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Tamil is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken in southern India and Sri Lanka, with smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. In 1996, it was the 18th most spoken language in the world with over 74 million speakers worldwide.

As one of the few living classical languages, Tamil has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millenia. The written language has changed little during this period, with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern literature. Tamil schoolchildren, for example, are still taught the alphabet using the átticúdi, an alphabet rhyme written around the first century AD.

The name 'Tamil' is an anglicised form of the native name தமிழ்(IPA /tæmɪɻ/). The final letter of the name, usually transcribed L or zh, is a retroflex r believed to only exist in Tamil and Malayalam. In phonetic transcriptions, it is usually represented by the retroflex approximant.
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History

Like the other Dravidian languages, but unlike most of the other established literary languages of India, the origins of Tamil are independent of Sanskrit. Tamil has the longest unbroken literary tradition amongst the Dravidian languages. Tamil tradition dates the oldest works to several millennia ago, but the earliest examples of Tamil writing we have today are in inscriptions from the third century BC, which are written in an adapted form of the Brahmi script. Dating the earliest literary works themselves is difficult, in large part because they were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission. Internal linguistic evidence, however, indicates that the oldest extant works were probably composed sometime between the second century BC and the third century AD. The earliest available text which describes the language of the classical period is the Tolkaappiyam (dating from around 200 BC).

Linguists categorise Tamil literature and language into three periods: ancient (200 BC to 700 AD), medieval (700 AD to 1500 AD) and modern (1500 AD to the present). During the medieval period, a number of Sanskrit loan words were absorbed by Tamil, which were sought to be removed by many purists during the 1900s, notably by Parithimaar kalaignar and Maraimalai adigal. This movement was called thanith thamizh iyakkam (meaning pure tamil movement). As a result of this, Tamil in formal documents, public speeches and scientific discourses is free of Sanskrit loan words largely. Around 800-1000 AD, Malayalam is believed to have evolved into a distinct language.

Classification

Tamil is a member of the Tamil languages group of languages that includes Irula, Kaikadi, Betta Kurumba, Sholaga, and Yerukula languages. This group is a subgroup of the Tamil-Malayalam languages, which falls under a subgroup of Tamil-Kodagu languages, which in turn is a subgroup of Tamil-Kannada languages. The Tamil-Kannada languages belong to the Southern branch of the Dravidian language family.

Malayalam, spoken by the people of Kerala state - which borders Tamil Nadu - closely resembles Tamil in vocabulary, syntax and writing system.

Geographic distribution

Tamil is spoken in southern India, northern and north-eastern Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Mauritius, and also by a significant minority in many countries like South Africa, Germany, Netherlands, Fiji, Canada, USA, ] and Australia.

Official status

Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and is one of 22 nationally-recognised languages under the Indian Constitution. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and has constitutional recognition in South Africa.

Classical language status

Tamil is the first language to be declared as a classical language by the Government of India. This was announced by the President of India Abdul Kalam in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004.

See item 41 of his address and the BBC news item on the formal approval by the Indian Cabinet.

Prior to that, several members of the academia had voiced a case for classical status to Tamil, notably Professor George L. Hart, who occupies the Chair in Tamil Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. See his statement.

Spoken and literary variants

Tamil is a diglossic language. The classic form (chentamil) of the language is different from the colloquial (koduntamil) form. This difference in the language has existed since ancient times.

The classic form is preferred for writing, and is also used for public speaking. While written Tamil is mostly standard across various Tamil speaking regions, spoken form of the language differs widely from the written form.

Dialects

Dialects of Tamil identified by the Ethnologue are: Adi Dravida, Aiyar, Aiyangar, , Arava, Burgandi, Kasuva, Kongar, Korava, Korchi, Madrasi, Parikala, Pattapu Bhasha, Sri Lanka Tamil, Malaya Tamil, Burma Tamil, South Africa Tamil, Tigalu, Harijan, Sanketi, Hebbar, Tirunelveli, Madurai. Other known dialects are Kongu and Kumari.

Sounds

Main article: Tamil alphabet

The Tamil alphabet has 12 vowels and 18 consonants. These combine to form 216 compound characters. There is one special character (aaytha ezutthu), giving a total of 247 characters.

Vowels

The vowels are called uyir ezhuthu (uyir - life, ezhuthu - letter). The vowels are classified into short and long (five of each type) and two diphthongs.

The long (nedil) vowels are about twice as long as the short (kuRil) vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as the short vowels, though most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.

