Tamil language
Tamil | |
---|---|
தமிழ் [ta] Error: {{Transliteration}}: unrecognized language / script code: tamiḻ (help) | |
Pronunciation | [t̪ɐmɨɻ] (Listen) |
Native to | India, Sri Lanka and Singapore, where it has an official status; with significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius, and Réunion, and emigrant communities around the world.[1] |
Native speakers | 68 million native,[2][3] 77 million total[2] |
Vatteluttu | |
Official status | |
Official language in | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Regulated by | Various academies and the Government of Tamil Nadu |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | ta |
ISO 639-2 | tam |
ISO 639-3 | tam |
Tamil (தமிழ் [ta] Error: {{Transliteration}}: unrecognized language / script code: tamiḻ (help); IPA: [t̪ɐmɨɻ]) is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people, originating on the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius, and Réunion, as well as emigrant communities around the world.[1] It is the administrative language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and was declared one of the classical languages of India by the government of India in 2004.[9][10] Tamil is the most important among southern dravidian languages as it is very close to the southern proto- dravidian language from which Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Tulu segregated.
Tamil literature has existed for over two thousand years.[11] The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BCE[12] and the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), the oldest known treatise in Tamil, has been dated variously between 2nd century BCE and 10th century CE.[13][14][15][16][17][18] Similarly, the earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated to between the 2nd century BCE and 10th century CE.[13][19]
Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class, number, and case, verb tense and other grammatical categories. Unlike other Dravidian languages, the metalanguage of Tamil, the language used to describe the technical linguistic terms of the language and its structure, is also Tamil (rather than Sanskrit).[20][21] According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies.[22]
History
Tamil is one of the ancient languages of the world with records in the language dating back over two millennia.[23][24] Its origins are not precisely known, but it developed and flourished in India as a language with a rich literature.[23][25] With an estimated 30,000 inscriptions, Tamil has the largest number of inscriptions in South Asia.[26]
Tamil has the oldest extant literature amongst the Dravidian languages, but dating the language and the literature precisely is difficult. Literary works in India were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making direct dating impossible.[27] External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably compiled sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 10th century CE.[28][17][18]
Tamil scholars categorize the history of the language into three periods, Old Tamil (300 BC - 700 CE), Middle Tamil (700 - 1600) and Modern Tamil (1600-present).[29] Epigraphic attestation of Tamil begins with rock inscriptions from the 3rd century BC, written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script.Cite error: A <ref>
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(see the help page). The earliest extant literary text is the Tolkāppiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, dated variously between the 3rd century BCE and 5th century CE.
The Sangam literature contains about 50,000 lines of poetry contained in 2381 poems attributed to 473 poets including many women poets.[30][31] Many of the poems of Sangam period were also set to music.[32] During the post-Sangam period, important works like Thirukkural, and epic poems like Silappatikaram, Manimekalai, Sīvakacintāmani were composed. The Bhakthi period is known for the great outpouring of devotional songs set to pann music, including over eight thousand Tevaram verses on Saivism and four thousand verses on Vaishnavism.[33] The early mediaeval Period gave rise to a popular adaptation of the Ramayana in Tamil, known as Kamba Ramayanam and a story of 63 Nayanmars known as Periyapuranam.[34]
Origin and development
Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages. It is sometimes classified as being part of a Tamil language family, which alongside Tamil proper, also includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups[35] such as the Irula, and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue). This group is a subgroup of the Tamil-Malayalam languages, which falls under a subgroup of the Tamil-Kodagu languages, which in turn is a subgroup of the Tamil-Kannada languages. The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam which is explained by the fact that until about the ninth century, Tamil and Malayalam were dialects of one language,[36] called "Tamil" by the speakers of both.[37] Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam evidence a pre-historic split between eastern and western dialects,[38] the process of separation of the two into distinct languages was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century.[39]
The origins and initial development of Tamil is similar to that of the other Dravidian languages and independent of Sanskrit.[14][40] During later centuries, however, Tamil, along with other Dravidian languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam etc., has been influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles,[41][14][15] reflecting the increased trend of Sanskritisation in the Tamil country.[42] Tamil vocabulary was never as heavily Sanskritised as that of the other Dravidian languages, and unlike in those languages, it was and remains possible to express complex ideas - including in science, art, religion and law - without the use of Sanskrit loan words.[43] Sanskritisation was actively resisted by a number of authors of the late medieval period,[44] culminating in the puristic movement of the 20th century, led by Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal, which sought to remove the accumulated influence of Sanskrit on Tamil. This movement was called taṉit tamiḻ iyakkam (meaning pure Tamil movement).[45] As a result of this, Tamil in formal documents, literature and public speeches has seen a marked decline in the use Sanskrit loan words in the past few decades.[46]
Geographic distribution
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Tamil_distribution.png/220px-Tamil_distribution.png)
Tamil is the first language of the majority in Tamil Nadu, India and North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. The language is spoken by small groups of minorities in other parts of these two countries such as Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Maharashtra in case of India and Colombo and the hill country in case of Sri Lanka.
