Phonology[edit]Main article: Tamil phonology

Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of retroflex consonants and mul

tiple rhotics. Tamil does not distinguish phonologically between voiced and unvo
iced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's posi
tion in a word.[113] Tamil phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can n
ever be word initial. Native grammarians classify Tamil phonemes into vowels, co
nsonants, and a "secondary character", the aytam.
Vowels[edit]Tamil vowels are called uyire?uttu (uyir life, e?uttu letter). The v
owels are classified into short (ku?il) and long (ne?il) (with five of each type
) and two diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/, and three "shortened" (ku??il) vowels.
The long vowels are about twice as long as the short vowels. The diphthongs are
usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as the short vowels, though most gram
matical texts place them with the long vowels.
Short Long
Front Central Back Front Central Back
Close i u i? u?
? ? ? ?
Mid e o e? o?
? ? ? ?
Open ? (a??) ? (a??)
? ? ? ??
Consonants[edit]Tamil consonants are known as meyye?uttu (meybody, e?uttuletters).
The consonants are classified into three categories with six in each category:
valli?amhard, melli?amsoft or Nasal, and i?ayi?ammedium.
Unlike most Indian languages, Tamil does not distinguish aspirated and unaspirat
ed consonants. In addition, the voicing of plosives is governed by strict rules
in centami?. Plosives are unvoiced if they occur word-initially or doubled. Else
where they are voiced, with a few becoming fricatives intervocalically. Nasals a
nd approximants are always voiced.[114]
Tamil is characterised by its use of more than one type of coronal consonants: l
ike many of the other languages of India, it contains a series of retroflex cons
onants. Notably, the Tamil retroflex series includes the retroflex approximant /
?/ (?) (example Tamil; often transcribed 'zh'), which is absent in the Indo-Arya
n languages. Among the other Dravidian languages, the retroflex approximant also
occurs in Malayalam (for example in 'Kozhikode'), disappeared from spoken Kanna
da around 1000 AD (although the character is still written, and exists in Unicod
e), and was never present in Telugu. In many dialects of colloquial Tamil, this
consonant is seen as disappearing and shifting to the alveolar lateral approxima
nt /l/[115] Dental and alveolar consonants also historically contrasted with eac
h other, a typically Dravidian trait not found in the neighbouring Indo-Aryan la
nguages. While this distinction can still be seen in the written language, it ha
s been largely lost in colloquial spoken Tamil, and even in literary usage the l
etters ? (dental) and ? (alveolar) may be seen as allophonic.[116] Likewise, the
historical alveolar stop has transformed into a trill consonant in many modern
dialects.
A chart of the Tamil consonant phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet f
ollows:[117]
Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Plosives p (b) t? (d?) t (d) ? (?) t?? (d??) k (g)
? ? ? ? ? ?
Nasals m n? n ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ? ?
Tap ?
?
Central approximants v ? j
? ? ?
Lateral approximants l? ?
? ?
Sounds in brackets are voiced allophones. They are written the same as the voice
less allophones, as voicing is determined by context. The sounds /f/ and /?/ are
peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, being found only in loanwords and frequen
tly replaced by native sounds. There are well-defined rules for elision in Tamil
categorised into classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.