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Tamil
தமிழ் Tamiḻ
Pronunciation[t̪ɐmɨɻ]; pronunciationⓘ
Native toIndia
Sri Lanka
EthnicityTamiḻ people
Native speakers
70 million (2007)[1]
8 million L2 speakers in India (no date)[2]
Early forms
Tamiḻ alphabet (Brahmic)
Arwi Script (Abjad)
Tamiḻ Braille (Bharati)
Tamiḻ-Brahmi (historical)
Vatteluttu (historical)
Pallava (historical)
Kolezhuthu (historical)
Grantha (historical)
Signed Tamiḻ
Official status
Official language in
 Sri Lanka
 Singapore
 India:
Recognised minority
language in
Language codes
ISO 639-1ta
ISO 639-2tam
ISO 639-3Variously:
tam – Modern Tamil
oty – Old Tamil
ptq – Pattapu Bhasha
oty Old Tamil
Glottologtami1289  Modern Tamil
oldt1248  Old Tamil
Linguasphere49-EBE-a
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
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Tamil is written in a non-Latin script. Tamil text used in this article is transliterated into the Latin script according to the ISO 15919 standard.

Tamil (English: /ˈtæmɪl/; தமிழ்; Tamiḻ; [t̪ɐmɨɻ]; pronunciationⓘ) is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamiḻ people of India and Sri Lanka, and also by the Tamiḻ diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamiḻ is an official language of two countries, Singapore and Sri Lanka.[6][7] It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. It is also used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin.[8][9] In India, outside of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, Tamiḻ is also spoken in the states of Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a secondary language, and by significant minorities in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.

Tamiḻ is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world.[10][11] Tamiḻ-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur[12] and 2,200-year-old Tamiḻ-Brahmi inscriptions have been found on Samanamalai.[13] It has been described as "the only language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical past."[14] The variety and quality of classical Tamiḻ literature has led to it being described as "one of the great classical traditions and literatures of the world".[15]

A recorded Tamiḻ literature has been documented for over 2000 years.[16] The earliest period of Tamiḻ literature, Sangam literature, is dated from ca. 300 BC – AD 300.[17][18] It has the oldest extant literature among other Dravidian languages.[10] The earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and hero stones date from around the 3rd century BC.[19][20] More than 55% of the epigraphical inscriptions (about 55,000) found by the Archaeological Survey of India are in the Tamiḻ language.[21] Tamiḻ language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka, and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt.[22][23] The two earliest manuscripts from India,[24][25] acknowledged and registered by UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil.[26]

In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamiḻ prayer book in old Tamiḻ script named 'Thambiraan Vanakkam,' thus making Tamiḻ the first Indian language to be printed and published.[27] The Tamiḻ lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the earliest dictionaries published in the Indian languages.[28] Tamiḻ is used as a sacred language of Ayyavazhi and in Tamiḻ Hindu traditions of Shaivism and Vaishnavism. According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamiḻ, of which 353 were dailies.[29]

Classification

Main article: Dravidian languages

Tamiḻ belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent.[30] It is also classified as being part of a Tamiḻ language family, which alongside Tamiḻ proper, also includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups[31] such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue).

The closest major relative of Tamiḻ is Malayalam; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE.[32] Although many of the differences between Tamiḻ and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic split of the western dialect,[33] the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century.[34]

History

Silver coin of king Vashishtiputra Sātakarni (c. AD 160). Obv: Bust of king; Rev: Ujjain/Sātavāhana symbol, crescented six-arch chaitya hill and river with Tamiḻ Brahmi script[35][36][37][38]

According to linguists like Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Tamiḻ, as a Dravidian language, descends from Proto-Dravidian, a Proto-language. Linguistic reconstruction suggests that Proto-Dravidian was spoken around the third millennium BC, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin in peninsular India. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of the culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India.[39] The next phase in the reconstructed proto-history of Tamiḻ is Proto-South Dravidian. The linguistic evidence suggests that Proto-South Dravidian was spoken around the middle of the second millennium BC, and that proto-Tamiḻ emerged around the 3rd century BC. The earliest epigraphic attestations of Tamiḻ are generally taken to have been written shortly thereafter.[40] Among Indian languages, Tamiḻ has the most ancient non-Sanskritised Indian literature.[41] Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods, Old Tamiḻ (300 BC – AD 700), Middle Tamiḻ (700–1600) and Modern Tamiḻ (1600–present).[42] In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BC with ancient Tamiḻ Brahmi inscriptions.[22] John Guy states that Tamiḻ was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India.[43]

