Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language. Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh  It is spoken in the Tamil Nadu and other states of India and parts of Sri Lanka.  Many people in Singapore and Malaysia also speak it.  Many people speaking Tamil live in various places around the world.

The Tamil language is part of the Dravidian language family, which includes Telugu, Odia, Kannada and Malayalam. According to a survey, 1863 newspapers are published in the Tamil language every day.Steever, Sanford B. "The Dravidian languages", First Published (1998), pp. 6–9.  The oldest text found in Tamil is a grammatical work called the Tolkāppiyam. Tamil has a long literary history, and is spoken by almost 100 million people.

 Tamil script 
The modern Tamil script is an abugida, much like the other brahmic scripts that surround it and from whom it developed from. The Tamil script has 18 consonants and 12 vowels and the āytam ஃ,. The āytam is used with other letters to represent sounds not native to the language (usually with the English sound f.) The vowels are written as symbols above, below or on either side of the consonant. There are 247 letters in its alphabet. Much like other brahmic scripts, it is written from left to right.

Tamil is the dominant language in the state of Tamil Nadu which is situated in India, and Northern provinces of Sri Lanka. It is also spoken by significant immigrant communities and the historical Tamil diaspora in like the United States, Germany, Fiji, Indonesia, France, Africa and Thailand and much more.

 References 

 Other websites 

 Tamil script stylistic text demonstration




Category:State symbols of Tamil Nadu
Category:Territory symbols of Puducherry