Dravidian language native to South India and Sri Lanka
Tamil
[b]
(
?????
,
Tami?
,
pronounced
[t?ami?]
ⓘ
) is a
Dravidian language
natively spoken by the
Tamil people
of
South Asia
. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu
and union territory of
Puducherry
, and the sovereign nations of
Sri Lanka
and
Singapore
.
[9]
[5]
Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other
South Indian
states of
Kerala
,
Karnataka
,
Andhra Pradesh
and
Telangana
, and the Union Territory of the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
. It is also spoken by the
Tamil diaspora
found in many countries, including
Malaysia
,
Myanmar
,
South Africa
,
United Kingdom
,
United States
,
Canada
,
Australia
,
New Zealand
,
United Arab Emirates
,
Saudi Arabia
,
France
,
Germany
,
Italy
,
Indonesia
, and
Mauritius
. Tamil is also natively spoken by the
Sri Lankan Moors
. One of 22 scheduled languages in the
Constitution of India
, Tamil was the first to be classified as a
classical language of India
.
Tamil is one of the longest-surviving
classical languages
in the world.
[10]
[11]
A. K. Ramanujan
described it as "the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past".
[12]
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".
[13]
Recorded
Tamil literature
has been documented for over 2000 years.
[14]
The earliest period of Tamil literature,
Sangam literature
, is dated from
c.
300 BC until AD 300.
[15]
[16]
It has the oldest extant literature among
Dravidian languages
. The earliest
epigraphic
records found on rock edicts and '
hero stones
' date from around the 3rd century BC.
[17]
[18]
About 60,000 of the approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the
Archaeological Survey of India
in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages.
[19]
Tamil language inscriptions
written in Brahmi script have been discovered in
Sri Lanka
and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt.
[20]
[21]
The two earliest
manuscripts
from India,
[22]
[23]
acknowledged and registered by the
UNESCO Memory of the World register
in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil.
[24]
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.
[25]
The
Tamil Lexicon
, published by the
University of Madras
, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages.
[26]
According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.
[27]
Classification
Tamil
belongs to the
southern
branch of the
Dravidian languages
, a family of around 26 languages native to the
Indian subcontinent
.
[28]
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
[29]
such as the
Irula
and
Yerukula
languages (see
SIL Ethnologue
).
The closest major relative of Tamil is
Malayalam
; the two began diverging around the 9th century AD.
[30]
Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect,
[31]
the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century.
[32]
History
Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the
Proto-Dravidian language
, which was most likely spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower
Godavari
river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the
Neolithic
complexes of South India.
[33]
Among Indian languages, Tamil has the most ancient non-Sanskritic Indian literature.
[34]
Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BC ? AD 700), Middle Tamil (700?1600) and Modern Tamil (1600?present).
[35]
In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BC with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions.
[20]
There are a number of apparent
Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew
dating to before 500 BC, the oldest attestation of the language.
[36]
John Guy
states that Tamil was the
lingua franca
for early maritime traders from India.
[37]
In 2004, a number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware
urns
dating from at least 696 BC in
Adichanallur
. Some of these urns contained writing in
Tamil Brahmi
script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin.
[38]
Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in
Keezhadi
. These were sent to Beta Analytic in
Miami
,
Florida
, for
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry
(AMS) dating. One sample containing
Tamil-Brahmi
inscriptions was claimed to be dated to around 580 BC.
[39]
[40]
Legend
According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form
Tamil Th?i
(Mother Tamil) was created by Lord
Shiva
.
Murugan
, 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
, which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these
Tamil Sangams
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.
[46]
[47]
The
Hathigumpha inscription
, inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by
Kharavela
, the Jain king of
Kalinga
, also refers to a
Tamira Samghatta
(
Tamil confederacy
)
[48]
The
Samavayanga Sutra
dated to the 3rd century BC contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'.
[49]
Southworth suggests that the name comes from
tam-mi?
>
tam-i?
"self-speak", or "our own speech".
[50]
Kamil Zvelebil
suggests an etymology of
tam-i?
, with
tam
meaning "self" or "one's self", and "
-i?
" having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of
tami?
<
tam-i?
< *
tav-i?
< *
tak-i?
, meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)".
[51]
However, this is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centami?', which means refined speech in the earliest literature.
[50]
The Tamil Lexicon of
University of Madras
defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness".
[52]
S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from
tam
? "sweet" and
il
? "sound".
[53]
Old Tamil
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
called
Tamil-Brahmi
.
[54]
The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the
Tolk?ppiyam
, an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BC.
