. It stands second in terms of population density among the districts of Tamil Nadu. It is also the richest district in Tamil Na ...
is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil.
Hebbar and
Mandyam
Iyengar Tamil () is a dialect of the Tamil language spoken mostly in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, as well as other neighbouring regions of South India. It is spoken by the Iyengar community, a sect of Tamil Brahmins whose members adhere to Sri Vai ...
dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil
Vaishnavites
Vaishnavism ( sa, वैष्णवसम्प्रदायः, Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the ...
who migrated to
Karnataka
Karnataka (; ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a state in the southwestern region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as Mysore State , it was renamed ''Karnat ...
in the 11th century, retain many features of the ''Vaishnava paribasai'', a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several
castes have their own
sociolect
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language ( non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group.
Sociolects involve both passive acqui ...
s which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech.
[Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2013]
"Tamil dialects"
in ''Tamil language''. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates
loan words from
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
, and English.
Spoken and literary variants
In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language ('), a modern literary and formal style ('), and a modern
colloquial
Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the style (sociolinguistics), linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom norm ...
form ('). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write ' with a vocabulary drawn from ', or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking '.
In modern times, ' is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of
Tamil literature
Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from T ...
and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, ' has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of '. Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in ', and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of ' in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial ‘standard' spoken dialects. In India, the ‘standard' ', rather than on any one dialect,
but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of
Thanjavur
Thanjavur (), also Tanjore, Pletcher 2010, p. 195 is a city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is the 11th biggest city in Tamil Nadu. Thanjavur is an important center of South Indian religion, art, and architecture. Most of the Gr ...
and
Madurai
Madurai ( , also , ) is a major city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Madurai District. As of the 2011 census, it was the third largest Urban agglomeration in ...
. In Sri Lanka, the standard is based on the dialect of
Jaffna
Jaffna (, ) is the capital city of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jaffna District located on a peninsula of the same name. With a population of 88,138 in 2012, Jaffna is Sri Lanka's 12th mo ...
.
Writing system
![Tirukkural manuscript](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Tirukkural_manuscript.jpg)
After
Tamil Brahmi
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamizhi or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil.Richard Salomon (1998) ''Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptio ...
fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called
amongst others such as
Grantha and
Pallava. The current Tamil script consists of 12
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s, 18
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
s and one special character, the ''
āytam
Visarga ( sa, विसर्गः, translit=visargaḥ) means "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology ('' ''), ' (also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians) is the name of a phone voiceless glottal fricative, , written as:
...
''. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 x 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel ''a'', as with other
Indic scripts. This inherent vowel is removed by adding a
tittle
A tittle or superscript dot is a small distinguishing mark, such as a diacritic in the form of a dot on a letter (for example, lowercase ''i'' or ''j''). The tittle is an integral part of the glyph of ''i'' and ''j'', but dot (diacritic), diacri ...
called a ', to the consonantal sign. For example, is ''ṉa'' (with the inherent ''a'') and is ''ṉ'' (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called
virama
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit vir ...
, but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible ''puḷḷi'' to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without a vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced
plosives. Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of
Tamil phonology
Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of “true-subapical” retroflex consonants and multiple rhotic consonants. Its script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned dependi ...
.
In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the
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, th ...
, which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit,
Prakrit
The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...
, and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but is not always consistently applied.
ISO 15919 is an international standard for the
transliteration of Tamil and other
Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of
Brahmic consonants and vowels to
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
, and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English.
Numerals and symbols
Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs.
Phonology
Grammar
Tamil employs
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...
grammar, where suffixes are used to mark
noun class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some a ...
,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, and
case, verb
tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard
metalinguistic
Metalinguistics is the branch of linguistics that studies language and its relationship to other cultural behaviors. It is the study of dialogue relationships between units of speech communication as manifestations and enactments of co-existence. ...
terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the
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 ...
that is standard for most
Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily ...
.
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the ''
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 ...
''. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar ' which restated and clarified the rules of the ''Tolkāppiyam'', with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely ', ', ', ', '. Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry.
Tamil words consist of a
lexical root to which one or more
affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are
suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be
derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or
inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
al suffixes, which mark categories such as
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
,
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
,
mood,
tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of
agglutination
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...
, which can lead to long words with many suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English. To give an example, the word ''pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka'' (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
s:
Morphology
Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (')—the "rational" ('), and the "irrational" (')—which include a total of five classes (''pāl'', which literally means "gender"). Humans and
deities are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (''pāl'')—masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes: irrational singular and irrational plural. The ''pāl'' is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an
honorific
An honorific is a title that conveys esteem, courtesy, or respect for position or rank when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term "honorific" is used in a more specific sense to refer to an honorary academic title. It ...
, gender-neutral, singular form.
Suffixes are used to perform the functions of
cases or
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into eight cases corresponding to the cases used in
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 ...
