Tamil language

Tamil

????? tamiḻ

Pronunciation [t̪əmɨɻ] (Listen)

Spoken in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore, where ithas an official status; with significantminorities in Canada, Malaysia, Mauritius,and Réunion, and emigrant communitiesaround the world.[1]

Totalspeakers

68 million native,[2][3] 77 million total[2]

Ranking 20, 16,[1] 15(native speakers)

Languagefamily

DravidianSouthernTamil-KannadaTamil-KodaguTamil-MalayalamTamil

Writingsystem

Tamil script

Official status

Officiallanguage in India,[4][5]

Sri Lanka,[6] andSingapore.[7]

Regulated by No official regulation

Language codes

ISO 639-1 ta

ISO 639-2 tam

ISO 639-3 tam

This page contains Indic text. Withoutrendering support you may see irregularvowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts.More...

Tamil is written in a non-Latin script.Tamil text used in this article istransliterated into the Latin scriptaccording to the ISO 15919 standard.

Tamil (????? tamiḻ; IPA: [t̪əmɨɻ]) is a Dravidi-an language spoken predominantly by Tamilpeople of the Indian subcontinent. It has offi-cial status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore.Tamil is also spoken by significant minoritiesin Malaysia, Mauritius, Vietnam, Réunion as

well as emigrant communities around theworld.[1] It is the administrative language ofthe Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and the firstIndian language to be declared as a classicallanguage by the government of India in 2004.

Tamil literature has existed for over twothousand years.[8] The earliest epigraphic re-cords found date from around the third cen-tury BCE.[9] The earliest period of Tamil liter-ature, Sangam literature, is dated from the300 BCE – 300 CE.[10][11] Inscriptions inTamil Language from 1st century BCE and2nd century CE have been discovered inEgypt and Thailand.[12][13] The first two an-cient manuscripts from India,[14][15] to be ac-knowledged and registered by UNESCOMemory of the World register in 1997 &2005 were in Tamil.[16] According to a 2001survey, there were 1,863 newspapers pub-lished in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.[17]More than 55% of the epigraphical inscrip-tions - about 55,000 - found by the Archaeolo-gical Survey of India in India are in the Tamillanguage.[18]

ClassificationTamil belongs to the southern branch of theDravidian languages, a family of aroundtwenty-six languages native to the Indiansubcontinent.[19] It is also classified as beingpart of a Tamil language family, which along-side Tamil proper, also includes the lan-guages of about 35 ethno-linguisticgroups[20] such as the Irula, and Yerukulalanguages (see SIL Ethnologue).

The closest major relative of Tamil isMalayalam. Until about the ninth century,Malayalam was a dialect of Tamil[21] Al-though many of the differences betweenTamil and Malayalam evidence a pre-historicsplit of the western dialect,[22] the process ofseparation into distinct language, Malayalamwas not completed until sometime in the 13thor 14th century.[23]

EtymologyThe exact period when the name "Tamil"came to be applied to the language is

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unclear, as is the precise etymology of thename. Southworth suggests that the namecomes from tam-miz > tam-iz ’self-speak’, or’one’s own speech’.[24] Zvelebil suggests anetymology of tam-iz, with tam meaning "self"or "one’s self", and "-iz" having the connota-tion of "unfolding sound". Alternately, he sug-gests a derivation of tamiz < tam-iz < *tav-iz< *tak-iz, meaning in origin "the proper pro-cess (of speaking)."[25]

History

Ancient Tamil inscription at the Bri-hadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur

The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamildate to c. the 3rd century BCE.[26][27] Itflourished in India as a language with a richliterature during the Sangam period (300BCE to 300 CE).[26][28] With an estimated30,000 inscriptions, Tamil has the largestnumber of inscriptions in South Asia.[29]

The Tamil Sangam literature is the oldestextant literature in any Dravidian lan-guage[30] Literary works in India were pre-served either in palm leaf manuscripts (im-plying repeated copying and recopying) orthrough oral transmission, making direct dat-ing impossible.[31] External chronological re-cords and internal linguistic evidence,however, indicate that the oldest extantworks were probably compiled sometimebetween the 2nd century BCE and the 10thcentury CE.[32][33][34]

Tamil scholars categorize the history ofthe language into three periods,• Old Tamil (300 BC - 700 CE),• Middle Tamil (700 - 1600)• Modern Tamil (1600–present).[35]

Old TamilEpigraphic attestation of Tamil begins withrock inscriptions from the 3rd century BC,written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form ofthe Brahmi script.[36] The earliest extantgrammatical treatise is the Tolkāppiyam, awork on poetics and grammar that describesthe language of the classical period, datedvariously between the 3rd century BCE and5th century CE.

The Sangam literature contains about50,000 lines of poetry contained in 2,381poems attributed to 473 poets includingmany women poets.[37][38] Many of thepoems of Sangam period were also set to mu-sic.[39]

During the post-Sangam period of OldTamil, important works like Thirukkural andepic poems were composed, including Silap-patikaram, Manimekalai, Sīvakacintāmani,Valaiyapathi and Kundalakesi. These latterfive works are known as the five great epics.