There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, South Africa, and Mauritius. Many people in Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins,[47] but only a small number speak the language there. Groups of more recent migrants from Sri Lanka and India exist in Canada (especially Toronto), USA, Australia, many Middle Eastern countries, and most of the western European countries.
Legal status
Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Pondicherry[48][49] and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands[50] It is one of 23 nationally recognised languages in the Constitution of India. Tamil is also one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and Singapore. In Malaysia, primary education in government schools is also available fully in Tamil.
In addition, with the creation in 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations[51][52] Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the then President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004.[53][9][10]
Dialects
Tamil is a diglossic language.[54][55] Tamil dialects are mainly differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example, the word for "here" —iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore, inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka. Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, Old Tamil iṅkaṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in the dialect of Ramanathapuram, and iṅkaṭe in various northern dialects. Even now in Coimbatore area it is common to hear "akkaṭṭa" meaning "that place".
Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India,[56] and use many other words slightly differently.[57] The dialect of the district of Palakkad in kerala has a large number of Malayalam loanwords, has also been influenced by Malayalam syntax and also has a distinct Malayalam accent. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the eleventh century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai, a special form of Tamil developed in the ninth and tenth centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values.[58] Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person’s caste by their speech.[59]
Spoken and literary variants
In addition to its various dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (caṅkattamiḻ), a modern literary and formal style (centamiḻ), and a modern colloquial form (koṭuntamiḻ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ, or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ.[60]
In modern times, centamiḻ is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ. Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in koṭuntamiḻ, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial ‘standard’ spoken dialects. In India, the ‘standard’ koṭuntamiḻ is based on ‘educated non-brahmin speech’, rather than on any one dialect,[61] but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. In Sri Lanka the standard is based on the dialect of Jaffna.
Writing system
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fc/History_of_Tamil_script.jpg/220px-History_of_Tamil_script.jpg)
Tamil is written using a script called the vaṭṭeḻuttu. The Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters. As with other Indic scripts, all consonants have an inherent vowel a, which in Tamil, is removed by adding an overdot called a puḷḷi, to the consonantal sign. Unlike most Indic scripts, the Tamil script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced plosives. Instead, plosives are articulated with voice or unvoiced depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology, as discussed below.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/Vatteluttu2.png/220px-Vatteluttu2.png)
In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script, which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words borrowed from Sanskrit, Prakrit and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology remains, but is not always consistently applied.[62]
Sounds
Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of retroflex consonants, and strict rules for the distribution within words of voiced and unvoiced plosives. Tamil phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can never be word initial. Native grammarians classify Tamil phonemes into vowels, consonants, and a "secondary character", the āytam.
Vowels
Tamil vowels are called uyireḻuttu (uyir – life, eḻuttu – letter). The vowels are classified into short (kuṟil) and long (five of each type) and two diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/, and three "shortened" (kuṟṟiyal) vowels.
The long (neṭil) vowels are about twice as long as the short vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as the short vowels, though most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.
Short | Long | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Front | Central | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
Close | i | u | iː | uː | ||
இ | உ | ஈ | ஊ | |||
Mid | e | o | eː | oː | ||
எ | ஒ | ஏ | ஓ | |||
Open | a | (æː) | aː | (ɔː) | ||
அ | ஐ | ஆ | ஒள |
Consonants
Tamil consonants are known as meyyeḻuttu (mey—body, eḻuttu—letters). The consonants are classified into three categories with six in each category: valliṉam—hard, melliṉam—soft or Nasal, and iṭayiṉam—medium.