Legend

According to Hindu legend, Tamiḻ or in personification form Tamiḻ tāi (Mother Tamiḻ) was created by Lord Shiva. Murugan, revered as the Tamiḻ God, along with sage Agastya, brought it to the people.[44]

Etymology

Agastya, Chairman of first Tamiḻ Sangam, Madurai, Pandiya Kingdom

The earliest extant Tamiḻ literary works and their commentaries celebrate the Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamiḻ sangams, which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamiḻ language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamiḻ sangams is mentioned as Tamil, the exact period when the name "Tamiḻ" 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 1st century BC.[45] Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ 'self-speak', or 'one's own speech'.[46](see Southworth's derivation of Sanskrit term for "others" or Mleccha) Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ, with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and "-iḻ" having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < *tav-iḻ < *tak-iḻ, meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)".[47]

The Tamiḻ lexicon of University of Madras defines the word 'Tamiḻ' as 'sweetness'.[48] S.V Subramanian suggests the meaning 'sweet sound' from 'tam'- sweet and 'il'- 'sound'.[49]

Tamiḻ hymn from Thiruppugazh

Old Tamil

Mangulam Tamiḻ Brahmi inscription
Main article: Old Tamil language

Old Tamiḻ is the period of the Tamiḻ language spanning the 5th century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamiḻ are short inscriptions from between the 5th and 2nd century BCE in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamiḻ Brahmi.[50] The earliest long text in Old Tamiḻ is the Tolkāppiyam, an early work on Tamiḻ grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the 1st century BC.[42] A large number of literary works in Old Tamiḻ 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 and 5th centuries AD,[42]

Middle Tamil

Main article: Middle Tamil language
Tamiḻ stone inscription in Thanjavur, Tamiḻ Nādu, India.

The evolution of Old Tamiḻ into Middle Tamiḻ, which is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century,[42] was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme,[51] the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals,[52] and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic.[53] In grammar, the most important change was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil (கில்), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamiḻ, 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 ṉ (ன்). In Middle Tamiḻ, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa (கின்ற) – which combined the old aspect and time markers.[54]

Modern Tamil

The Nannul remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamiḻ, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamiḻ of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamiḻ.[55] Colloquial spoken Tamiḻ, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamiḻ[56] – negation is, instead, expressed either morphologically or syntactically.[57] Modern spoken Tamiḻ also shows a number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions,[58] and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic.[59]

Contact with European languages also affected both written and spoken Tamiḻ. Changes in written Tamiḻ include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamiḻ. The syntax of written Tamiḻ 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.[60] Simultaneously, a strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamiḻ Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic and other foreign elements from Tamiḻ.[61] It received some support from Dravidian parties.[62] This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamiḻ equivalents, though many others remain.[63]

Geographic distribution

Tamiḻ is the first language of the majority of the people residing in Tamiḻ Nādu, Puducherry, in India and Northern Province, Eastern Province, in Sri Lanka. The language is also spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and the hill country. Tamiḻ 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. Tamiḻ was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century AD.[64] Tamiḻ was also used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar, Mysore, Mandya and Bangalore.[65]

There are currently sizeable Tamiḻ-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Mauritius, South Africa, Indonesia,[66] Thailand,[67] Burma, and Vietnam. A large community of Pakistani Tamiḻs speakers exists in Karachi, Pakistan, which includes Tamiḻ-speaking Hindus[68][69] as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamiḻ-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka.[70] Many in Réunion, Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamiḻ origins,[71] but only a small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamiḻ language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults.[72] It is also used by groups of migrants from Sri Lanka and India, Canada (especially Toronto), United States (especially New Jersey and New York City), Australia, many Middle Eastern countries, and some Western European countries.