. These were the
nominative,
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
,
dative,
sociative,
genitive,
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
,
locative, and
ablative
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. ...
. Modern grammarians argue that this classification is artificial,
and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.
Tamil nouns can take one of four
prefixes
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy''. Particu ...
: ''i'', ''a'', ''u'', and ''e'' which are functionally equivalent to the
demonstratives in English. For example, the word ''vazhi'' (வழி) meaning "way" can take these to produce ''ivvazhi'' (இவ்வழி) "this way", ''avvazhi'' (அவ்வழி) "that way", ''uvvazhi'' (உவ்வழி) "the medial way" and ''evvazhi'' (எவ்வழி) "which way".
Tamil verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of
suffixes, which show person, number, mood, tense, and voice.
* Person and number are indicated by suffixing the
oblique case
In grammar, an oblique (abbreviated ; from la, casus obliquus) or objective case ( abbr. ) is a nominal case other than the nominative case, and sometimes, the vocative.
A noun or pronoun in the oblique case can generally appear in any role ex ...
of the relevant pronoun. The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from
grammatical particles, which are added to the stem.
* Tamil has two voices. The first indicates that the subject of the sentence ''undergoes'' or ''is the object of'' the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence ''directs'' the action referred to by the verb stem.
* Tamil has three simple tenses—past, present, and future—indicated by the suffixes, as well as a series of perfects indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone are ...
s which mark tense categories. Tamil verbs also mark
evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
, through the addition of the hearsay
clitic ''.''
Verb inflection is shown below using example ''aḻintukkoṇṭiruntēṉ''; (அழிந்துக்கொண்டிருந்தேன்); "(I) was being destroyed".
Traditional grammars of Tamil do not distinguish between
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s and
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
s, including both of them under the category ''uriccol'', although modern grammarians tend to distinguish between them on morphological and syntactical grounds.
Tamil has many
ideophone
Ideophone is a word class evoking ideas in sound imitation or onomatopoeia to express action, manner of property. Ideophone is the least common syntactic category cross-linguistically occurring mostly in African, Australian and Amerindian langua ...
s that act as adverbs indicating the way the object in a given state "says" or "sounds".
Tamil does not have
articles. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context.
In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between
inclusive pronouns ' (we), ' (our) that include the addressee and exclusive pronouns ' (we), ' (our) that do not.
Syntax
Tamil is a consistently
head-final
In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the ...
language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with a typical word order of
subject–object–verb (SOV).
However, word order in Tamil is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different
pragmatic
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement.
Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to:
*Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy
*Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics
*''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...
effects. Tamil has
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s rather than
prepositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
. Demonstratives and modifiers precede the noun within the noun phrase. Subordinate clauses precede the verb of the matrix clause.
Tamil is a
null-subject language
In linguistic typology, a null-subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject; such a clause is then said to have a null subject.
In the principles and parameters framework, the null subj ...
. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs, and objects. It is possible to construct grammatically valid and meaningful sentences which lack one or more of the three. For example, a sentence may only have a verb—such as ' ("completed")—or only a subject and object, without a verb such as ' ("That
smy house"). Tamil does not have a
copula (a linking verb equivalent to the word ''is''). The word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning more easily.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of Tamil is mainly Dravidian. A strong sense of
linguistic purism is found in Modern Tamil, which opposes the use of foreign loanwords. Nonetheless, a number of words used in classical and modern Tamil are loanwords from the languages of neighbouring groups, or with whom the Tamils had trading links, including
Munda (for example, "frog" from Munda ),
Malay (e.g. "sago" from Malay ), Chinese (for example, "skiff" from Chinese san-pan) and Greek (for example, from Greek ὥρα). In more modern times, Tamil has imported words from
and
Marathi
Marathi may refer to:
*Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India
*Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people
*Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece
See also
*
* ...
, reflecting groups that have influenced the Tamil area at times, and from neighbouring languages such as
Telugu,
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
, and Sinhala. During the modern period, words have also been adapted from European languages, such as Portuguese, French, and English.
The strongest impact of purism in Tamil has been on words taken from Sanskrit. During its history, Tamil, along with other Dravidian languages like
Telugu,
Kannada
Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
,
Malayalam
Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...
etc., was influenced by
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 ...
in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles,
["Literature in all Dravidian languages owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch raised each of the languages from a level of patois to that of a literary idiom" (Sastri 1955, p. 309); Trautmann, Thomas R. (2006). ''Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras''. Berkeley: University of California Press. "The author endeavours to demonstrate that the entire Sangam poetic corpus follows the "Kavya" form of Sanskrit poetry" – .][Takahashi, Takanobu. (1995). ''Tamil love poetry and poetics''. Brill's Indological Library, v. 9. Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 16, 18. .] reflecting the increased trend of
Sanskritisation
Sanskritisation (or Sanskritization) is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek 'upward' mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper ...
in the Tamil country. Tamil vocabulary never became quite as heavily Sanskritised as that of the other Dravidian languages, and unlike in those languages, it was and remains possible to express complex ideas (including in science, art, religion and law) without the use of Sanskrit loan words. In addition, Sanskritisation was actively resisted by a number of authors of the late medieval period, culminating in the 20th century in a movement called ''
'' (meaning "pure Tamil movement"), led by
Parithimaar Kalaignar and
Maraimalai Adigal
Maraimalai Adigal (15 July 1876 – 15 September 1950) was a Tamil orator and writer and father of Pure Tamil movement. He was a fervent Tamizh Saivite. He wrote more than 100 books, including works on original poems and dramas, but most famous ...