Unlike most Indian languages, Tamil does not have aspirated consonants. In addition, the voicing of plosives is governed by strict rules in centamiḻ. Plosives are unvoiced if they occur word-initially or doubled. Elsewhere they are voiced, with a few becoming fricatives intervocalically. Nasals and approximants are always voiced.[63]
A chart of the Tamil consonant phonemes in the International Phonetic Alphabet follows:[64]
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | p (b) | t̪ (d̪) | ʈ (ɖ) | tʃ (dʒ) | k (g) | |
ப | த | ட | ச | க | ||
Nasal | m | n̪ | ṉ | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ |
ம | ந | ன | ண | ஞ | ங | |
Rhotic | ɾ̪ | r | ||||
ர | ற | |||||
Lateral | l̪ | ɭ | ||||
ல | ள | |||||
Approximant | ʋ | ɻ | j | |||
வ | ழ | ய |
Phonemes in brackets are voiced equivalents. Both voiceless and voiced forms are represented by the same character in Tamil, and voicing is determined by context. The sounds /f/ and /ʂ/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, being found only in loanwords and frequently replaced by native sounds. There are well-defined rules for elision in Tamil categorised into different classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.
Aytam
Classical Tamil also had a phoneme called the āytam, written as ‘ஃ’. Tamil grammarians of the time classified it as a dependent phoneme (or restricted phoneme[36] ) (cārpeḻuttu), but it is very rare in modern Tamil. The rules of pronunciation given in the Tolkāppiyam, a text on the grammar of Classical Tamil, suggest that the āytam could have glottalised the sounds it was combined with. It has also been suggested that the āytam was used to represent the voiced implosive (or closing part or the first half) of geminated voiced plosives inside a word.[65]
Grammar
Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, col, poruḷ, yāppu, aṇi. Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry.[66]
Similar to other Dravidian languages, Tamil is an agglutinative language.[67] Tamil is characterised by its use of retroflex consonants, like the other Dravidian languages. It also uses a liquid l (ழ) (example Tamil), which is also found in Malayalam (example Kozhikode), but disappeared from Kannada at around 1000 AD (but present in Unicode), and was never present in Telugu.[68] Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes.
Morphology
Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (thiṇai)—the "rational" (uyarthiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai)—which include a total of five classes (pāl, which literally means ‘gender’). Humans and deities are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (pāl)—masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes - irrational singular and irrational plural. The pāl is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form.[69]
Suffixes are used to perform the functions of cases or postpositions. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into eight cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit. These were the nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative. Modern grammarians argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case.[70] Tamil nouns can take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to the demonstratives in English.
Tamil verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffixes, which show person, number, mood, tense and voice.
- Person and number are indicated by suffixing the oblique case of the relevant pronoun. The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particles, which are added to the stem.
- Tamil has two voices. The first indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem.
- Tamil has three simple tenses—past, present, and future—indicated by the suffixes, as well as a series of perfects indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morphemes which mark tense categories. Tamil verbs also mark evidentiality, through the addition of the hearsay clitic ām.[71]
Traditional grammars of Tamil do not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, including both of them under the category uriccol, although modern grammarians tend to distinguish between them on morphological and syntactical grounds.[72] Tamil has a large number of ideophones that act as adverbs indicating the way the object in a given state "says" or "sounds".[73]
Tamil has no articles. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context.[74] In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns நாம் nām (we), நமது namadhu (our) that include the addressee and exclusive pronouns நாங்கள் nāṅgaḷ (we), எமது emadhu (our) that do not.[74]
Syntax
Tamil is a consistently head-final language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with typical word order Subject Object Verb (SOV).[75] However, Tamil also exhibits extensive scrambling (word order variation), so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different pragmatic effects. Tamil has postpositions rather than prepositions. Demonstratives and modifiers precede the noun within the noun phrase. Subordinate clauses precede the verb of the matrix clause.
Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb—such as mudindhuvittathu ("completed")—or only a subject and object, without a verb such as athu eṉ veedu ("That, my house"). Tamil does not have a copula (a linking verb equivalent to the word is). The word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning more easily.
Vocabulary
A strong sense of linguistic purism is found in Modern Tamil.[76] Much of the modern vocabulary derives from classical Tamil,[citation needed] as well as governmental and non-governmental institutions, such as the Tamil Virtual University, and Annamalai University.[clarification needed]
These institutions have generated technical dictionaries for Tamil containing neologisms and words derived from Tamil roots to replace loan words from English and other languages. Since mediaeval times, there has been a strong resistance to the use of Sanskrit words in Tamil.[77] As a result, the Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words used in modern Tamil are, unlike in some other Dravidian languages, restricted mainly to some spiritual terminology and abstract nouns.[78] Besides Sanskrit, there are a few loan words from Persian and Arabic implying there were trade ties in ancient times.[79] Many loan words from Portuguese and Dutch and English were introduced into colloquial and written Tamil during the colonial period.
Words of Tamil origin occur in other languages. Popular examples in English are cash (kaasu, meaning "money"), cheroot (curuṭṭu meaning "rolled up"),[80] mango (from mangai),[80] mulligatawny (from miḷaku taṉṉir meaning pepper water), pariah (from paraiyar), ginger (from ingi), curry (from kari),[81] rice (from arici) and catamaran (from kaṭṭu maram, கட்டு மரம், meaning "bundled logs"),[80] pandal (shed, shelter, booth),[80] tyer (curd),[80] coir (rope).[82]
See also
- Arwi language
- Date of the Tolkappiyam
- Languages of India
- List of Indian languages by total speakers
- Indian languages in Singapore
- Official languages of India
References
- Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp.
- Herman Tieken(2001) Kavya in South India: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry. Groningen: Forsten 2001
- Hart, George L. (1975), The poems of ancient Tamil : their milieu and their Sanskrit counterparts. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0520026721
- Lehmann, Thomas (1989). A Grammar of Modern Tamil. Pondicherry, Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture.
- Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003). Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. Cambridge, Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674012275
- Johann Philip Fabricius (1933 and 1972), Tamil and English Dictionary. based on J.P. Fabricius Malabar-English Dictionary, 3rd and 4th Edition Revised and Enlarged by David Bexell. Evangelical Lutheran Mission Publishing House, Tranquebar; called Tranquebar Dictionary.
- Pope, GU (1868). A Tamil hand-book, or, Full introduction to the common dialect of that language. (3rd ed.). Madras, Higginbotham & Co.
- Rajam, VS (1992). A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry. Philadelphia, The American Philosophical Society. ISBN 087169199X
- Schiffman, Harold F. (1998). "Standardization or restandardization: The case for ‘Standard’ Spoken Tamil". Language in Society 27, 359–385.
- Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521771110.
Footnotes
- ^ a b c Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
- ^ a b "Top 30 Languages by Number of Native Speakers: sourced from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 15th ed. (2005)". Vistawide - World Languages & Cultures. Retrieved 2007-04-03.
- ^ "Languages Spoken by More Than 10 Million People". MSN Encarta. Retrieved 2007-04-02.
- ^ "Official languages". UNESCO. Retrieved 2007-05-10.
- ^ "Official languages of Tamilnadu". Tamilnadu Government. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
- ^ "Official languages of Srilanka". State department, US. Retrieved 2007-05-01.
- ^ "Official languages and national language". Constitution of the Republic of Singapore. Government of Singapore. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
- ^ George Weber (1997). Geoffrey Kingscott (ed.). "TOP LANGUAGES" (pdf). Language Today. 2: 87–99. Retrieved 2007-04-02.
{{cite journal}}
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- ^ a b The Hindu. Sanskrit to be declared classical language. October 28, 2005. Retrieved on 2007-08-16.
- ^ Kamil V. Zvelebil (1992). Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature. BRILL Academic. p. 12. ISBN 9004093656.
p12 - ...the most acceptable periodisation which has so far been suggested for the development of Tamil writing seems to me to be that of A Chidambaranatha Chettiar (1907 - 1967): 1. Sangam Literature - 200BC to AD 200; 2. Post Sangam literature - AD 200 - AD 600; 3. Early Medieval literature - AD 600 to AD 1200; 4. Later Medieval literature - AD 1200 to AD 1800; 5. Pre-Modern literature - AD 1800 to 1900...