File:Saravana Bhavan.JPG
Anglicisation noted in Edison, New Jersey, U.S. on one of the busiest overseas branches of Chennai-based Saravanaa Bhavan, the world's largest Indian vegetarian restaurant chain. Tamiḻ script is displayed as an adjunct translation of the English spelling.
See also: States of India by Tamil speakers
The distribution of Tamiḻ language in the world. (Dark green: Above a million, Light green: 10.000 to 100.000)

Tamiḻ is the official language of the Indian state of Tamiḻ Nādu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India. It is also one of the official languages of the union territory of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.[73][74] Tamiḻ is also one of the official languages of Singapore. Tamiḻ is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala.[6] It was once given nominal official status in the state of Haryana, purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab, though there was no attested Tamiḻ-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi, in 2010.[75] In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamiḻ medium.[76] The establishments of Tamiḻ medium schools have been currently in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamiḻ language by the Tamiḻs who settled there 200 years ago.[77] Tamiḻ language is taught in Canada and South Africa for the local Tamiḻ minority populations. In Canada, the month of January has been declared "Tamiḻ Heritage Month" per legislation [3].

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 Tamiḻ associations,[78][79] Tamiḻ became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India, Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004.[80][81][82]

Dialects

Region-specific variations

Tamiḻ writings and sculptures at the right side of Gopuram in Brihadeeswara Temple, Thanjavur, Tamiḻ Nādu, India.

The socio-linguistic situation of Tamiḻ is characterised by diglossia: there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status, a high register and a low one.[83][84] Tamiḻ dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamiḻ. For example, the word for "here"—iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore, inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka. Old Tamiḻ's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, Old Tamiḻ iṅkaṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in the dialect of Madurai, and iṅkaṭe in various northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear "akkaṭṭa" meaning "that place". Although Tamiḻ 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,[42][85] and use many other words slightly differently.[86] The various Tamiḻ dialects include Central Tamiḻ dialect, Kongu Tamiḻ, Madras Bashai, Madurai Tamiḻ, Nellai Tamiḻ, Kumari Tamiḻ in India and Batticaloa Tamiḻ dialect, Jaffna Tamiḻ dialect, Negombo Tamiḻ dialect in Sri Lanka. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada.

Tamiḻ Oppaari song, sung by women during a death ceremony.

Loanword variations

See also: Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil and Loan words in Sri Lankan Tamil

The dialect of the district of Palakkad in Kerala has a large number of Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax and also has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamiḻ spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamiḻ spoken at other parts of Tamiḻ Nādu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamiḻ. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamiḻ Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai, a special form of Tamiḻ developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values.[87] 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.[88] Tamiḻ in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese, Dutch, and English.

Spoken and literary variants

Tamiḻ pronunciation(An excerpt from Ma. Po. Si's book Arivuk kadhaigal)
Audio recording of Pudumaipithan's short story 'Ponnagaram' in Tamiḻ

In addition to its various dialects, Tamiḻ exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (sankattamiḻ), a modern literary and formal style (centamiḻ), and a modern colloquial form (koṭuntamiḻ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ, or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ.[89]

In modern times, centamiḻ is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamiḻ literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ. Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in koṭuntamiḻ, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial ‘standard' spoken dialects. In India, the ‘standard' koṭuntamiḻ, rather than on any one dialect,[90] 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

Main articles: Tamil script and Tamil braille
See also: Vatteluttu, Grantha script, Pallava script, and Arwi
Jambai Tamiḻ Brahmi inscription dated to the early Sangam age

After Tamiḻ Brahmi fell out of use, Tamiḻ was written using a script called the vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava script. The current Tamiḻ script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 x 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel a, as with other Indic scripts. This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi, to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama, but the Tamiḻ script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi 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 Tamiḻ 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 Tamiḻphonology.

In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script, which was used in the Tamiḻ region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamiḻ, 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 Tamiḻ phonology, remains, but is not always consistently applied.[91] ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamiḻ and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script. Tamiḻ can be transliterated into English by using ISO 15919, since English language uses the Latin script for writing.