[35]
[47]
Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as
Sangam literature
. These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BC and 5th century AD.
[35]
[47]
Middle Tamil
The evolution of
Old Tamil
into
Middle Tamil
, which is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century,
[35]
was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (?), an old phoneme,
[55]
the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals,
[56]
and the transformation of the alveolar
plosive
into a
rhotic
.
[57]
In grammar, the most important change was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb
kil
(
????
), 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 ?
ki??a
(
?????
) ? which combined the old aspect and time markers.
[58]
Modern Tamil
The
Nann?l
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.
[59]
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
[60]
? instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically.
[61]
Modern spoken Tamil also shows a number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions,
[62]
and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic.
[63]
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.
[64]
Simultaneously, a strong strain of
linguistic purism
emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the
Pure Tamil Movement
which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil.
[65]
It received some support from
Dravidian parties
.
[66]
This led to the replacement of a significant number of
Sanskrit
loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain.
[67]
Geographic distribution
Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in
Tamil Nadu
,
Puducherry
, (in India) and in the
Northern
and
Eastern
provinces of
Sri Lanka
. The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include
Karnataka
,
Telangana
,
Andhra Pradesh
,
Kerala
,
Maharashtra
,
Gujarat
,
Delhi
,
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as
Colombo
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
districts of
Chittoor
and
Nellore
until the 12th century AD.
[68]
Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as
Kolar
,
Mysore
,
Mandya
and
Bengaluru
.
[69]
There are currently sizeable
Tamil-speaking populations
descended from colonial-era migrants in
Malaysia
,
Singapore
,
Philippines
,
Mauritius
,
South Africa
, Indonesia,
[70]
Thailand,
[71]
Burma
, and
Vietnam
. Tamil is used as one of the languages of education in
Malaysia
, along with English, Malay and Mandarin.
[72]
[73]
A large community of
Pakistani Tamils
speakers exists in
Karachi
,
Pakistan
, which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus
[74]
[75]
as well as Christians and Muslims ? including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka.
[76]
There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in
Madrasi Para
colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi.
[77]
Many in
Reunion
,
Guyana
,
Fiji
,
Suriname
, and
Trinidad and Tobago
have Tamil origins,
[78]
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
it is now being relearnt by students and adults.
[79]
Tamil is also spoken by migrants
from Sri Lanka
and India in
Canada
, the
United States
(especially
New Jersey
and
New York City
), the
United Arab Emirates
, the
United Kingdom
,
South Africa
, and
Australia
.
Legal status
Tamil is the
official language
of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the
22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India
.
[
citation needed
]
It is one of the official languages of the union territories of
Puducherry
and the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
.
[80]
[81]
Tamil is also one of the official languages of
Singapore
. Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with
Sinhala
.
[9]
It was once given nominal official status in the Indian state of
Haryana
, purportedly as a rebuff to
Punjab
, though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by
Punjabi
, in 2010.
[82]
In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in
Tamil as the medium of instruction
.
[83]
The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in
Myanmar
to provide education completely in Tamil language by the Tamils who settled there 200 years ago.
[84]
Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in
Canada
and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the
Parliament of Canada
.
[85]
[86]
Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the
Constitution of South Africa
and is taught as a subject in schools in
KwaZulu-Natal
province.
[87]
[88]
Recently, it has been rolled out as a subject of study in schools in the
French overseas department
of
Reunion
.
[89]
In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the
Government of India
and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations,
[90]
[91]
Tamil became the first legally recognised
Classical language
of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous
President of India
,
Abdul Kalam
, who was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the
Indian Parliament
on 6 June 2004.
[92]
[93]
[94]
Dialects
Oppaari song lamenting death, sung by women during a death ceremony. Here it is the death of a son lamented by the mother.
Audio recording of
Pudumaipithan
's short story 'Pon Nagaram' (showing a few loanwords).
Region-specific variations
The
socio-linguistic
situation of Tamil is characterised by
diglossia
: there are two separate registers varying by
socioeconomic status
, a high register and a low one.
[95]
[96]
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"?
i?ku
in
Centamil
(the classic variety)?has evolved into
i?k?
in the Kongu dialect of
Coimbatore
,
inga
in the dialects of
Thanjavur
and
Palakkad
, and
i?kai
in some
dialects of Sri Lanka
. Old Tamil's
i?ka?
(where
ka?
means place) is the source of
i?kane
in the dialect of
Tirunelveli
, Old Tamil
i?ki??u
is the source of
i?ku??u
in the dialect of
Madurai
, and
i?ka?e
in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear "
akka??a
" 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,
[35]
[97]
and use many other words slightly differently.
