Official Language of - Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry
Spoken by - 60 million
Tamil- The Ancient Language of Dravidian Speech
Ancient Indian literature is not all about the Vedas; it's about Sangam literature too. Tamil, the oldest and truest of the Dravidian speeches, boasts of this literary tradition of more than 2,200 years, the most remarkable body of secular poetry extant in India.
While other pre-Aryan languages were happily courting Sanskrit and Prakrit (600 BC-600AD), Old Tamil stood firm in its corner refusing to yield. However, the evolutionary story of the language and script are a controversy among scholars even today.
The Sangam composition
The Sangam compositions are anthologies of poems grouped into two the Eight Collections (Ettuttokai) and the Ten Idyls (Pattu-p-pattu). There are also few individual long narrative poems (Kavyas).
Based on two distinct themes, akam (romantic) and puram (martial), the poems are replete with imageries of seasons, places, plants and animals, enabling scholars to know the world of these ancient poets. The literary output till about 500AD is simply amazing.
Lay The Foundation of Bhakti Cult
By the next century, Shaiva (in praise of Shiva) and Vaishanva (in praise of Vishnu) writers began rising from sleep, leading to a religious renaissance. It was the turn of devotional literature to hog the limelight. The corpus of Shaiva hymns, sung till today, were compiled in Tirumurarais (early 11th century). The Vaishnava saints lay the foundation of the Bhakti cult not only for South India (500-1000AD), but for the whole of India. Their songs were put together in the colossal Nal-ayira-p-pirapantam or the 'Book of 4000 Hymns'.
The Poetry
The following centuries were the age of learned commentaries on Sangam poetry, Shaiva and Vaishnava philosophies, and literature influenced by Sanskrit. Some of these were the esteemed Bharatham by Villiputthurar, Thiruppuhazh (hymns) by Arunagirinathar and translations of many Puranas.
Some brilliant stray verses of this period have been collected in late anthologies like Kalamegham, Satthimutthapulavar and Padikkasu Thambiran. European Christian missionaries also took to Tamil in the 16th century, and the first book was printed in 1579. Muslim poets like Sakkari Pulavar and Umaru Pulavar brought new themes in Tamil writings in the 18th century.
Modern Tamil Literature
A modern trend in Tamil literature was begun in the 19th century by a group of writers influenced by English, Vedanayakam Pillai (1824-1889) being among them who wrote the first original novels and dramas.
A literary giant of the 20th century was Subramania Bharathi, whose poems and patriotic songs are well known. Although the development of prose has been pretty slow, the historical romances of C R Srinivasa Aiyangar, social novels like Padmavati and Vijaya Marttandam of A.
s Madhavayya, Kamalambal by Rajam Iyer and S. Venkataramani's Murugam are prominent. The short story was popularized by V V S Iyer and Rajaji, while Sambanda Mudaliar's adaptations of Shakespeare's plays contributed to Tamil drama greatly.
Tamil is one of the major languages of southern India. It is spoken principally in the state of Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras), located on the eastern coast and extending down to the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent. There are about 60 million Tamil speakers in India. In addition it is spoken by about 4 million people in northeastern Sri Lanka, about one million in Malaysia, and in smaller colonies in Singapore, Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, Guyana, Zanzibar, and parts of East Africa.
Tamil is the oldest and most richly developed of the Dravidian languages. The origin of the alphabet is uncertain, though it is believed to be about 1,500 years old. Curry and mulligatawny are two Tamil words that have entered the English language. The latter is a combina-tion of the Tamil words for "pepper" and "water."
Tamil is also spoken/used in the following countries:
Fiji (Republic of), Guyana, India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Trinidad & Tobago, Zanzibar & Pemba (Tanganyika)
Tamil is the official language of Tamil Nadu state and one of the 18 languages mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. Tamil is one of the classical languages of the world, with a rich heritage of literature. It is the most widely spoken language in Tamil Nadu. Besides Tamil Nadu, Tamil is also spoken by a number of people in Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mauritius and Malaysia. The antiquity of Tamil is comparable to Sanskrit. Tamil is written in a derivative of the southern 'Brahmi' script. The alphabet of Tamil is unique (phonetic). That is, in Tamil language letters represent sounds, rather than ideas, as is the case in the 'Mandarin' language of China.
Tamil is spoken by most of the people while around ten percent of the people residing in Tamil Nadu speak Telugu. Other languages that are popular in the state are Kannada, Urdu and Malayalam (though they are spoken by much smaller percentage). The influence of the Malayalam language is more prominent in the west while people residing mostly in the North Eastern part, bordering Karnataka, speak Kannada. Besides the above-mentioned languages, English is also spoken as a subsidiary language in Tamil Nadu.
The University of Pennsylvania Web Site for Learning and Teaching Tamil is a project of the Penn Language Center and is funded partially by a grant from the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning, with the joint participation of Tamil-teaching faculty at the Universities of Chicago, Cornell, and Pennsylvania. The Project members are Prof. Harold F. Schiffman and Dr. Vasu Renganathan
The comprehensive teaching modules include a Tamil Writing Project, an Invocation on Tamil Goddess, an Introduction to the Tamil Alphabet that can be used to practice making the various characters that make up the Tamil alphabet, exercises based on Reader lessons, some simple Conversational Exchanges, and Modern Short Stories for reading comprehension.