Consonants

The consonants are classified into three categories with 6 in each category: vallinam - hard, mellinam - soft or nasal, and idayinam - medium. Tamil has very restricted consonant clusters (eg: never word initial etc.) and has neither aspirated nor voiced stops. Some scholars have suggested that in Chenthamil (which refers to Tamil as it existed before Sanskrit words were borrowed), stops were voiceless when at the start of a word and voiced allophonically otherwise. However, no such distinction is observed by most modern Tamil speakers.

Following is the listing of consonants in isolated form (sans vowel sounds), indicated by the overdot diacritic.

Compound form

Using the consonant 'k' as an example.

Special character

The special character 'ஃ' (pronounced 'akh') is rarely used by itself; it normally serves a purely grammatical function as an independent vowel form, the equivalent of the overdot diacritic of plain consonants. This character is called aayutha ezhuthu (aayutham - weapon or device used in wars, ezhuthu - character) as it resembles the three dots found on a shield used by infantry in wars of olden days. The vowel sound u in aayutham gets dropped often. See section below.

Phonology

Phonologists are divided in their opinion over allophones in Tamil. One point of view is that Tamil has never had either conjunct consonants or aspirated and voiced stops. Hence, unlike Indo-European languages and other Dravidian languages, Tamil did not have the need for either separate characters for these consonants or for allophones. But, there is another theory that, though the script does not have symbols for aspirated consonants, the sounds are present as different allophones of the present consonants. Whichever is true, the Sanskrit loan words are pronounced with aspirated consonants in normal conversation even while there are well-defined rules in Tolkaappiyam for pronouncing such words without the aspirated sounds.

Elision

Elision is the reduction in the duration of sound of a phoneme when preceded by or followed by certain other sounds. There are well-defined rules for elision in Tamil. They are categorised into different classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.

1. Kutriyalukaram - the vowel u
2. Kutriyalikaram - the vowel i
3. Aiykaarakkurukkam - the diphthong ai
4. Oukaarakkurukkam - the diphthong au
5. Aaythakkurukkam - the special character akh (aayutham)
6. Makarakkurukkam - the phoneme m

Grammar

This section uses information from the UCLA profile of Tamil.

Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinating language. Morphemes are usually transparently separable and analysable affixes that are attached to roots or stems. Such affixes in Tamil are almost always suffixal. Words are made up of lexical roots, or stems (roots that have been expanded by a derivational suffix), followed by one or more inflectional suffixes which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination. Because of this, the words get very long and are difficult to translate at times. According to Today Translations, a British translation service, the Tamil word "செல்லாதிருப்பவர்" (sellaathiruppavar, meaning a certain type of truancy †) is ranked 8 in The Most Untranslatable Word In The World list.

Peyarchol (roughly corresponding to Noun) is a broad classification in Tamil grammatical terminology, which includes common and proper nouns, numerals, pronouns and some adjectives. They inflect for case, person, number (singular and plural), and gender. There are two genders which are based on the natural gender of the referent. There is a notion of animacy called thinai, which makes a distinction between human and nonhuman or rational and irrational. Nouns may be of type "rational" (e.g., nouns referring to men, deities, women in many dialects) or of type "irrational" (e.g., women and children in a few dialects, animals). Honorific references require the peyarchol to inflect similar to the gender-neutral plural form. Tamil also makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns that include the listener and exclusive pronouns that do not. There are 8 cases viz nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative.

Adjectives and adverbs fall under the category of urichol. Conjunctions are called idaichol.

Tamil has no articles. Hence, definiteness and indefiniteness are usually signalled by other grammatical devices, such as the number "one", used as an indefinite article. Compound nouns are used as deictic pronouns (demonstratives), which are used to indicate objects close by, at a distance, and a kind of neutral. Sri Lankan Tamil has a fourth kind indicating medial distance.

Verbs are formally inflected mainly for mood and tense by a grammatical particle suffixed to the stem. Most verbs also mark affective and effective "voice" where the former indicates that the subject undergoes the action named by the stem, and the latter signals that the subject directs the action of the stem. The voices used here are not equivalent to the notions of transitivity or causation. Mood is also reflected implicitly by grammatical formatives which also mark tense categories. These signal whether the verbal event is unreal, possible, potential, or a real, and actual. There are three simple tenses (past, present, and future), and a series of perfects.

