Tamil language

Tamil, the oldest of the Dravidian languages, is spoken mainly in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the classical languages of the world, with a rich literature spanning over 2000 years, making it one of the world's oldest languages.

Tamil evolved independently of Sanskrit, but has borrowed a large number of words from it. It has a rather small phoneme set. Like most writing systems in India, it is phonetic in nature - each (compound) character is a syllable, and is always pronounced the same way.

The 'l' in the word 'Tamil' is pronounced like a retroflex 'r'.

(Add IPA symbol here)

Tamil is an official language in the following countries:

• India
• Sri Lanka
• Malaysia
• Singapore

See also:

• Tamil - the people

External links:

Kalaivani, a Malaysian Tamil Information Exchange [1] (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kalaivani/);

Tamil inayam offers Learn Basic Tamil (http://www.tamil.net/learn-tamil/); Tamil inayam offers Learn Spoken Tamil (http://www.tamil.net/spokentamil/); Tamil Inayam offers Basic Tamil Dictionary (http://www.tamil.net/learn-tamil/);

University of Pennsylvania provides web based courses for learning and teaching Tamil (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/tamilweb/);

Tamil virtual University (http://www.tamilvu.org/) has the largest digitalised tamil literature and web based courses for learning and teaching Tamil