- ^ Maloney, Clarence (1970), "The Beginnings of Civilization in South India", The Journal of Asian Studies, 23 (3): 603–616 at p. 610
- ^ a b Herman Tieken(2001) Kavya in South India: Old Tamil Cankam Poetry. Groningen: Forsten 2001
- ^ a b c Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp. Cite error: The named reference "caldwell" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b Takahashi, Takanobu. 1995. Tamil love poetry and poetics. Brill's Indological library, v. 9. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Cite error: The named reference "takahashi" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ B. G. L. Swamy. "The Date of the Tolkappiyam: A Retrospect." Annals of Oriental Research (Madras), Silver Jubilee Volume: 292-317
- ^ a b Kamil Veith Zvelebil, Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature, pp12
- ^ a b See K.A. Nilakanta Sastry, A History of South India, OUP (1955) pp 105
- ^ Narasimhachar, R. 1988. History of Kannada literature: readership lectures. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, pp 8-11.
- ^ Kamil Zvelebil. "Google Books version of the book The Smile of Murugan by Kamil Zvelebil". Retrieved 2007-05-22.
- ^ A.K. Ramanujam and V. Dharwadker (Ed.), The collected essays of A.K. Ramanujam, Oxford University Press 2000, p.111
- ^ India 2001: A Reference Annual 2001. Compiled and edited by Research, Reference and Training Division, Publications Division, New Delhi: Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
- ^ a b M. B. Emeneau (1956). "India as a Linguistic Area". Language. 32 (1): 5. doi:10.2307/410649.
Of the four literary Dravidian languages, Tamil has voluminous records dating back at least two millennia.
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ignored (help) - ^ Burrow, Thomas (2001). The Sanskrit Language. Motilal Banarsidass Publications. p. 337. ISBN 8120817672.
…In the case of Tamil the literary tradition goes back for at least two thousand years…
{{cite book}}
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(help) - ^ Caldwell, Robert
- ^ Morrison, Kathleen D. (1997). "Inscriptions as Artifacts: Precolonial South India and the Analysis of Texts". Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 4 (3): 219, 224.
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suggested) (help) - ^ Dating of Indian literature is largely based on relative dating relying on internal evidences with a few anchors. I. Mahadevan’s dating of Pukalur inscription proves some of the Sangam verses. See George L. Hart, "Poems of Ancient Tamil, University of Berkeley Press, 1975, p.7-8
- ^ George Hart, "Some Related Literary Conventions in Tamil and Indo-Aryan and Their Significance" Journal of the American Oriental Society, 94:2 (Apr - Jun 1974), pp. 157-167.
- ^ Thomas Lehmann, "Old Tamil" in Sanford Steever (ed.), The Dravidian Languages Routledge, 1998 at p. 75
- ^ Rajam, V. S. 1992. A reference grammar of classical Tamil poetry: 150 B.C.-pre-fifth/sixth century A.D.. Memoirs of the American philosophical society, v. 199. Philadelphia, Pa: American Philosophical Society. p12
- ^ Dr. M. Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature, (Translated from Tamil by E.Sa. Viswanathan), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1988 p.40
- ^ Marr, John Ralston (1985), The Eight Anthologies, Madras: Institute of Asian Studies at pp. 370-373.
- ^ Varadarajan, M. (1988), A history of Tamil literature, Madras: Sahitya Akademi at pp. 102-119}}
- ^ Varadarajan, M. (1988), A history of Tamil literature, Madras: Sahitya Akademi at pp. 155-157}}
- ^ Prof. A.K. Perumal, Manorama Yearbook (Tamil) 2005 pp.302-318
- ^ a b Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge University Press. p. 140. ISBN 0521771110. Cite error: The named reference "krishnamurti" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ Freeman, Rich (1998). "Rubies and Coral: The Lapidary Crafting of Language in Kerala". The Journal of Asian Studies. 57 (1): 38-65 at p.39.
