Tamil is a very old classical language and has inscriptions from 500 B.C and plays a significant role as a language in the world today. [46], Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "one's own speech". [88], 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,[89][90] Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. [44][45], The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BC contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. Murugan, revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya, brought it to the people. For Sanskrit, there is a special status mentioned in article 351, whereby Sanskrit was given a position of the primary source language for many languages including Hindi. [16][17] It has the oldest extant literature among Dravidian languages. The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam. [78] Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada, the United States (especially New Jersey and New York City), Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and many other European and Middle Eastern countries. [47] Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ, with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and "-iḻ" having the connotation of "unfolding sound". In some dialects of colloquial Tamil, this consonant is seen as disappearing and shifting to the alveolar lateral approximant /l/. 100,000+ words collection with detailed description of the words, makes it one of the largest such collection in the world. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. 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. In 2004 Tamil was declared a classical language of India, meaning that it met three criteria: its origins are ancient; it has an independent tradition; and it possesses a considerable body of ancient literature. Each may be long or short. A notable example of a word in worldwide use with Dravidian (not specifically Tamil) etymology is orange, via Sanskrit nāraṅga from a Dravidian predecessor of Tamil nartaṅkāy "fragrant fruit". One of 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India, Tamil was the first to be classified as a classical language of India and is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. 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 ṉ (ன்). Venba is a form of the classical poetry of Tamil. It now enjoys the classical status of a classical language by an act of legislation in 2004. The meaning of this name is “musical instrument”. In the early 21st century more than 66 million people were Tamil … Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. 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. 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 puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without a vowel). Article 343 gave Hindi the status of official language of the Union. [97] Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect, Kongu Tamil, Madras Bashai, Madurai Tamil, Nellai Tamil, Kumari tamil in India and Batticaloa Tamil dialect, Jaffna Tamil dialect, Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka. Tamil literature is dominated by poetry, especially Sangam literature, which is composed of poems composed between 300 BCE and 300 CE. 300 BC – AD 300. [137], Words of Tamil origin occur in other languages. The World Tamil Conference (Tamil: உலகத் தமிழ் மாநாடு) is a series of occasional conferences to discuss the social growth of the Tamil language.Each conference is attended by thousands of Tamil enthusiasts around the world. Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in the dialect of Madurai, and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. [37] In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BC with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. Here are the mp3 form of these songs. The sounds /f/ and /ʂ/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, being found only in loanwords and frequently replaced by /p/ and /s/ respectively. A strong sense of linguistic purism is found in Modern Tamil,[122] which opposes the use of foreign loanwords. [11] The earliest epigraphic records found on rock edicts and 'hero stones' date from around the 3rd century BC. [31] Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic split of the western dialect,[32] the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same, The Five Lesser Epics of Tamil Literature, This page was last edited on 3 February 2021, at 16:56. Notably, the Tamil retroflex series includes the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ (ழ) (example Tamil; often transcribed 'zh'), which is rare in the Indo-Aryan languages. Ellis, F. W. (1820), "Note to the introduction" in Campbell, A.D., List of territorial entities where Tamil is an official language, 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India, Pudumaipithan's short story 'Pon Nagaram', List of countries where Tamil is an official language, List of languages by first written accounts, "Scheduled Languages in descending order of speaker's strength - 2011", Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 – Chapter 1: Founding Provisions", Republic of Singapore Independence Act, s.7, "Statement on the Status of Tamil as a Classical Language", Definitive Editions of Ancient Tamil Works, "Chera, Chola, Pandya: Using Archaeological Evidence to Identify the Tamil Kingdoms of Early Historic South India", "Palani excavation triggers fresh debate", "An epigraphic perspective on the antiquity of Tamil", "Delay, howlers in Tamil Lexicon embarrass scholars", UN Chronicle – National Identity and Minority Languages, "Strangers to Their Roots and Those Around Them", Myanmar's Tamils seek to protect their identity, "Canada officially declares pride in its Tamils, passes Bill calling for Tamil Heritage Month", "Constitutional Court of South Africa – The Constitution", "Five Indian languages reinstated as official subjects in South African schools", "For these islanders, a reunion with Tamil", "Tradition, Modernity and Impact of Globalization – Whither Will Tamil Go? There are two diphthongs, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/. Agarathi has multiple dictionary sources including, University of madras lexicon, J.P.Fabricius Tamil and English dictionary, Miron Winslow - a comprehensive tamil and english dictionary, David Mcalpin - a core vocabulary for Tamil and Tamil agara muthali. Its official language is Tamil, which is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world. [27] According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.[28]. [79][80] Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore. And we contantly add more new words to our dictionary. During the modern period, words have also been adapted from European languages, such as Portuguese, French, and English. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil does not distinguish phonologically between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word. In the context of traditional European classical studies, the "classical languages" refer to Greek and Latin, which were the literary languages of the Mediterranean world in classical antiquity.. In India, the ‘standard' koṭuntamiḻ, rather than on any one dialect,[101] but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. Tamil is a null-subject language. info)) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil has postpositions rather than prepositions. (2000). Tamil is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. The word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning more easily. [106] Likewise, the historical alveolar stop has transformed into a dental stop in many modern dialects. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil[59] – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. 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