[98]
Tamil dialects include
Central Tamil dialect
,
Kongu Tamil
,
Madras Bashai
,
Madurai Tamil
,
Nellai Tamil
, Kumari Tamil in
India
;
Batticaloa Tamil dialect
,
Jaffna Tamil dialect
,
Negombo Tamil dialect
in Sri Lanka; and
Malaysian Tamil
in Malaysia.
Sankethi dialect
in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by
Kannada
.
Loanword variations
The dialect of the district of
Palakkad
in Kerala has many
Malayalam
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
is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil.
Hebbar
and
Mandyam
dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil
Vaishnavites
who migrated to
Karnataka
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.
[99]
Several
castes
have their own
sociolects
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.
[100]
For example,
Tamil Brahmins
tend to speak a variety of dialects that are all collectively known as
Brahmin Tamil
. These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many
Sanskrit
loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates
loan words
from
Portuguese
,
Dutch
, and English.
Spoken and literary variants
Literary Tamil in hymn 'Umbartharu' (Hamsadhwani) on lord
Ganesha
from
Thiruppugazh
(c. 1400s).
Literary Tamil pronunciation. Reading an excerpt from
Ma. Po. Si.
's book 'Arivuk kadhaigal' (1900s).
Literary Tamil pronunciation in song written by
Subramanya Bharathi
, 'Senthamizh naadennum pothinile' (1900s ).
In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (
sankattami?
), a modern literary and formal style (
centami?
), and a modern
colloquial
form (
ko?untami?
). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write
centami?
with a vocabulary drawn from
ca?kattami?
, or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking
ko?untami?
.
[101]
In modern times,
centami?
is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of
Tamil literature
and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however,
ko?untami?
has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of
centami?
. Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in
ko?untami?
, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of
ko?untami?
in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard'
ko?untami?
, rather than on any one dialect,
[102]
[
clarification needed
]
but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of
Thanjavur
and
Madurai
. In Sri Lanka, the standard is based on the dialect of
Jaffna
.
Writing system
After
Tamil Brahmi
fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called
va??e?uttu
amongst others such as
Grantha
and
Pallava
. The current
Tamil script
consists of 12
vowels
, 18
consonants
and one special character, the
?ytam
. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel
a
, as with other
Indic scripts
. This inherent vowel is removed by adding a
tittle
called a
pu??i
, to the consonantal sign. For example,
?
is
?a
(with the inherent
a
) and
??
is
?
(without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called
virama
, but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible
pu??i
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
.
In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the
Grantha script
, 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
, 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.
[103]
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
, 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.
zero
|
one
|
two
|
three
|
four
|
five
|
six
|
seven
|
eight
|
nine
|
ten
|
hundred
|
thousand
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
day
|
month
|
year
|
debit
|
credit
|
as above
|
rupee
|
numeral
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
Phonology
/f/
,
/z/
,
/?/
and
/?/
are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic.
Tamil has two
diphthongs
:
/a??/
?
and
/a??/
?
, the latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items.
Grammar
'???? ???????? ??????????, ??????? ????? ???? ?????????.'
?????? ????? ??????. ????? ?????? ???? ?????, ???? ?????.
??? ?????? ?????? ???? ???? ???? ?????????? ?????????? ???? ??????????.
'???? ??????????, ???? ??????????. ???? ??????????, ???? ??????????. ?????? ?????? ???? ??????????????, ???? ?????????? ?'
Tamil employs
agglutinative
grammar, where suffixes are used to mark
noun class
,
number
, and
case
, verb
tense
and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard
metalinguistic
terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the
Sanskrit
that is standard for most
Indo-Aryan languages
.
[106]
[107]
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the
Tolk?ppiyam
. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar
Na???l
which restated and clarified the rules of the
Tolk?ppiyam
, with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely
e?uttu
,
col
,
poru?
,
y?ppu
,
a?i
. Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry.
[108]
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
inflectional
suffixes, which mark categories such as
person
,
number
,
mood
,
tense
, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of
agglutination
, 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
p?kamu?iy?tavarka?ukk?ka
(?????????????????????) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following
morphemes
:
??? ???? ??? ? ??? ??? ????? ??
p?ka mu?i ?t a var ka? ukku ?ka
go accomplish
NEG
.IMPRS PTCP
NMLZ
PL to for
Morphology
Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (
ti?ai
)?the "rational" (
uyarti?ai
), and the "irrational" (
ak?i?ai
)?which include a total of five classes (
p?l
, 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 (
p?l
)?masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes: irrational singular and irrational plural. The
p?l
is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an
honorific
, gender-neutral, singular form.