Learn Tamil Through English by Sendhil Kumar Cheran, a second generation Tamil born and raised in the United States, contains PDF-formatted lessons for teaching Tamil to English-speaking second generation Tamils. The lessons are based on the method used to teach Tamil as a foreign language at universities in the United States.
The site is a valuable learning resource for second-generation Tamils. It does not simply concentrate on teaching the alphabet and vocabulary words but contains lessons that are designed specifically for teaching sentence formation. In his Introduction, Sendhil Kumar Cheran writes:
"The human brain is hard-wired to learn language from birth. Young children have an innate ability to absorb and internalize the language(s) being spoken around them. As children get older and become teenagers, their ability to quickly learn new languages diminishes greatly. Whereas a language immersion environment is all that is needed to "teach" language to a young child, the older child and teenager needs to learn new languages through a more structured approach. The lessons found at this website will provide the structure for learning Thamil through English. By learning the grammar contained in the lessons, learners will be able to use their knowledge of English to produce sentences in Thamil.
These lessons are based on the highly effective method used to teach Thamil at universities and colleges in the United States of America. The method was developed by linguists fluent in English and Thamil, and it makes use of the student's fluency in English to teach written Thamil. This knowledge of written Thamil can then be very easily applied to learn the spoken language. I was born and raised in the United States and never spoke Thamil until I was nearly 18 years old. I was first introduced to this method during the summer of 1997, and I had achieved fluency in the written and spoken language by the summer of 1999. To get an idea of my level of language proficiency, read my articles in Thamil."
How to write in Tamil using Anjal Font website is maintained by Ram Ravindran.
The multi media Kalvi Tamil Learning Software by Softech Creations teaches Tamil through English. It includes programs for teaching (with sound pronunciation) the Tamil vowels (a... au), consonants (ka, nga, cha...na), how compound letters are formed, numbers, a word game and three letter words in a variety of game/video formats.
Tamil has been taught as part of Indological Studies at Uppasala University, Sweden since 1967. Other Universities where Tamil is taught include Heidelberg , Cologne and London
amil is probably the oldest language in the world. It is a well developed and sweet language.
The author has evolved a right way to teach this language in as simple a way as possible.
The book consists of five parts - each part having separate lessons. The first part introduces the alphabet, vowels, consonants and special letters. The second part deals with simple words. The third part is the most important as it contains every word of daily usage. The fourth part is about sentences and conversations. The last part contains letters, essays and new words.
This book is a capsule easiest course to learn, know, understand, read, speak, write and to converse in Tamil through the medium of English.
History
The origins of Tamil are not transparent, but it developed and flourished as an independent language with a rich literature in India for more than 2300 years. Tamil has one of the largest number of epigraphical inscriptions in India, estimated to be 25,000. 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. 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 3rd century CE. The earliest extant literary text is the Tolkappiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, dated on linguistic grounds to the 1st or 2nd century BCE.
Geographic distribution
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, 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 Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, and Mauritius. Many people in Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, 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. Tamil is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It is one of 23 nationally recognised languages in the Constitution of India. Tamil is an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore. It enjoys constitutional recognition in South Africa, Mauritius, and Malaysia.
In addition, with the creation in 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the government of India, Tamil became the first legally recognised classical language following a campaign by several Tamil associations supported by academics from India and abroad, most notably Professor George L. Hart, who occupies the Chair in Tamil Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The recognition was announced by the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004.
Dialects
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. Thus the word for "here" - i?ku in Centamil (the classic variety) - has evolved into i?ku in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore, inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, i?kane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, i?ku??u in the dialect of Ramanathapuram, i?kale and i?ka?e in various northern dialects and i?kai in some dialects of Sri Lanka.
Although most Tamil dialects do not differ very 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, and use many other words slightly differently. The dialect of the Iyers of Palakkad has a large number of Malayalam loanwords, has also been influenced by Malayalam syntax and also has a distinct Malayalam accent. Finally, Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai, a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values.
Tamil dialects vary according to both region and community. 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.
The Ethnologue lists twenty-two current dialects of Tamil, including Adi Dravida, Aiyar, Aiyangar, Arava, Burgandi, Kasuva, Kongar, Korava, Korchi, Madrasi, Parikala, Pattapu Bhasha, Sri Lanka Tamil, Malaya Tamil, Burma Tamil, South Africa Tamil, Tigalu, Harijan, Sankethi, Hebbar, Tirunelveli, Tamil Muslim and Madurai.
Although not a dialect, the Tamil spoken in Chennai (Capital of Tamil Nadu) infuses English words and is called Madras Bashai.
Spoken and literary variants
In addition to its various dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (cakattami), a modern literary and formal style (centami), and a modern colloquial form (kountami). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centami with a vocabulary drawn from cakattami, or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking kountami
In modern times, centami 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, ko?untami has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centami Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in kountami, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of kountami in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' kountami is based on 'educated non-brahmin speech', rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. In Sri Lanka the standard is based on the dialect of Jaffna.
Learn Tamil
http://www.tamilnation.org/index.htm
http://www.learntamil.com/
http://www.tamil.net/learn-tamil/
http://www.unc.edu/~echeran/paadanool/
http://www.tamil-online.info/
http://www.southasia.upenn.edu/tamil/index.html
http://www.languageshome.com/
http://www.google.com/intl/ta/
Wiki Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language