Tamil is a Dravidian language, spoken in South Asia. It is one of the longest surviving ancient languages still in modern use, with records of literature and stone carvings dating back to 300 BCE (2000+ years ago). The Tamil script is considered to have evolved from the Brahmi script, which is where the vast majority of Indian and nearby scripts came out of.
Tamil is a fairly complex script, coming from the English alphabet, because pairs of characters often times combine into a completely new shape, which must be memorized. As such, there are several hundred glyphs to memorize.
Some symbols have more than one sound, so they are shown multiple times, one for each sound.
Here are the 34 fundamental consonants used when speaking Tamil.
For a complete list of possible consonants a human voice might make while speaking a natural language, check out the consonants page.
This language has palatalized consonants.
| bilabial | labiodental | dental | alveolar | postalveolar | retroflex | velar | uvular | pharyngeal | glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiced nasal | |||||||||||
| voiced palatalized nasal | |||||||||||
| quiet plosive | |||||||||||
| voiced plosive | |||||||||||
| quiet sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| quiet palatalized sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced palatalized sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| quiet non-sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced non-sibilant fricative | |||||||||||
| voiced approximant | |||||||||||
| voiced tap | |||||||||||
| voiced trill | |||||||||||
| voiced lateral approximant |
These are the 6 base vowels used when speaking Tamil.
Also, a complete list of possible vowels a human voice might make while speaking can be found here.
| manner | front unrounded | front rounded | front central unrounded | front central rounded | central unrounded | central rounded | back central unrounded | back central rounded | back unrounded | back rounded | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| close | |||||||||||
| close-mid | |||||||||||
| open |