Middle TamilThe Bhakthi period is known for the greatoutpouring of devotional songs set to pannmusic, including over eight thousandTevaram verses on Saivism and NalayiraDivya Prabandham (four thousand verses) onVaishnavism.[40] The mediaeval period gaverise to a popular adaptation of the Ramayanain Tamil, known as Kamba Ramayanam (12thcentury) and a story of 63 Nayanmars knownas Periyapuranam (13th century).[41]

In the later medieval period (14th to 16thcentury), Tamil became increasinglySanskritized, to the point of the emergence ofa mixed language known as maṇippiravāḷam.

Modern TamilIn the early 20th century, the Pure TamilMovement called for removal of all Sanskriticand other foreign elements from Tamil.[42] Itreceived some support from Dravidianparties and nationalists who supported Tamilindependence.[43] This led to the replace-ment of a significant number of Sanskritloanwords by Tamil equivalents.[44] Tamilwriters have won the Jnanpith awards twice.

Geographic distributionTamil is the first language of the majority inTamil Nadu, India and North EasternProvince, Sri Lanka. The language is spoken

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Distribution of Tamil speakers in South Indiaand Sri Lanka (1961).

by small groups of minorities in other partsof these two countries such as Karnataka,Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra incase of India and Colombo, the hill country,north and east in case of Sri Lanka.

There are currently sizeable Tamil-speak-ing populations descended from colonial-eramigrants in Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vi-etnam, South Africa, and Mauritius. Somepeople in Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinid-ad and Tobago have Tamil origins,[45] butonly a small number speak the languagethere. Groups of more recent migrants fromSri Lanka and India exist in Canada (espe-cially Toronto), USA, Australia, many MiddleEastern countries, and most of the westernEuropean countries.

Legal statusTamil is the official language of the Indianstate of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the officiallanguages of the union territories of Pondich-erry[46][47] and the Andaman & Nicobar Is-lands[48] It is one of 23 nationally recognisedlanguages in the Constitution of India. Tamilis also one of the official languages of SriLanka and Singapore. In Malaysia, 543[49]primary education government schools areavailable fully in Tamil medium.

In addition, with the creation in 2004 of alegal status for classical languages by thegovernment of India and following a politicalcampaign supported by several Tamil associ-ations[50][51] Tamil became the first legallyrecognised Classical language of India. Therecognition was announced by the then

President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a jointsitting of both houses of the Indian Parlia-ment on June 6, 2004.[52][53][54]See also: States of India by Tamil speakers

DialectsRegion specific variationsTamil is a diglossic language.[55][56] Tamildialects are primarily differentiated fromeach other by the fact that they have under-gone different phonological changes andsound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. Forexample, the word for "here"—iṅku inCentamil (the classic variety)—has evolvedinto iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore,inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, and iṅkai insome dialects of Sri Lanka. Old Tamil’s iṅkaṇ(where kaṇ means place) is the source ofiṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, Old Tamiliṅkaṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in the dialectof Ramanathapuram, and iṅkaṭe in variousnorthern dialects. Even now in Coimbatorearea it is common to hear "akkaṭṭa" meaning"that place". Although Tamil dialects do notdiffer significantly in their vocabulary, thereare a few exceptions. The dialects spoken inSri Lanka retain many words and grammatic-al forms that are not in everyday use in In-dia,[57] and use many other words slightlydifferently.[58]

Loanword variationsSee also: Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil andLoan words in Sri Lankan TamilThe dialect of the district of Palakkad in Ker-ala has a large number of Malayalam loan-words, has also been influenced by Malay-alam syntax and also has a distinct Malay-alam accent. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects,spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites whomigrated to Karnataka in the eleventh cen-tury, retain many features of the Vaishnavaparibasai, a special form of Tamil developedin the ninth and tenth centuries that reflectVaishnavite religious and spiritual values.[59]Several castes have their own sociolectswhich most members of that caste tradition-ally used regardless of where they comefrom. It is often possible to identify a per-son’s caste by their speech.[60] Tamil in SriLanka incorporates loan words from Por-tuguese,Dutch and English also.

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Spoken and literaryvariantsIn addition to its various dialects, Tamil ex-hibits different forms: a classical literarystyle modelled on the ancient language(sankattamiḻ), a modern literary and formalstyle (centamiḻ), and a modern colloquialform (koṭuntamiḻ). These styles shade intoeach other, forming a stylistic continuum.For example, it is possible to write centamiḻwith a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ, orto use forms associated with one of the othervariants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ.[61]

In modern times, centamiḻ is generallyused in formal writing and speech. For in-stance, it is the language of textbooks, ofmuch of Tamil literature and of public speak-ing and debate. In recent times, however,koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads intoareas that have traditionally been consideredthe province of centamiḻ. Most contemporarycinema, theatre and popular entertainmenton television and radio, for example, is inkoṭuntamiḻ, and many politicians use it tobring themselves closer to their audience.The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in moderntimes has led to the emergence of unofficial‘standard’ spoken dialects. In India, the‘standard’ koṭuntamiḻ is based on ‘educatednon-brahmin speech’, rather than on any onedialect,[62] but has been significantly influ-enced by the dialects of Thanjavur andMadurai. In Sri Lanka the standard is basedon the dialect of Jaffna.

Writing systemSee also: Vatteluttu and Grantha script

History of Tamil script.

Tamil is written using a script called thevaṭṭeḻuttu. The Tamil script consists of 12

vowels, 18 consonants and one special char-acter, the āytam. The vowels and consonantscombine to form 216 compound characters,giving a total of 247 characters. All conson-ants have an inherent vowel a, as with otherIndic scripts. This inherency is removed byadding an overdot called a puḷḷi, to the con-sonantal sign, whereas no such distiction isthere in other Indic scipts. The Tamil scriptdoes not differentiate voiced and unvoicedplosives. Instead, plosives are articulatedwith voice depending on their position in aword, in accordance with the rules of Tamilphonology.