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A. Govindankutty Menon (1990). "Some Observations on the Sub-Group Tamil-Malayalam: Differential Realizations of the Cluster *nt". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 53 (1): 87–99.
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(help) - ^ Andronov, M.S. (1970). Dravidian Languages. Nauka Publishing House. p. 21.
- ^ See Vaidyanathan’s analysis of an early medieval text in S. Vaidyanathan, "Indo-Aryan loan words in the Civakacintamani" Journal of the American Oriental Society 87:4. (Oct - Dec 1967), pp. 430-434.
- ^ "Literature in all Dravidian languages owes a great deal to Sanskrit, the magic wand whose touch raised each of the languages from a level of patois to that of a literary idiom" (Sastri 1955, p309); Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley: University of California Press; "The author endeavours to demonstrate that the entire Sangam poetic corpus follows the "Kavya" form of Sanskrit poetry"-Tieken, Herman Joseph Hugo. 2001. Kāvya in South India: old Tamil Caṅkam poetry. Groningen: Egbert Forsten; Vaiyapuri Pillai in Takahashi, Takanobu. 1995, p18.
- ^ Sheldon Pollock, "The Sanskrit Cosmopolis 300-1300: Transculturation, vernacularisation and the question of ideology" in Jan E.M. Houben (ed.), The ideology and status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the history of the Sanskrit language (E.J. Brill, Leiden: 1996) at pp. 209-217.
- ^ Trautmann, Thomas R. (1999), South Asian Research, 19 (1): 53–70
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suggested) (help) at p. 64; Caldwell, Robert. 1974. A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corp, p 50; Ellis, F.W. (1820), "Note to the introduction" in Campbell, A.D., A grammar of the Teloogoo language. Madras: College Press, pp. 29-30. - ^ See Ramaswamy’s analysis of one such text, the Tamil viṭututu, in Sumathi Ramaswamy, "Language of the People in the World of Gods: Ideologies of Tamil before the Nation" The Journal of Asian Studies, 57:1. (Feb. 1998), pp. 66-92.
- ^ Dr. M. Varadarajan, A History of Tamil Literature, (Translated from Tamil by E.Sa. Viswanathan), Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, 1988- p.12 "Since then the movement has been popularly known as the tanittamil iyakkam or the Pure Tamil movement among the Tamil scholars."
- ^ Ramaswamy, Sumathy (1997). "Laboring for language". Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891-1970. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Nevertheless, even impressionistically-speaking, the marked decline in the use of foreign words, especially of Sanskritic origin, in Tamil literary, scholarly, and even bureaucratic circles over the past half century is quite striking.
{{cite book}}
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suggested) (help) - ^ McMahon, Suzanne. "Overview of the South Asian Diaspora". University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2008-04-23.
- ^ Ramamoorthy, L. Multilingualism and Second Language Acquisition and Learning in Pondicherry. Retrieved on 2007-08-16.
- ^ Younger, Paul. Tamil Hinduism in Indenture-based Societies. Retrieved on 2007-08-16.
- ^ Sunwani, Vijay K. Amazing Andamans and North-East India: A Panoramic View of States, Societies and Cultures. Retrieved on 2007-08-16.
- ^
"Classic case of politics of language". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2007-04-20.
Members of the committee felt that the pressure was being brought on it because of the compulsions of the Congress and the UPA government to appease its ally, M. Karunanidhi's DMK.
- ^ S.S. Vasan. "Recognising a classic". The Hindu. Retrieved 2007-05-14.
- ^ Thirumalai, Ph.D., M. S. (2004). "Tradition, Modernity and Impact of Globalization - Whither Will Tamil Go?". Language in India. 4. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
{{cite journal}}
: Unknown parameter|month=
ignored (help) - ^ Arokianathan, S. Writing and Diglossic: A Case Study of Tamil Radio Plays. Retrieved on 2007-08-16.
- ^ Francis Britto. "Diglossia: A Study of the Theory, with Application to Tamil," Language, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 152-155. doi:10.2307/414796
- ^ Thomas Lehmann, "Old Tamil" in Sanford Steever (ed.), The Dravidian Languages Routledge, 1998 at p. 75; E. Annamalai and S. Steever, "Modern Tamil" in ibid. at pp. 100-128.
