Tamil Language

Tamil is an ancient language belonging to the Dravidian family of languages. It is spoken in Tamil Nadu and northern part of Sri Lanka and is the mother tongue of a large population settled in the far-east such as Singapore and Malaysia and in the African region such as Mauritius and South Africa. It is also the mother tongue of many in other diaspora countries such as France, US, UK etc.

Tamil Script

Tamil script is graphically easy as there are only thirty letters and five newly adopted letters; in addition it has twelve vowel signs. It does not have conjunct letters as in many other Indian languages. The use of the vowel symbol (called matra in many languages) with all consonants is very regular except in the case of /u/ and /u:/ It will be necessary to specify what we are discussing. We are adopting the following notations –

It will be necessary to specify what we are discussing. We are adopting the following notations–

Tamil Phonology

It is phonologically a bit complex as some letters betray different ways of pronunciation depending on its place in a word. This is a very logical system as the description of the sound of any letter is predictable. However new parameters as shown below make phonology a bit more complicated.

1. Tamil has only one letter for /k/, /g/ and so on. But the letters represent more sounds in different contexts. For example, /k/ is pronounced word initially and as geminate ( double kk) and /g/ in pronounced after the nasal .The same thing applies to ப (p) and த (t) too. So it does not have word initial voiced sounds such as /d/, /b/ or /g/ nor a separate letter for these. But it manages to retain the original pronunciation of innumerable words from English, Sanskrit, Telugu etc. such as 'beach, gate, bali, gaanam, Bengaluru, Geeta, dass, du:ram' though the alphabet gives no clue.
2. As Tamil is an ancient language its pronunciation has changed over the last two millennia. The modern spoken Tamil is quite different from the written form of the language. The trouble is that formal writing prefers the traditional written form and tries to retain the traditional way of speaking. Though we cannot go into this aspect in this program we are trying to give a feel of both in these lessons.
3. The pronunciation of two of its letters ற /t/ and ந /n/ has changed to /r/ and /n/ respectively giving rise to some problems of pronunciation and spelling.
4. It has adopted five new letters but the conservationists would prefer to avoid them and localize the words. This leads to some spelling problems in some places.

Introducing the Script

Tamil has the following 12 vowels. We are giving a rough equivalent of the letters here; we shall discuss the pronunciation subsequently. The colon indicates the length of the vowel. 

The following are the vowel symbols occurring with the consonant <k>. All consonants take vowel symbols in a similar manner except those of<u> and   <u:>.

The following are the eighteen consonants of Tamil. We are giving a rough equivalent of the letters here; we shall discuss the pronunciation subsequently.

The following are letters for newly created sounds for use in borrowed words. The letter க்ஷ is a combination of k and sh and is rarely used. 

All the letters of Tamil are introduced in eight lessons. Mother tongue or bilingual learners should be able to learn to read Tamil in eight days. New learners may take about fifteen days.