Phonology

Main article: Tamil phonology

Tamiḻ phonology is characterised by the presence of retroflex consonants and multiple rhotics. Tamiḻ does not distinguish phonologically between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word.[92] Tamiḻ phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can never be word initial. Native grammarians classify Tamiḻ phonemes into vowels, consonants, and a "secondary character", the āytam.

Vowels

Tamiḻ has five vowel qualities, namely /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/. Each may be long or short. There are two diphthongs, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/. Long vowels are about twice as long as short vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as short vowels. Most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.

Short Long
Front Central Back Front Central Back
Close i u iː uː
இ உ ஈ ஊ
Mid e o eː oː
எ ஒ ஏ ஓ
Open a (aɪ̯) aː (aʊ̯)
அ ஐ ஆ ஒள

Consonants

Tamiḻ tongue-twister phrases
Some Tamiḻ tongue-twister phrases

Tamiḻ consonants are presented as hard, soft and medial in some grammars which roughly corresponds to plosives, nasals and approximants. Unlike most Indian languages, Tamiḻ does not distinguish aspirated and unaspirated consonants. In addition, the voicing of plosives is governed by strict rules in centamiḻ. Plosives are unvoiced if they occur word-initially or doubled. Elsewhere they are voiced, with a few becoming fricatives intervocalically. Nasals and approximants are always voiced.[93]

Tamiḻ is characterised by its use of more than one type of coronal consonants: like many of the other languages of India, it contains a series of retroflex consonants. Notably, the Tamiḻ retroflex series includes the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ (ழ) (example Tamil; often transcribed 'zh'), which is absent in the Indo-Aryan languages. Among the other Dravidian languages, the retroflex approximant also occurs in Malayalam (for example in 'Kozhikode'), disappeared from spoken Kannada around 1000 AD (although the character is still written, and exists in Unicode), and was never present in Telugu. In many dialects of colloquial Tamiḻ, this consonant is seen as disappearing and shifting to the alveolar lateral approximant /l/.[94] Dental and alveolar consonants also historically contrasted with each other, a typically Dravidian trait not found in the neighbouring Indo-Aryan languages. While this distinction can still be seen in the written language, it has been largely lost in colloquial spoken Tamiḻ, and even in literary usage the letters ந (dental) and ன (alveolar) may be seen as allophonic.[95] Likewise, the historical alveolar stop has transformed into a trill consonant in many modern dialects.

A chart of the Tamiḻ consonant phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet follows:[85]

Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Plosives p t̪ t ʈ t͡ɕ k
ப த ற ட ச க
Nasals m n̪ n ɳ ȵ ŋ
ம ந ன ண ஞ ங
Tap ɽ
ர
Central approximants ʋ ɻ j
வ ழ ய
Lateral approximants l̪ ɭ
ல ள

The plosives have voiced allophones in predictable contexts. The sounds /f/ and /ʂ/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamiḻ, being found only in loanwords and frequently replaced by native sounds. There are well-defined rules for elision in Tamiḻ categorised into classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.

Āytam

Classical Tamiḻ also had a phoneme called the Āytam, written as ‘ஃ'. Tamiḻ grammarians of the time classified it as a dependent phoneme (or restricted phoneme[96]) (cārpeḻuttu), but it is very rare in modern Tamiḻ. The rules of pronunciation given in the Tolkāppiyam, a text on the grammar of Classical Tamiḻ, suggest that the āytam could have glottalised the sounds it was combined with. It has also been suggested that the āytam was used to represent the voiced implosive (or closing part or the first half) of geminated voiced plosives inside a word.[97] The Āytam, in modern Tamiḻ, is also used to convert p to f when writing English words using the Tamiḻ script.