[109]
peyarccol (Name-words)
[110]
|
uyarti?ai
(rational)
|
a??i?ai
(irrational)
|
??p?l
Male
|
pe?p?l
Female
|
palarp?l
Collective
|
o??a?p?l
One
|
palavi?p?l
Many
|
Example: the Tamil words for "doer"
|
ceytava?
He who did
|
ceytava?
She who did
|
ceytavar(ka?)
They who did
|
ceytatu
That which did
|
ceytavai
Those ones which did
|
Suffixes are used to perform the functions of
cases
or
postpositions
. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into eight cases corresponding to the cases used in
Sanskrit
. These were the
nominative
,
accusative
,
dative
,
sociative
,
genitive
,
instrumental
,
locative
, and
ablative
. Modern grammarians argue that this classification is artificial,
[111]
and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.
[102]
Tamil nouns can take one of four
prefixes
:
i
,
a
,
u
, and
e
which are functionally equivalent to the
demonstratives
in English. For example, the word
vazhi
(???) meaning "way" can take these to produce
ivvazhi
(??????) "this way",
avvazhi
(??????) "that way",
uvvazhi
(??????) "the medial way" and
evvazhi
(??????) "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
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
morphemes
which mark tense categories. Tamil verbs also mark
evidentiality
, through the addition of the hearsay
clitic
?m
.
[112]
Verb inflection is shown below using example
a?intukko??irunt??
; (???????????????????????); "(I) was being destroyed".
???
|
????
|
??????
|
???
|
????
|
???
|
a?i
|
ntu
|
ko??u
|
iru
|
nt
|
?n
|
root
destroy
|
transitivity marker
intransitive
|
aspect marker
continuous
|
aspect marker
continuous
|
tense marker
past tense
|
person marker
first person,
singular
|
Traditional grammars of Tamil do not distinguish between
adjectives
and
adverbs
, including both of them under the category
uriccol
, although modern grammarians tend to distinguish between them on morphological and syntactical grounds.
[113]
Tamil has many
ideophones
that act as adverbs indicating the way the object in a given state "says" or "sounds".
[114]
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.
[115]
In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between
inclusive
pronouns
????
n?m
(we),
????
namatu
(our) that include the addressee and exclusive pronouns
???????
n??ka?
(we),
????
ematu
(our) that do not.
[115]
Syntax
Tamil is a consistently
head-final
language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with a typical word order of
subject?object?verb
(SOV).
[116]
[117]
However, word order in Tamil is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different
pragmatic
effects. Tamil has
postpositions
rather than
prepositions
. 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
. 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
mu?intuvi??atu
("completed")?or only a subject and object, without a verb such as
atu e? v??u
("That [is] my 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,
[118]
which opposes the use of foreign loanwords.
[119]
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
Malay
(e.g.
cavvarici
"sago" from Malay
s?gu
), Chinese (for example,
camp?n
"skiff" from Chinese san-pan) and Greek (for example,
ora
from Greek ?ρα). In more modern times, Tamil has imported words from
Urdu
and
Marathi
, reflecting groups that have influenced the Tamil area at times, and from neighbouring languages such as
Telugu
,
Kannada
, and Sinhala. During the modern period, words have also been adapted from European languages, such as Portuguese, French, and English.
[120]
The strongest effect of purism in Tamil has been on words taken from Sanskrit. During its history, Tamil, along with other Dravidian languages like
Telugu
,
Kannada
,
Malayalam
etc., was influenced by
Sanskrit
in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles,
[121]
[122]
[123]
[124]
reflecting the increased trend of
Sanskritisation
in the Tamil country.
[125]
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.
[126]
[127]
[128]
In addition, Sanskritisation was actively resisted by a number of authors of the late medieval period,
[129]
culminating in the 20th century in a movement called
ta?it tami? iyakkam
(meaning "pure Tamil movement"), led by
Parithimaar Kalaignar
and
Maraimalai Adigal
, which sought to remove the accumulated influence of Sanskrit on Tamil.
[130]
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,
[131]
under some estimates having fallen from 40 to 50% to about 20%.
[67]
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
.
[132]
In the 20th century, institutions and learned bodies have, with government support, generated technical dictionaries for Tamil containing
neologisms
and words derived from Tamil roots to replace loan words from English and other languages.
[65]
As of 2019,
[update]
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.
[133]
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
orange
, via Sanskrit
n?ra?ga
from a Dravidian predecessor of Tamil
n?rtta?k?y
'fragrant fruit'. One suggestion as to the origin of the word
anaconda
is the Tamil
anaikkonda
'having killed an elephant'.