- ^ Kamil Zvelebil, "Some features of Ceylon Tamil" Indo-Iranian Journal 9:2 (June 1996) pp. 113-138.
- ^ Thiru. Mu. Kovintācāriyar, Vāḻaiyaṭi vāḻai Lifco, Madras, 1978 at pp. 26-39.
- ^ "Tamil dialects". Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 2007-03-28.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, classifies Tamil dialects into two broad sociolects, Brahmin and non-Brahmin. See Tamil language.
- ^ Harold Schiffman, "Diglossia as a Sociolinguistic Situation", in Florian Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. London: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1997 at pp. 205 et seq.
- ^ Harold Schiffman, "Standardization or restandardization: The case for ‘Standard’ Spoken Tamil". Language in Society 27 (1998), pp. 359–385.
- ^ Fowler, Murray, "The Segmental Phonemes of Sanskritized Tamil", Language (3): 360–367
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suggested) (help) at p. 360. - ^ See e.g. the pronunciation guidelines in G.U. Pope (1868). A Tamil hand-book, or, Full introduction to the common dialect of that language. (3rd ed.). Madras, Higginbotham & Co.
- ^ E. Annamalai and S.B. Steever, Modern Tamil in S.B. Steevar (Ed.)The Dravidian Languages, London and New York, Routledge 1998, p100-128
- ^ See generally F. B. J. Kuiper, "Two problems of old Tamil phonology", Indo-Iranian Journal 2:3 (September 1958) pp. 191-224, esp. pp. 191-207.
- ^ ""Five fold grammar of Tamil"". Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ ""Tamil is an agglutinative language"". Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ ""A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry: 150 B.C.-Pre-Fifth/Sixth Century A.D. By V. S. Rajam"". Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ ""Classes of nouns in Tamil"". Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ Harold Schiffman, "Standardization and Restandardization: the case of Spoken Tamil." Language in Society 27:3 (1998) pp. 359-385 and esp. pp.374-375.
- ^ Steever, Sanford B. (2002), "Direct and indirect discourse in Tamil", in Güldemann, Tom; von Roncador, Manfred (eds.), Reported Discourse: A Meeting Ground for Different Linguistic Domains, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 91–108, ISBN 9027229589 at p. 105.
- ^ Lehmann, Thomas (1989). A Grammar of Modern Tamil. Pondicherry: Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. at pp. 9-11
- ^ Swiderski, Richard M. (1996). The metamorphosis of English: versions of other languages. New York: Bergin & Garvey. p. 61. ISBN 0-89789-468-5.
- ^ a b Annamalai, E.; Steever, S.B. (1998), "Modern Tamil", in Steever, Sanford B. (ed.), The Dravidian Languages, London: Routledge, pp. pp. 100-128, ISBN 0415100232
{{citation}}
:|pages=
has extra text (help) at p. 109. - ^ ""Tamil is a head-final language"". Retrieved 2007-06-01.
- ^ Sumathi Ramaswamy, En/Gendering Language: The Poetics of Tamil Identity" Comparative Studies in Society and History 35:4. (Oct. 1993), pp. 683-725.
- ^ Sumathi Ramaswamy, "Language of the People in the World of Gods: Ideologies of Tamil before the Nation" The Journal of Asian Studies, 57:1. (Feb. 1998), pp. 66-92.
- ^ Dr.T.P. Meenakshisundaram, A History of Tamil Language, Sarvodaya Ilakkiya Pannai, 1982 (translated) p. 241-2
- ^ Silapadhigaaram, Manimekalai, P.T.Srinivasa Iyengar’s "History of the Tamils: from the earliest times to 600 AD", Madras, 1929
- ^ a b c d e "Oxford English Dictionary Online". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 2007-04-14.
- ^ "Entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 2008-04-17.
- ^ "Entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved 2007-04-14.
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- General
- Ethnologue report
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- UCLA Tamil Profile
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- Online learning resources
- Tamil Language In Context – A project providing online Tamil lessons, including video lessons.
- Tamil Virtual University – Online Education Basic level to B.A. Tamilology for Tamil only.
- Web Assisted Learning and Teaching of Tamil – University of Pennsylvania’s web based lessons for learning Tamil.