An eleventh century vaṭṭeḻuttu inscription,from the Brihadisvara temple in Thanjavur

In addition to the standard characters, sixcharacters taken from the Grantha script,which was used in the Tamil region to writeSanskrit, are sometimes used to representsounds not native to Tamil, that is, wordsborrowed from Sanskrit, Prakrit and otherlanguages. The traditional system prescribedby classical grammars for writing loan-words,which involves respelling them in accordancewith Tamil phonology, remains, but is not al-ways consistently applied.[63]

SoundsTamil phonology is characterised by the pres-ence of retroflex consonants, multiple rhot-ics. Tamil does not distinguish phonologicallybetween voiced and unvoiced consonants;phonetically, voice is assigned depending ona consonant’s position in a word.[64] Tamilphonology permits few consonant clusters,which can never be word initial. Native gram-marians classify Tamil phonemes into vowels,consonants, and a "secondary character", theāytam.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tamil language

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Short LongFront Central Back Front Central Backi u iː uːClose? ? ? ?e o eː oːMid? ? ? ?

a (ai) aː (aw)Open? ? ? ??

Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velarp (b) t̪ (d̪) ʈ (ɖ) tʃ (dʒ) k (g)Plosives? ? ? ? ?m n̪ ṉ ɳ ɲ ŋNasals? ? ? ? ? ?

ɾ̪Tap?

rTrill?

ʋ ɻ jCentral approximants? ? ?

l̪ ɭLateral approximants? ?

VowelsTamil vowels are called uyireḻuttu (uyir – life,eḻuttu – letter). The vowels are classified intoshort (kuṟil) and long (five of each type) andtwo diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/, and three"shortened" (kuṟṟiyal) vowels.

The long (neṭil) vowels are about twice aslong as the short vowels. The diphthongs areusually pronounced about 1.5 times as longas the short vowels, though most grammatic-al texts place them with the long vowels.

ConsonantsTamil consonants are known as meyyeḻuttu(mey—body, eḻuttu—letters). The consonantsare classified into three categories with six ineach category: valliṉam—hard, mel-liṉam—soft or Nasal, and iṭayiṉam—medium.

Unlike most Indian languages, Tamil doesnot distinguish aspirated and unaspiratedconsonants. In addition, the voicing ofplosives is governed by strict rules incentamiḻ. Plosives are unvoiced if they occurword-initially or doubled. Elsewhere they arevoiced, with a few becoming fricatives

intervocalically. Nasals and approximants arealways voiced.[65]

As commonplace in languages of India,Tamil is characterised by its use of more thanone type of coronal consonants. Retroflexconsonants include the retroflex approximant/ɻ/ (?) (example Tamil), which among theDravidian languages is also found in Malay-alam (example Kozhikode), disappeared fromKannada in pronunciation at around 1000 AD(the dedicated letter is still found inUnicode), and was never present in Te-lugu.[66] Dental and alveolar consonants alsocontrast with each other, a typically Dravidi-an trait not found in the neighboring Indo-Aryan languages.

A chart of the Tamil consonant phonemesin the International Phonetic Alphabet fol-lows:[67]Phonemes in brackets are voiced equivalents.Both voiceless and voiced forms are repres-ented by the same character in Tamil, andvoicing is determined by context. The sounds/f/ and /ʂ/ are peripheral to the phonology ofTamil, being found only in loanwords and fre-quently replaced by native sounds. There are

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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 100 1000? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

day month year debit credit as above rupee numeral? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

well-defined rules for elision in Tamil cat-egorised into different classes based on thephoneme which undergoes elision.

ĀytamClassical Tamil also had a phoneme calledthe Āytam, written as ‘?’. Tamil grammariansof the time classified it as a dependent phon-eme (or restricted phoneme[68] ) (cārpeḻuttu),but it is very rare in modern Tamil. The rulesof pronunciation given in the Tolkāppiyam, atext on the grammar of Classical Tamil, sug-gest that the āytam could have glottalised thesounds it was combined with. It has also beensuggested that the āytam was used to repres-ent the voiced implosive (or closing part orthe first half) of geminated voiced plosives in-side a word.[69] The Āytam, in modern Tamil,is also used to convert pa to fa (not the retro-flex zha (ɻ)) when writing English words us-ing the Tamil script.

Numerals & SymbolsApart from the usual numerals, Tamil alsohas numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbolsfor day, month, year, debit, credit, as above,rupee, numeral are present as well.

GrammarTamil employs agglutinative grammar, wheresuffixes are used to mark noun class, num-ber, and case, verb tense and other grammat-ical categories. Tamil’s standard metalin-guistic terminology and scholarly vocabularlyis itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit thatis standard for most other Dravidian lan-guages.[70][71]

Much of Tamil grammar is extensively de-scribed in the oldest known grammar bookfor Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamilwriting is largely based on the 13th centurygrammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarifiedthe rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with somemodifications. Traditional Tamil grammarconsists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, col, por-uḷ, yāppu, aṇi. Of these, the last two aremostly applied in poetry.[72]

Tamil words consist of a lexical root towhich one or more affixes are attached. MostTamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes canbe derivational suffixes, which either changethe part of speech of the word or its meaning,or inflectional suffixes, which mark categor-ies such as person, number, mood, tense, etc.There is no absolute limit on the length andextent of agglutination, which can lead tolong words with a large number of suffixes.

MorphologyTamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified in-to two super-classes (tiṇai)—the "rational"(uyartiṇai), and the "irrational"(aḵṟiṇai)—which include a total of five classes(pāl, which literally means ‘gender’). Humansand deities are classified as "rational", and allother nouns (animals, objects, abstractnouns) are classified as irrational. The "ra-tional" nouns and pronouns belong to one ofthree classes (pāl)—masculine singular, fem-inine singular, and rational plural. The "irra-tional" nouns and pronouns belong to one oftwo classes - irrational singular and irrationalplural. The pāl is often indicated through suf-fixes. The plural form for rational nouns maybe used as an honorific, gender-neutral, sin-gular form.[73]

Suffixes are used to perform the functionsof cases or postpositions. Traditional gram-marians tried to group the various suffixes in-to eight cases corresponding to the casesused in Sanskrit. These were the nominative,accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instru-mental, locative, and ablative. Modern gram-marians argue that this classification is artifi-cial, and that Tamil usage is best understoodif each suffix or combination of suffixes isseen as marking a separate case.[74] Tamilnouns can take one of four prefixes, i, a, uand e which are functionally equivalent to thedemonstratives in English.

Tamil verbs are also inflected through theuse of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form willhave a number of suffixes, which show per-son, number, mood, tense and voice.

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• Person and number are indicated bysuffixing the oblique case of the relevantpronoun. The suffixes to indicate tensesand voice are formed from grammaticalparticles, which are added to the stem.

• Tamil has two voices. The first indicatesthat the subject of the sentence undergoesor is the object of the action named by theverb stem, and the second indicates thatthe subject of the sentence directs theaction referred to by the verb stem.

• Tamil has three simple tenses—past,present, and future—indicated by thesuffixes, as well as a series of perfectsindicated by compound suffixes. Mood isimplicit in Tamil, and is normally reflectedby the same morphemes which mark tensecategories. Tamil verbs also markevidentiality, through the addition of thehearsay clitic ām.[75]

Traditional grammars of Tamil do not distin-guish between adjectives and adverbs, in-cluding both of them under the category ur-iccol, although modern grammarians tend todistinguish between them on morphologicaland syntactical grounds.[76] Tamil has a largenumber of ideophones that act as adverbs in-dicating the way the object in a given state"says" or "sounds".[77]

Tamil does not have articles. Definitenessand indefiniteness are either indicated byspecial grammatical devices, such as usingthe number "one" as an indefinite article, orby the context.[78] In the first person plural,Tamil makes a distinction between inclusivepronouns ???? nām (we), ???? namatu (our)that include the addressee and exclusive pro-nouns ??????? nāṅkaḷ (we), ???? ematu (our)that do not.[78]

SyntaxTamil is a consistently head-final language.The verb comes at the end of the clause, withtypical word order Subject Object Verb(SOV).[79] However, word order in Tamil isalso flexible, so that surface permutations ofthe SOV order are possible with differentpragmatic effects. Tamil has postpositionsrather than prepositions. Demonstratives andmodifiers precede the noun within the nounphrase. Subordinate clauses precede theverb of the matrix clause.

Tamil is a null subject language. Not allTamil sentences have subjects, verbs and ob-jects. It is possible to construct

grammatically valid and meaningful sen-tences which lack one or more of the three.For example, a sentence may only have averb—such as muṭintuviṭṭatu("completed")—or only a subject and object,without a verb such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That [is]my house"). Tamil does not have a copula (alinking verb equivalent to the word is). Theword is included in the translations only toconvey the meaning more easily.

VocabularySee also: Wiktionary:Category:Tamil lan-guage and Wiktionary:Category:TamilderivationsThe vocabulary of Tamil is mainly Dravidian.A strong sense of linguistic purism is found inModern Tamil[80], which opposes the use offoreign loan-words.[81] Nonetheless, a num-ber of words used in classical and modernTamil indicate borrowing from languages ofneighbouring groups, or with whom theTamils had trading links, including Munda(e.g. tavaḷai "frog" from Munda tabeg), Malay(e.g. cavvarici "sago" from Malay sāgu),Chinese (e.g. campān "skiff" from Chinesesan-pan) and Greek (e.g. ora from Greekὥρα). In more modern times, Tamil has im-ported words from Arabic, Persian, Urdu andMarathi, reflecting groups that have influ-enced the Tamil area at various points oftime, and from neighbouring languages suchas Telugu, Kannada and Sinhala. During themodern period, words have also been bor-rowed from European languages, such asPortuguese, French and English.[82]

The strongest impact of purism in Tamilhas been on loanwords from Sanskrit. Duringits history, Tamil, along with other Dravidianlanguages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalametc., was influenced by Sanskrit in terms ofvocabulary, grammar and literarystyles,[83][84][85][86] reflecting the increasedtrend of Sanskritisation in the Tamil coun-try.[87] Tamil vocabulary never became quiteas heavily Sanskritised as that of the otherDravidian languages, and unlike in those lan-guages, it was and remains possible to ex-press complex ideas - including in science,art, religion and law - without the use ofSanskrit loan words.[88] In addition, Sanskrit-isation was actively resisted by a number ofauthors of the late medieval period,[89] cul-minating in the 20th century in a movementcalled taṉit tamiḻ iyakkam (meaning pure

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Tamil movement), led by ParithimaarKalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal, whichsought to remove the accumulated influenceof Sanskrit on Tamil.[90] As a result of this,Tamil in formal documents, literature andpublic speeches has seen a marked decline inthe use Sanskrit loan words in the past fewdecades,[91] under some estimates havingfallen from 40-50% to about 20%[92]. As aresult, the Prakrit and Sanskrit loan wordsused in modern Tamil are, unlike in someother Dravidian languages, restricted mainlyto some spiritual terminology and abstractnouns.[93]

In the twentieth century, institutions andlearned bodies have, with government sup-port, generated technical dictionaries forTamil containing neologisms and words de-rived from Tamil roots to replace loan wordsfrom English and other languages.[42]

Words of Tamil origin occur in other lan-guages. Popular examples in English are che-root (curuṭṭu meaning "rolled up"),[94] mango(from mangai),[94] mulligatawny (from miḷakutaṉṉir meaning pepper water), pariah (fromparaiyar), ginger (from ingi), curry (fromkari),[95] and catamaran (from kaṭṭu maram,????? ????, meaning "bundled logs"),[94] pan-dal (shed, shelter, booth),[94] tyer (curd),[94]coir (rope).[96]Tamil words are also found inSinhala and Malay.

See also• Tamil script• Tamil literature• Invocation to Goddess Tamil• List of Tamil people• Official languages of India• List of Indian languages by total speakers• List of Indian languages by number of

native speakers• List of languages by first written accounts

References• Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparative

grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indianfamily of languages. New Delhi: OrientalBooks Reprint Corp.

• Herman Tieken(2001) Kavya in SouthIndia: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry.Groningen: Forsten 2001

• Hart, George L. (1975), The poems ofancient Tamil : their milieu and theirSanskrit counterparts. University of

California Press, Berkeley. ISBN0520026721

• Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). TheDravidian Languages. CambridgeLanguage Surveys. Cambridge UniversityPress. ISBN 0521771110.

• Lehmann, Thomas (1989). A Grammar ofModern Tamil. Pondicherry, PondicherryInstitute of Linguistics and Culture.

• Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003). EarlyTamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Timesto the Sixth Century A.D. Cambridge,Harvard University Press. ISBN0674012275

• Meenakshisundaram, T.P. (1965). AHistory of Tamil Language. Poona: DeccanCollege.

• Johann Philip Fabricius (1933 and 1972),Tamil and English Dictionary. based onJ.P. Fabricius Malabar-English Dictionary,3rd and 4th Edition Revised and Enlargedby David Bexell. Evangelical LutheranMission Publishing House, Tranquebar;called Tranquebar Dictionary.

• Pope, GU (1868). A Tamil hand-book, or,Full introduction to the common dialect ofthat language. (3rd ed.). Madras,Higginbotham & Co.

• Rajam, VS (1992). A Reference Grammarof Classical Tamil Poetry. Philadelphia,The American Philosophical Society. ISBN087169199X

• Schiffman, Harold F. (1998)."Standardization or restandardization: Thecase for ‘Standard’ Spoken Tamil".Language in Society 27, 359–385.

Footnotes[1] ^ Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005.

Ethnologue: Languages of the World,Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SILInternational.

[2] ^ "Top 30 Languages by Number ofNative Speakers: sourced fromEthnologue: Languages of the World,15th ed. (2005)". Vistawide - WorldLanguages & Cultures.http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm. Retrieved on2007-04-03.

[3] "Languages Spoken by More Than 10Million People". MSN Encarta.http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500404/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tamil language

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Languages_Spoken_by_More_Than_10_Million_People.html.Retrieved on 2007-04-02.

[4] "Official languages". UNESCO.http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=22495&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.Retrieved on 2007-05-10.

[5] "Official languages of Tamilnadu".Tamilnadu Government.http://www.tn.gov.in/welcometn.htm.Retrieved on 2007-05-01.

[6] "Official languages of Srilanka". Statedepartment, US. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5249.htm. Retrieved on2007-05-01.

[7] "Official languages and nationallanguage". Constitution of the Republicof Singapore. Government of Singapore.http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/non_version/cgi-bin/DisplayContent.pl?DOCID=1999-REVED-CONST&VID=931158661-003601&WEF=latest&TYPE=simple&mode=and&version=currentVersion&query1=official%20language.Retrieved on 2008-04-22.

[8] Kamil V. Zvelebil (1992). CompanionStudies to the History of TamilLiterature. BRILL Academic. p. 12. ISBN9004093656. "p12 - ...the mostacceptable periodisation which has so farbeen suggested for the development ofTamil writing seems to me to be that of AChidambaranatha Chettiar (1907–1967):1. Sangam Literature - 200BC to AD 200;2. Post Sangam literature - AD 200 - AD600; 3. Early Medieval literature - AD600 to AD 1200; 4. Later Medievalliterature - AD 1200 to AD 1800; 5. Pre-Modern literature - AD 1800 to 1900..."