[134]
Examples in English
include
cheroot
(
curu??u
meaning 'rolled up'),
[135]
mango
(from
m??g?y
),
[135]
mulligatawny
(from
mi?aku ta???r
'pepper water'),
pariah
(from
pa?aiyar
),
curry
(from
ka?i
),
[136]
catamaran
(from
ka??u maram
'bundled logs'),
[135]
and
congee
(from
kanji
'rice porridge' or 'gruel').
[137]
Sample text
The following is a sample text in literary Tamil of Article 1 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
. The first line is the
Tamil script
; the second is romanized Tamil; the third is the
International Phonetic Alphabet
; the fourth is the gloss.
?????????
U?uppurai
urupːurai
Section
??????
Ma?itap
m?nid??
Human
??????????
pi?aviyi?ar
piri?ijin?r
beings
???????
cakalarum
s?g?l?rum
all-of-them
?????????????
cutantiram?kav?
sud??n?d?ir?maːg??eː
freely
?????????????;
pi?akki??a?ar;
pir?kːin?d?ran?r
are born.
???????
avarka?
?v?rg??
They
???????????,
matippilum,
m?d?ipːilum
rights-in-and
????????????
urimaika?ilum
urim?ig??ilum
dignities-in-and
???????????,
camam??avarka?,
s?m?maːn???rg??
equal-ones.
???????
avarka?
?v?rg??
They
?????????????
niy?yattaiyum
nijaːjatː?ijum
law-and
????????????????
ma?acc??ciyaiyum
m?n?tt??aː?t??ij?ijum
conscience-and
????????????
iya?pa?p?kap
ij?rp??baːg?
intrinsically
???????????.
pe??avarka?.
pet?r???rg??
possessed-ones.
???????
Avarka?
?v?rg??
They
??????????????
oruvaru?a?oruvar
oru??ru??noru??r
among-one-another
?????
cak?tara
sagoːd???
brotherly
????????
u?arvup
u??r??
feeling
????????
p??kil
paːŋgil
share-in
?????????????
na?antuko??al
n???n?d??ko???l
act
????????.
v???um.
veː??um
must.
?????????
1:
?????? ?????????? ??????? ????????????? ?????????????; ??????? ???????????, ???????????? ???????????, ??????? ????????????? ???????????????? ???????????? ???????????. ??????? ?????????????? ????? ???????? ???????? ????????????? ????????.
U?uppurai
1:
Ma?itap pi?aviyi?ar cakalarum cutantiram?kav? pi?akki??a?ar; avarka? matippilum, urimaika?ilum camam??avarka?, avarka? niy?yattaiyum ma?acc??ciyaiyum iya?pa?p?kap pe??avarka?. Avarka? oruvaru?a?oruvar cak?tara u?arvup p??kil na?antuko??al v???um.
urupːurai
ond?r?
m?nid?? piri?ijin?r s?g?l?rum sud??n?d?ir?maːg??eː pir?kːin?d?ran?r ?v?rg?? m?d?ipːilum urim?ig??ilum s?m?maːn???rg?? ?v?rg?? nijaːjatː?ijum m?n?tt??aː?t??ij?ijum ij?rp??baːg? pet?r???rg?? ?v?rg?? oru??ru??noru??r sagoːd??? u??r?? paːŋgil n???n?d??ko???l veː??um
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.
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.
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The entire problem of the concept of "case" in Dravidian will be ignored in this paper. In fact, we might posit a great number of "cases" for perhaps any Dravidian language once we departed from the familiar types of paradigms forced upon us by traditional, indigenous and European grammars, especially of the literary languages. It is, for instance, sheer convention based on Tamil grammatical tradition (influenced no doubt by Sanskrit) that, as a rule, the number of cases in Tamil is given as eight.
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"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).
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Laboring for language
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, London: Routledge, pp. 100?128,
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978-0-415-10023-6
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(inactive 29 March 2024),
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The Dravidian Languages
, London: Routledge, pp. 75?99,
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978-0-674-01227-1
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246076230
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20170197
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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.
- Freeman, Rich (February 1998), "Rubies and Coral: The Lapidary Crafting of Language in Kerala",
The Journal of Asian Studies
,
57
(1): 38?65,
doi
:
10.2307/2659023
,
JSTOR
2659023
,
S2CID
162294036
- Keane, Elinor (2004), "Tamil",
Journal of the International Phonetic Association
,
34
(1): 111?116,
doi
:
10.1017/S0025100304001549
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