Tamil language

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Tamil
????? Tamil
Word Tamil.svg
Pronunciation [t??m??]; About this sound pronunciation (help�info)
Native to India
Sri Lanka
Ethnicity Tamil people
Native speakers
70 million (2007)[1]
8 million L2 speakers in India (no date)[2]
Language family
Dravidian
Southern
Tamil�Kannada
Tamil�Kodagu
Tamil�Malayalam
Tamil languages
Tamil
Early forms
Old Tamil
Middle Tamil
Writing system
Tamil alphabet (Brahmic)
Arwi Script (Abjad)
Tamil Braille (Bharati)
Tamil-Brahmi (historical)
Vatteluttu (historical)
Pallava (historical)
Kolezhuthu (historical)
Grantha (historical)
Latin script (informal)
Signed forms
Signed Tamil
Official status
Official language in
Sri Lanka
Singapore
India:

Tamil Nadu[3]
Puducherry[4]
Andaman & Nicobar Islands[5]
Recognised minority
language in
Malaysia[6]
Mauritius[7]
South Africa[8]
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ta
ISO 639-2 tam
ISO 639-3 Variously:
tam � Modern Tamil
oty � Old Tamil
ptq � Pattapu Bhashai
Linguist List
oty Old Tamil
Glottolog tamil1289 Modern Tamil[9]
oldt1248 Old Tamil[10]
Linguasphere 49-EBE-a
Idioma tamil.png
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Tamil A.svg 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: /'t�m?l/; ????? Tami? [t??m??], About this sound pronunciation
(help�info)) is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of
India and Sri Lanka, and by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Burghers,
Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is an official language of two countries: Sri Lanka
and Singapore.[11][12] It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and
the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. It is used as one of the languages of
education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin.[13][14] Tamil is
spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala,
Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the Union Territory of the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.

Tamil is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world.[15][16] It

is stated as 20th in the Ethnologue list of most-spoken languages worldwide.[17]
Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from 500 BC have been found on Adichanallur[18] and
2,200-year-old Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions have been found on Samanamalai.[19] A
study conducted by Germany's Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
found that the Dravidian language family, of which Tamil is a part, may be
approximately 4000-4500 years old.[20][21] It has been described as "the only
language of contemporary India which is recognizably continuous with a classical
past."[22] The variety and quality of classical Tamil l