[9] Maloney, Clarence (1970). "TheBeginnings of Civilization in SouthIndia". The Journal of Asian Studies 23(3): 603–616. doi:10.2307/2943246.http://www.jstor.org/stable/2943246. atp. 610

[10]Classical Tamil, Government of India[11]Chera, Chola, Pandya: Using

Archaeological Evidence to Identify theTamil Kingdoms of Early Historic SouthIndia - Abraham, Shinu Anna, AsianPerspectives - Volume 42, Number 2,Fall 2003, pp. 207-223 University ofHawaii Press

[12] "Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt". TheHindu. 2007-11-21.http://www.hinduonnet.com/2007/11/21/stories/2007112158412400.htm.Retrieved on 2008-11-11.

[13] "Tamil-Brahmi inscription on potteryfound in Thailand". The Hindu.2006-07-16. http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/16/stories/2006071603952000.htm.Retrieved on 2008-11-11.

[14]http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3839&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[15]http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17246&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[16]http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=3838&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

[17] India 2001: A Reference Annual 2001.Compiled and edited by Research,Reference and Training Division,Publications Division, New Delhi:Government of India, Ministry ofInformation and Broadcasting.

[18]Staff Reporter (November 22, 2005)."Students get glimpse of heritage". TheHindu. http://www.thehindu.com/2005/11/22/stories/2005112215970400.htm.Retrieved on 2007-04-26.

[19]Krishnamurti 2003, p. 19[20]Prof. A.K. Perumal, Manorama Yearbook

(Tamil) 2005 pp.302-318[21]Freeman, Rich (February 1998). "Rubies

and Coral: The Lapidary Crafting ofLanguage in Kerala". The Journal ofAsian Studies 57 (1): 38–65 at p.39.doi:10.2307/2659023.

[22]A. Govindankutty Menon (1990). "SomeObservations on the Sub-Group Tamil-Malayalam: Differential Realizations ofthe Cluster *nt". Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies, Universityof London 53 (1): 87–99.

[23]Andronov, M.S. (1970). DravidianLanguages. Nauka Publishing House. pp.21.

[24]Southworth, Franklin C. (1998). "On theOrigin of the word tamiz". InternationalJournal of Dravidial Linguistics 27 (1):129–132.

[25]Zvelebil, Kamil V. (1992). CompanionStudies to the history of Tamil literature.Leiden: E.J. Brill. at pp. x-xvi.

[26]^ M. B. Emeneau (Jan-Mar 1956). "Indiaas a Linguistic Area". Language 32 (1):5. doi:10.2307/410649. "Of the fourliterary Dravidian languages, Tamil hasvoluminous records dating back at leasttwo millennia.".

[27]Burrow, Thomas (2001). The SanskritLanguage. Motilal BanarsidassPublications. pp. 337. ISBN 8120817672."…In the case of Tamil the literary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tamil language

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tradition goes back for at least twothousand years…"

[28]Caldwell, Robert[29]Morrison, Kathleen D.; Mark T. Lycett

(1997). "Inscriptions as Artifacts:Precolonial South India and the Analysisof Texts". Journal of ArchaeologicalMethod and Theory 4 (3): 219, 224.doi:10.1007/BF02428062.

[30]Zvelebil, Kamil (1975). Tamil Literature.Leiden: E.J. Brill. pp. 5–21, 50–53. ISBN9004041907.

[31]Dating of Indian literature is largelybased on relative dating relying oninternal evidences with a few anchors. I.Mahadevan’s dating of Pukalurinscription proves some of the Sangamverses. See George L. Hart, "Poems ofAncient Tamil, University of BerkeleyPress, 1975, p.7-8

[32]George Hart, "Some Related LiteraryConventions in Tamil and Indo-Aryan andTheir Significance" Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society, 94:2 (Apr -Jun 1974), pp. 157-167.

[33]Kamil Veith Zvelebil, Companion Studiesto the History of Tamil Literature, pp12

[34]See K.A. Nilakanta Sastry, A History ofSouth India, OUP (1955) pp 105

[35]Thomas Lehmann, "Old Tamil" in SanfordSteever (ed.), The Dravidian LanguagesRoutledge, 1998 at p. 75

[36] Iravatham Mahadevan (2003). EarlyTamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Timesto the Sixth Century A.D. Cambridge,Harvard University Press.

[37]Rajam, V. S. 1992. A reference grammarof classical Tamil poetry: 150 B.C.-pre-fifth/sixth century A.D.. Memoirs of theAmerican philosophical society, v. 199.Philadelphia, Pa: American PhilosophicalSociety. p12

[38]Dr. M. Varadarajan, A History of TamilLiterature, (Translated from Tamil byE.Sa. Viswanathan), Sahitya Akademi,New Delhi, 1988 p.40

[39]Marr, John Ralston (1985). The EightAnthologies. Madras: Institute of AsianStudies. at pp. 370-373.

[40]Varadarajan, M. (1988). A history ofTamil literature. Madras: SahityaAkademi.

[41]Varadarajan, M. (1988). A history ofTamil literature. Madras: SahityaAkademi. at pp. 155-157

[42]^ Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997)."Laboring for language". Passions of theTongue: Language Devotion in TamilIndia, 1891–1970. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press. http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft5199n9v7&chunk.id=ch4.

[43]Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997). "Laboringfor language". Passions of the Tongue:Language Devotion in Tamil India,1891–1970. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press. http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft5199n9v7&chunk.id=ch4."Dravidianism, too, lent its support to thecontestatory classicist project, motivatedprincipally by the political imperative ofcountering (Sanskritic) Indiannationalism... It was not until the DMKcame to power in 1967 that suchdemands were fulfilled, and the pureTamil cause received a boost, althoughpurification efforts are not particularlyhigh on the agenda of either theDravidian movement or the Dravidianistidiom of tamiḻppaṟṟu."