, which sought to remove the accumulated influence of Sanskrit on Tamil. As a result of this, Tamil in formal documents, literature and public speeches has seen a marked decline in the use Sanskrit loan words in the past few decades, under some estimates having fallen from 40 to 50% to about 20%.
As a result, the Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words used in modern Tamil are, unlike in some other Dravidian languages, restricted mainly to some spiritual terminology and
abstract nouns.
In the 20th century, institutions and learned bodies have, with government support, generated technical dictionaries for Tamil containing
neologism
A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...
s and words derived from Tamil roots to replace loan words from English and other languages.
As of 2019, the language had a listed vocabulary of over 470,000 unique words, including those from old literary sources. In November 2019, the state government issued an order to add 9,000 new words to the vocabulary.
Influence
Words of Tamil origin occur in other languages. A notable example of a word in worldwide use with Dravidian (not specifically Tamil) etymology is ''
:wikt:orange, orange'', via Sanskrit ' from a Dravidian predecessor of Tamil ''nartaṅkāy'' "fragrant fruit". One suggestion as to the origin of the word ''anaconda'' is the Tamil ''anaikkonda,'' "having killed an elephant".
Examples in English include ''cheroot'' (' meaning "rolled up"),
''mango'' (from ''māngāi''),
''mulligatawny'' (from ', "pepper water"), ''pariah'' (from ''paraiyan''), ''curry'' (from ''kari''),
["curry, n.2", ''The Oxford English Dictionary''. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 14 August 2009] ''catamaran'' (from ', "bundled logs"),
and ''congee'' (from ''kanji'' – rice porridge or gruel).
Sample text
The following is a sample text in literary Tamil of Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, ...
:
Tamil in the
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, ...
:
:
Romanized Tamil:
:Uṟuppurai 1: Maṉitap piṟaviyiṉar cakalarum cutantiramākavē piṟakkiṉṟaṉar; avarkaḷ matippilum, urimaikaḷilum camamāṉavarkaḷ, avarkaḷ niyāyattaiyum maṉaccāṭciyaiyum iyaṟpaṇpākap peṟṟavarkaḷ. Avarkaḷ oruvaruṭaṉoruvar cakōtara uṇarvup pāṅkil naṭantukoḷḷal vēṇṭum.
Tamil in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
:
:
Gloss:
:Section 1: Human beings all-of-them freely are born. They rights-in-and dignities-in-and equal-ones. They law-and conscience-and intrinsically possessed-ones. They among-one-another brotherly feeling share-in act must.
Translation:
:Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They possess conscience and reason. Therefore, everyone should act in a spirit of brotherhood towards each other.
See also
*
List of countries where Tamil is an official language
The following is a list of sovereign states and territories where Tamil is an official language or language of government.
Tamil is the 20th most spoken language in the world. Tamil language speakers make approximately 1.06% of the world popu ...
*
List of languages by first written accounts
This is a list of languages arranged by age of the oldest existing text recording a complete sentence in the language. It does not include undeciphered scripts, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, ...
*
Tamil keyboard
*
Tamil population by cities
*
Tamil population by nation This is a list of Tamil population per nation.
See also
* List of countries and territories where Tamil is an official language
* Tamil population by cities
* States of India by Tamil speakers
This is a list of states and territories of India ...
*
Tamil Loanwords in other languages
Footnotes
References
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Further reading
*
Fabricius, Johann Philip (1933 and 1972)
''Tamil and English Dictionary'' based on J.P. Fabricius ''Malabar-English Dictionary'', 3rd and 4th Edition Revised and Enlarged by David Bexell. Evangelical Lutheran Mission Publishing House, Tranquebar; called Tranquebar Dictionary.
*
*
External links
*
Tamil languageat ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
''
Tamil Language & Literature*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Tamil Language
Agglutinative languages
Classical Language in India
Dravidian languages
Languages of Andhra Pradesh
Languages of Indonesia
Languages of Karnataka
Languages of Kerala
Languages of Malaysia
Languages of Mauritius
Languages of Puducherry
Languages of South Africa
Languages of Singapore
Languages of Sri Lanka
Languages of Tamil Nadu
Official languages of India
Subject–object–verb languages
Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC
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