Numerals and symbols

Main article: Tamil numerals

Apart from the usual numerals, Tamiḻ also has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamiḻ also uses several historical fractional signs.

zero one two three four five six seven eight nine ten hundred thousand
௦ ௧ ௨ ௩ ௪ ௫ ௬ ௭ ௮ ௯ ௰ ௱ ௲
day month year debit credit as above rupee numeral
௳ ௴ ௵ ௶ ௷ ௸ ௹ ௺

Grammar

Main article: Tamil grammar

Tamiḻ employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class, number, and case, verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamiḻ's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamiḻ, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Aryan languages.[98][99]

Much of Tamiḻ grammar is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamiḻ, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamiḻ writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications. Traditional Tamiḻ grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, sol, poruḷ, yāppu, aṇi. Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry.[100]

Tamiḻ words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamiḻ affixes are suffixes. Tamiḻ 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 a large number of suffixes.

Morphology

Tamiḻ nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (tiṇai)—the "rational" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (akṟiṇai)—which include a total of five classes (pāl, 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 (pāl)—masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes: irrational singular and irrational plural. The pāl is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form.[101]

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,[102] and that Tamiḻ usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.[90] Tamiḻ nouns can take one of four prefixes, i, a, u, and e which are functionally equivalent to the demonstratives in English.

Tamiḻ verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamiḻ 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.
  • Tamiḻ 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.
  • Tamiḻ 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 Tamiḻ, and is normally reflected by the same morphemes which mark tense categories. Tamiḻ verbs also mark evidentiality, through the addition of the hearsay clitic ām.[103]

Traditional grammars of Tamiḻ 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.[104] Tamiḻ has a large number of ideophones that act as adverbs indicating the way the object in a given state "says" or "sounds".[105]

Tamiḻ 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.[106] In the first person plural, Tamiḻ makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns நாம் nām (we), நமது namatu (our) that include the addressee and exclusive pronouns நாங்கள் nāṅkaḷ (we), எமது ematu (our) that do not.[106]

Syntax

Tamiḻ 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).[107][108] However, word order in Tamiḻ is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different pragmatic effects. Tamiḻ has postpositions rather than prepositions. Demonstratives and modifiers precede the noun within the noun phrase. Subordinate clauses precede the verb of the matrix clause.

Tamiḻ is a null-subject language. Not all Tamiḻ 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 muṭintuviṭṭatu ("completed")—or only a subject and object, without a verb such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That [is] my house"). Tamiḻ 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 Tamiḻ is mainly Dravidian. A strong sense of linguistic purism is found in Modern Tamiḻ,[109] which opposes the use of foreign loanwords.[110] Nonetheless, a number of words used in classical and modern Tamiḻ are loanwords from the languages of neighbouring groups, or with whom the Tamiḻs had trading links, including Munda (for example, tavaḷai "frog" from Munda tabeg), 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, Tamiḻ has imported words from Urdu and Marathi, reflecting groups that have influenced the Tamiḻ area at various points of time, 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.[111]

The strongest impact of purism in Tamiḻ has been on words taken from Sanskrit. During its history, Tamiḻ, along with other Dravidian languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam etc., was influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles,[112][113][114][115] reflecting the increased trend of Sanskritisation in the Tamiḻ country.[116] Tamiḻ 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.[117][118][119] In addition, Sanskritisation was actively resisted by a number of authors of the late medieval period,[120] culminating in the 20th century in a movement called Taṉit Tamiḻ Iyakkam (meaning "pure Tamiḻ movement"), led by Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal, which sought to remove the accumulated influence of Sanskrit on Tamiḻ.[121] As a result of this, Tamiḻ in formal documents, literature and public speeches has seen a marked decline in the use Sanskrit loan words in the past few decades,[122] under some estimates having fallen from 40–50% to about 20%.[63] As a result, the Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words used in modern Tamiḻ are, unlike in some other Dravidian languages, restricted mainly to some spiritual terminology and abstract nouns.[123]

In the 20th century, institutions and learned bodies have, with government support, generated technical dictionaries for Tamiḻ containing neologisms and words derived from Tamiḻ roots to replace loan words from English and other languages.[61]

