Portal:India/SC Summary/SA Tamil language



Tamil is a classical language and one of the major languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. It is predominantly spoken in South India and Sri Lanka, with smaller communities of speakers in many other countries. As of 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 millennia. 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 CE.

The name 'Tamil' is an anglicised form of the native name தமிழ் (IPA ). The final letter of the name, usually transcribed as the lowercase 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. (more...)