Tamil language
Tamil[b] (தமிழ், Tamiḻ, pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) 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
- Tamil Nadu and the enclaves of Puducherry and Karaikal
- Sri Lanka
- Tamil script
- Tamil-Brahmi script (historical)
- Grantha script (historical)
- Vatteluttu script (historical)
- Pallava script (historical)
- Kolezhuthu script (historical)
- Arabic script (Arwi)
- Latin script (informal)
- Tamil Braille (Bharati)
- Central Institute of Classical Tamil (India)
- Department of Official Languages (Sri Lanka)
- Tamil Language Council (Singapore)
oty Old Tamil
49-EBE-a
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]
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 Réunion, 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.
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 sāgu), Chinese (for example, campān "skiff" from Chinese san-pan) and Greek (for example, ora from Greek ὥρα). 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 taṉit tamiḻ 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, 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]
Tamil language at Wikibooks