Influence

Main article: Words of Tamil origin

Words of Tamiḻ origin occur in other languages. A notable example of a word in worldwide use with Dravidian (not specifically Tamiḻ) etymology is orange, via Sanskrit nāraṅga from a Dravidian predecessor of Tamiḻ nartankāy "fragrant fruit". Anaconda is word of Tamiḻ origin anai-kondra meaning elephant killer[124] Examples in English include cheroot (churuṭṭu meaning "rolled up"),[125] mango (from mangāi),[125] mulligatawny (from miḷagu taṉṉir, "pepper water"), pariah (from paraiyan), curry (from kari),[126] and catamaran (from kaṭṭu maram, "bundled logs"),[125] Congee (from Kanji - rice porridge or gruel).[127]

See also

Footnotes

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References

  • Andronov, M.S. (1970), Dravidian Languages, Nauka Publishing House
  • Annamalai, E.; Steever, S.B. (1998), "Modern Tamil", in Steever, Sanford (ed.), The Dravidian Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 100–128, ISBN 0-415-10023-2
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  • Hart, George L. (1975), The poems of ancient Tamil : their milieu and their Sanskrit counterparts, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-02672-1
  • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003), The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge Language Surveys, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-77111-0
  • Kesavapany, K.; Mani, A; Ramasamy, Palanisamy (2008), Rising India and Indian Communities in East Asia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, ISBN 981-230-799-0
  • Kuiper, F. B. J. (1958), "Two problems of old Tamil phonology I. The old Tamil āytam (with an appendix by K. Zvelebil)", Indo-Iranian Journal, 2 (3), doi:10.1007/BF00162818
  • Lehmann, Thomas (1998), "Old Tamil", in Steever, Sanford (ed.), The Dravidian Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 75–99, ISBN 0-415-10023-2
  • Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003), Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D, Harvard Oriental Series vol. 62, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-01227-5
  • Meenakshisundaran, T.P. (1965), A History of Tamil Language, Poona: Deccan College
  • Murthy, Srinivasa; Rao, Surendra; Veluthat, Kesavan; Bari, S.A. (1990), Essays on Indian History and culture: Felicitation volume in Honour of Professor B. Sheik Ali, New Delhi: Mittal, ISBN 81-7099-211-7
  • Ramstedt, Martin (2004), Hinduism in modern Indonesia, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-7007-1533-9
  • Rajam, VS (1992), A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, ISBN 0-87169-199-X
  • Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997), "Laboring for language", Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 0-585-10600-2 {{citation}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
  • Shapiro, Michael C.; Schiffman, Harold F. (1983), Language and society in South Asia, Dordrecht: Foris, ISBN 90-70176-55-6
  • Schiffman, Harold F. (1999), A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-64074-1
  • Southworth, Franklin C. (1998), "On the Origin of the word tamiz", International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics, 27 (1): 129–132
  • Southworth, Franklin C. (2005), Linguistic archaeology of South Asia, Routledge, ISBN 0-415-33323-7
  • Steever, Sanford (1998), "Introduction", in Steever, Sanford (ed.), The Dravidian Languages, London: Routledge, pp. 1–39, ISBN 0-415-10023-2
  • Steever, Sanford (2005), The Tamil auxiliary verb system, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-34672-X
  • Tharu, Susie; Lalita, K., eds. (1991), Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the present – Vol. 1: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century, Feminist Press, ISBN 1-55861-027-8
  • Talbot, Cynthia (2001), Precolonial India in practice: Society, Region and Identity in Medieval Andhra, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-513661-6
  • Tieken, Herman (2001), Kavya in South India: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry, Gonda Indological Studies, Volume X, Groningen: Egbert Forsten Publishing, ISBN 90-6980-134-5
  • Varadarajan, Mu. (1988), A History of Tamil Literature, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi (Translated from Tamil by E.Sa. Viswanathan)
  • Zvelebil, Kamil (1992), Companion studies to the history of Tamil literature, Leiden: Brill, ISBN 90-04-09365-6

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), Association for Asian Studies: 38–65, doi:10.2307/2659023, JSTOR 2659023
  • Keane, Elinor (2004), "Tamil", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 111–116, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001549
Tamil edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For a list of words relating to Tamil language, see the Tamil language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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