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Tamil is a Dravidian language related to Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam, among others. As one of the few living classical languages, it has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millennia, with the earliest writings having been dated to circa 500 B.C. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is agglutinative and the writing is largely phonetic. It is spoken by a majority of people in Tamil Nadu and northern and north-eastern Sri Lanka, while a significant emigrant population lives in Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of the world. It is officially recognised in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and South Africa. (more...)