Word order is usually Subject Object Verb (SOV). Even though case and postpositions are used to mark grammatical relations, word order is not completely free. Even where variation is allowed the verb in simple sentences must always come to the far right of the sentence, the exception being in poetry.

In addition, Tamil has a verbal category called attitude which is used to indicate the state of mind of the speaker and subjective attitude about the narrated event. Verb auxiliaries are used for this purpose. Examples of affected states projected are: pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief towards an unpleasant event having ended, undesirability about the result of an event etc.

Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkaappiyam.

Vocabulary

Modern Tamil vocabulary still retains most of the words from classical Tamil. Due to this and because of the emphasis on learning classical works like Tirukkural, classical Tamil is comprehensible in various degrees to most native speakers of today. However, a number of Sanskrit loan words have been adapted and used commonly in Tamil. But, unlike some other Dravidian languages, these words are restricted mainly to spiritual terminology and abstract nouns. Besides Sanskrit, there are a few loan words from Persian and Arabic implying trade ties in ancient times. Of late, English words are also being used freely in colloqial Tamil. Some modern technical terminology is borrowed from English, though attempts are being made to have a pure Tamil technical terminology. Many individuals, and some institutions like the Tamil Virtual University have generated technical dictionaries for Tamil.

There are also many instances of Tamil loan words in other languages. Popular examples are cheroot (churuttu meaning "rolled up"), mango and catamaran (from kattu maram meaning "bundled logs"). For more such words, see here.

Writing system

Main article: Tamil alphabet

Due to the absence of allophones and because of the deterministic nature of variation under special circumstances like elision, spelling in Tamil writing system is usually either phonetic or rule based. The present script used to write Tamil text is believed to have evolved from the Brahmi script of the Ashokan era. Later, a southern variant of the Brahmi script evolved into the Grantha script, which was used to write both Sanskrit and Tamil texts. Around the 15th century, a new script called vettezhuthu (meaning letters that are cut) evolved in order to make it easy for creating inscriptions on stone. Some people also call this as vattezhuthu (meaning curved letters). Around 1935, Periyar suggested some changes to make it amenable for printing. Some of these suggestions were incorporated by the then MG Ramachandran government in 1975.

While the evolution of the script was happening, many Sanskrit words also began to be used in Tamil. To facilitate writing these words, some characters from the grantha script are still being retained. However, there are many purists who would argue against the use of such characters as there are well-defined rules in Tolkaappiyam for Tamilising loan words.

Examples

Following are translations of some commonly used phrases.

• Tamil: தமிழ்/Tamizh /tamiɮ/
• hello: வணக்கம்/Vanakkam /vanakːam/
• good-bye: சென்று வருகிறேன்/sentru varukireen /sentu varukireen/
• please: தயவு செய்து/dayavu seithu /tajavu sei/
• thank you: நன்றி/nandri /nantʕi/
• sorry: மன்னிக்கவும்/mannikkavum /
• that one: அது/adhu /a tʰu/
• how much?: எவ்வளவு/evvalavu /evːalavu/
• yes: ஆம்/aam /aːm/
• no: இல்லை/illai /ilːaj/
• I don't understand: எனக்குப் புரியவில்லை
• Where's the bathroom?: குளியலறை எங்கே உள்ளது?
• generic toast (not used in formal conversations and to elders): (Hey): டேய்!/dei /de:i/
• English: ஆங்கிலம்/aangilam /aːŋilam/
• Do you speak English?: நீங்கள் ஆங்கிலம் பேசுவீர்களா?

External links

General

• Ethnologue report
• Omniglot resource
• Rosetta Project Archive
• Language Museum report
• UCLA Tamil Profile
• A brief review of its history and characteristics
• International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil
• Tamil Language & Literature

Resources for learning

• UPENN course page - University of Pennsylvania's web based courses for learning Tamil
• Tamil virtual University has the largest collection of digitised Tamil literary works and web based courses for learning Tamil
• IITS - Institute of Indology and Tamil Studies,University of Cologne ,Germany

Fonts and Encodings

• Unicode Chart - Unicode Chart for Tamil (PDF)
• Unicode Converter - Online JavaScript tool to convert text in various Tamil encodings into Unicode
• Tamil fonts - Links to download various Tamil fonts
• NLS Information - NLS Information page for Windows XP
• thamizhlinux.org - A community website for everything Linux and Open Source in Tamil

• Agglutinative languages
• Classical languages
• Dravidian languages
• Languages of India
• Languages of Sri Lanka
• Tamil