[44]Krishnamurti 2003, p. 480[45]McMahon, Suzanne. "Overview of the

South Asian Diaspora". University ofCalifornia, Berkeley.http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/overview.html. Retrieved on2008-04-23.

[46]Ramamoorthy, L. Multilingualism andSecond Language Acquisition andLearning in Pondicherry. Retrieved on2007-08-16.

[47]Younger, Paul. Tamil Hinduism inIndenture-based Societies. Retrieved on2007-08-16.

[48]Sunwani, Vijay K. Amazing Andamansand North-East India: A Panoramic Viewof States, Societies and Cultures.Retrieved on 2007-08-16.

[49]http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/sparadox/sparadox.html

[50] "Classic case of politics of language".The Telegraph.http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040928/asp/frontpage/story_3813391.asp.Retrieved on 2007-04-20. "Members ofthe committee felt that the pressure wasbeing brought on it because of thecompulsions of the Congress and theUPA government to appease its ally, M.Karunanidhi’s DMK."

[51]S.S. Vasan. "Recognising a classic". TheHindu. http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tamil language

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fl2122/stories/20041105004310600.htm.Retrieved on 2007-05-14.

[52]Thirumalai, Ph.D., M. S. (November2004). "Tradition, Modernity and Impactof Globalization - Whither Will TamilGo?". Language in India 4.http://www.languageinindia.com/nov2004/tamilglobalization1.html.Retrieved on 2007-11-17.

[53]BBC. India sets up classical languages.August 17, 2004. Retrieved on2007-08-16.

[54]The Hindu. Sanskrit to be declaredclassical language. October 28, 2005.Retrieved on 2007-08-16.

[55]Arokianathan, S. Writing and Diglossic: ACase Study of Tamil Radio Plays.Retrieved on 2007-08-16.

[56]Francis Britto. "Diglossia: A Study of theTheory, with Application to Tamil,"Language, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Mar., 1988),pp. 152-155. doi:10.2307/414796

[57]Thomas Lehmann, "Old Tamil" in SanfordSteever (ed.), The Dravidian LanguagesRoutledge, 1998 at p. 75; E. Annamalaiand S. Steever, "Modern Tamil" in ibid.at pp. 100-128.

[58]Kamil Zvelebil, "Some features of CeylonTamil" Indo-Iranian Journal 9:2 (June1996) pp. 113-138.

[59]Thiru. Mu. Kovintācāriyar, Vāḻaiyaṭi vāḻaiLifco, Madras, 1978 at pp. 26-39.

[60] "Tamil dialects". EncyclopædiaBritannica Online See Tamil language..http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9071110.Retrieved on 2007-03-28.

[61]Harold Schiffman, "Diglossia as aSociolinguistic Situation", in FlorianCoulmas (ed.), The Handbook ofSociolinguistics. London: Basil Blackwell,Ltd., 1997 at pp. 205 et seq.

[62]Harold Schiffman, "Standardization orrestandardization: The case for‘Standard’ Spoken Tamil". Language inSociety 27 (1998), pp. 359–385.

[63]Fowler, Murray (1954). "The SegmentalPhonemes of Sanskritized Tamil".Language 30 (3): 360–367. doi:10.2307/410134. at p. 360.

[64]Schiffman, Harold F.; Arokianathan, S.(1986). "Diglossic variation in Tamil filmand fiction". in Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju;Masica, Colin P.. South Asian languages:structure, convergence, and diglossia.New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN8120800338. at p. 371

[65]See e.g. the pronunciation guidelines inG.U. Pope (1868). A Tamil hand-book, or,Full introduction to the common dialectof that language. (3rd ed.). Madras,Higginbotham & Co.

[66] ""A Reference Grammar of ClassicalTamil Poetry: 150 B.C.-Pre-Fifth/SixthCentury A.D. By V. S. Rajam"".http://books.google.com/books?id=2Qwf3pAxJpUC&pg=PA40&ots=kqeR3TbYVk&dq=Tamil+retroflex+consonants&sig=xUZeNAJUhQOR6UMroReeMr0Kwtg#PPA40,M1.Retrieved on 2007-06-01.

[67]E. Annamalai and S.B. Steever, ModernTamil in S.B. Steevar (Ed.)The DravidianLanguages, London and New York,Routledge 1998, p100-128

[68]Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). TheDravidian Languages. CambridgeLanguage Surveys. CambridgeUniversity Press. pp. 154. ISBN0521771110.

[69]See generally F. B. J. Kuiper, "Twoproblems of old Tamil phonology", Indo-Iranian Journal 2:3 (September 1958) pp.191-224, esp. pp. 191-207.

[70]Kamil Zvelebil. "Google Books version ofthe book The Smile of Murugan by KamilZvelebil". http://books.google.com/books?id=VF2VMUoY_okC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=metalanguage+of+tamil&source=web&ots=Jx1AizWlxq&sig=YyyqYLWsiqrRv27txT-dYD8Nla0#PPA4,M1. Retrieved on2007-05-22.

[71]A.K. Ramanujam and V. Dharwadker(Ed.), The collected essays of A.K.Ramanujam, Oxford University Press2000, p.111

[72] ""Five fold grammar of Tamil"".http://www.southasia.upenn.edu/tamil/lit.html. Retrieved on 2007-06-01.

