Tamil

Also known as Tamil language

Dravidian language native to South India and Sri Lanka

AI overview

Tamil is a language spoken primarily in South India and Sri Lanka that belongs to the Dravidian language family. It matters as one of the major languages of the region, with a rich history and millions of native speakers.

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Wikidata facts

Image: Word Tamil.svg

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Commons category: Tamil language
Wikimedia language code: ta
Stack Exchange tag: stackoverflow.com/tags/tamil
native label: تَمِۻْ
time of earliest written record: 0400-00-00
Commons gallery: Tamil language gallery
exact match: publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/language/TAM
P10369: Tuesday
number of speakers, writers, or signers: 8000000
P8168: Kavalan people
P13311: Narcissus pseudonarcissus

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Article

Tamil (தமிழ், Tamiḻ, pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) is a Dravidian language spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia where they are concentrated in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. It is one of the longest-surviving classical languages in the world, attested since c. 300 BCE.

Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders in South India, with Tamil inscriptions found outside of the Indian subcontinent, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Egypt. The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature, consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations.