List of countries where Tamil is an official language

The following is a list of sovereign states and territories where Tamil is an official or language of government.

Historical map of Chola Kingdom where Tamil was the language of administration.

Tamil is one of the oldest language and 15th most spoken language in the world and which gave birth to new languages such as Malayalam in 15th Century and the first language to be declare as the classical language of India. Tamil language speakers makes approximately 1% of the world population. Tamil was one of the dominant language of trade during the pre-colonial era by people like Ainnurruvar and such as Tamil inscriptions and coins found on many parts of Asia and Africa such as on China, Cambodia, Egypt and Indonesia.^[1]

During 18th Century, the British and French rules brought the Tamils to many parts of Asia and Africa which makes many countries with significant Tamil speakers and cultural impact such as there are more than 1,000,000 speakers of Tamil language in the Malaysia itself.

Sovereign states [edit]

Countries where Tamil is a de jure/official language
Country	Region	Population¹
Singapore^[2]	Asia	5,312,400
Sri Lanka ^[3]	Asia	20,277,597

Dependent entities where Tamil is an official language [edit]

Distribution of Tamil speakers in Indian Subcontinent.

Entity	Continent	Population	Status
Andaman and Nicobar Islands	Asia	7005379944000000000379,944	Union Territory of India
Puducherry	Asia	70061244464000000001,244,464	Union Territory of India
Tamil Nadu	Asia	700772138958000000072,138,958	State of India

Partially recognized and unrecognized states/territories [edit]

Country	Notes
Tamil Eelam (Eelam)	Claiming sovereignty over the North and Eastern Sri Lanka as the independent state of Tamil Eelam
Karaikal	Claiming for separate union territory of India (not a separate country)