[73] ""Classes of nouns in Tamil"".http://books.google.com/books?id=AfwCAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA156&dq=%22Classes+of+nouns+in+Tamil%22.Retrieved on 2007-06-01.

[74]Harold Schiffman, "Standardization andRestandardization: the case of SpokenTamil." Language in Society 27:3 (1998)pp. 359-385 and esp. pp.374-375.

[75]Steever, Sanford B. (2002). "Direct andindirect discourse in Tamil". inGüldemann, Tom; von Roncador,Manfred. Reported Discourse: A MeetingGround for Different Linguistic Domains.Amsterdam: John Benjamins PublishingCompany. pp. 91–108. ISBN9027229589. at p. 105.

[76]Lehmann, Thomas (1989). A Grammar ofModern Tamil. Pondicherry: Pondicherry

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tamil language

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Institute of Linguistics and Culture. atpp. 9-11

[77]Swiderski, Richard M. (1996). Themetamorphosis of English: versions ofother languages. New York: Bergin &Garvey. pp. 61. ISBN 0-89789-468-5.

[78]^ Annamalai, E.; Steever, S.B. (1998)."Modern Tamil". in Steever, Sanford B..The Dravidian Languages. London:Routledge. pp. 100–128. ISBN0415100232. at p. 109.

[79] ""Tamil is a head-final language"".http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Discussion/d02.html.Retrieved on 2007-06-01.

[80]Sumathi Ramaswamy, En/GenderingLanguage: The Poetics of Tamil Identity"Comparative Studies in Society andHistory 35:4. (Oct. 1993), pp. 683-725.

[81]Krishnamurti 2003, p. 480.[82]Meenakshisundaram 1965, pp. 169-193[83] "Literature in all Dravidian languages

owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magicwand whose touch raised each of thelanguages from a level of patois to thatof a literary idiom" (Sastri 1955, p309);Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languagesand nations: the Dravidian proof incolonial Madras. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press; "The author endeavoursto demonstrate that the entire Sangampoetic corpus follows the "Kavya" form ofSanskrit poetry"-Tieken, Herman JosephHugo. 2001. Kāvya in South India: oldTamil Caṅkam poetry. Groningen: EgbertForsten; Vaiyapuri Pillai in Takahashi,Takanobu. 1995, p18.

[84]See Vaidyanathan’s analysis of an earlymedieval text in S. Vaidyanathan, "Indo-Aryan loan words in theCivakacintamani" Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society 87:4. (Oct -Dec 1967), pp. 430-434.

[85]Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparativegrammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. New Delhi:Oriental Books Reprint Corp, p87, 88

[86]Takahashi, Takanobu. 1995. Tamil lovepoetry and poetics. Brill’s Indologicallibrary, v. 9. Leiden: E.J. Brill, p16,18

[87]Sheldon Pollock, "The SanskritCosmopolis 300-1300: Transculturation,vernacularisation and the question ofideology" in Jan E.M. Houben (ed.), Theideology and status of Sanskrit:Contributions to the history of the

Sanskrit language (E.J. Brill, Leiden:1996) at pp. 209-217.

[88]Trautmann, Thomas R. (1999)."Hullabaloo About Telugu". South AsianResearch 19 (1): 53–70. doi:10.1177/026272809901900104. at p. 64;Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparativegrammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. New Delhi:Oriental Books Reprint Corp, p 50; Ellis,F.W. (1820), "Note to the introduction"in Campbell, A.D., A grammar of theTeloogoo language. Madras: CollegePress, pp. 29-30.

[89]See Ramaswamy’s analysis of one suchtext, the Tamil viṭututu, in SumathiRamaswamy, "Language of the People inthe World of Gods: Ideologies of Tamilbefore the Nation" The Journal of AsianStudies, 57:1. (Feb. 1998), pp. 66-92.

[90]Dr. M. Varadarajan, A History of TamilLiterature, (Translated from Tamil byE.Sa. Viswanathan), Sahitya Akademi,New Delhi, 1988- p.12 "Since then themovement has been popularly known asthe tanittamil iyakkam or the Pure Tamilmovement among the Tamil scholars."

[91]Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997). "Laboringfor language". Passions of the Tongue:Language Devotion in Tamil India,1891–1970. Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press. http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft5199n9v7&chunk.id=ch4."Nevertheless, even impressionistically-speaking, the marked decline in the useof foreign words, especially of Sanskriticorigin, in Tamil literary, scholarly, andeven bureaucratic circles over the pasthalf century is quite striking."

[92]Krishnamurti 2003, p. 480[93]Dr.T.P. Meenakshisundaram, A History

of Tamil Language, Sarvodaya IlakkiyaPannai, 1982 (translated) p. 241-2

[94]^ "Oxford English Dictionary Online".Oxford English Dictionary.http://dictionary.oed.com. Retrieved on2007-04-14.

[95] "Entry in the Merriam-WebsterDictionary". Merriam-WebsterDictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curry. Retrievedon 2008-04-17.

[96] "Entry in the Merriam-WebsterDictionary". Merriam-WebsterDictionary. http://www.m-w.com/

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dictionary/coir. Retrieved on2007-04-14.

External links• UCLA Tamil Profile

• Tamil Language & Literature• Tamil Language In Context – A project

providing online Tamil lessons, includingvideo lessons.

• Statement on the Status of Tamil as aClassical Language

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