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92-503: Poovizhi Vasalile ( transl.  Eye at the door ) is a 1987 Indian Tamil -language thriller film directed by Fazil . The film stars Sathyaraj , Sujitha and Karthika , with Raghuvaran , Babu Antony , Nizhalgal Ravi , T. S. Raghavendra and Rajyalakshmi playing supporting roles. It is a remake of the 1986 Malayalam film Poovinu Puthiya Poonthennal . The film was released on 14 January 1987 and attained cult status. A deaf-mute boy Benny and his mother Stella witness

184-468: 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 many suffixes, which would require several words or

276-480: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without

368-740: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and

460-502: A Tamil population of 200,000 at one point in the country's history but since the end of the Second World War the number has fallen. The affluence of the Tamil community could be gauged by the existence of Dandayuthapani temples in 32 towns, the functioning of 50 Tamil primary schools, and the circulation of two Tamil newspapers, "Rasika Ranjani" and "Thondan", both of which were banned as of 1966. Tamils were brought to Indonesia by

552-547: A bar along with their boss. First, the police arrest Jeeva for kidnapping Raja and for hiding his mother Stella, but the police discover Stella's body with Raja's help and Yamuna understands the boy is none other than her sister's son Benny. Thereafter, Anand and Ranjith kidnap Raja from Yamuna, so Jeeva kills the murderers and goes to jail. The soundtrack was composed by Ilaiyaraaja . Jayamanmadhan of Kalki appreciated Fazil for being able to visually convey what he wanted, but said Ilaiyaraaja's music, Raghuvaran's acting and

644-511: A family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of

736-439: A man getting killed by Anand and Ranjith. So the killers also killed the mother, but Benny manages to escape from them. Jeeva is an alcoholic who is not able to recover from the tragic death of his family. Jeeva finds Benny when he is sleeping in the trash and adopts him as Raja, naming him after his son. Soon, he meets Yamuna and becomes close friends without knowing that she is Raja's aunt. Raja recognises his mother's murderer in

828-591: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil

920-650: A number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions

1012-512: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with

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1104-455: A sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish Tamil Diaspora Four groups make up the bulk of the Tamil diaspora: colonial-era descendants of migrants to Southeast Asia , South Africa, East Africa ,

1196-620: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of

1288-595: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who

1380-458: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on

1472-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to

1564-622: Is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil

1656-682: Is a full-time radio station, Oli 96.8 , and a full-fledged TV channel, Vasantham . Sepoy troops from Madras (now Chennai , Tamil Nadu ), arrived in Manila , Philippines with the British expedition and occupation between 1762 and 1764 during the Seven Years' War . When the British withdrew, many of the Sepoys mutinied and refused to leave. Virtually all had taken Filipina brides (or soon did so). They settled in what

1748-563: Is a significant number of Tamils in Africa, especially Kenya. At least 30% of the Tamils in Africa live in Kenya, followed by Uganda. Most of these people are migrants, while some have been living there for generations. Tamil migration to South Africa started as from 1860, first as indentured labor and in the first batch 340 Tamils were there. Now there are more than 250,000 Tamils spread over in many cities,

1840-662: Is also a popular Mariamman temple . The former Prime Minister of Guyana , Moses Veerasammy Nagamootoo is of Tamil descent. Hindu Tamil Indians make up the majority of the East Berbice-Corentyne region in Guyana. Tamils have been in Trinidad and Tobago since the 1840s. The first Tamils arrived in Trinidad and Tobago as indentured laborers who were brought by the British to work on the sugarcane and other agricultural estates. There

1932-405: Is also home for a substantial number of Tamils who are recent migrants. The first Tamil immigrant to Norway , Anthony Rajendram from Gurunagar , came to Norway in 1956. The majority of the early immigrants had contacts to Rajendram, and came as immigrant worker. Most had their origins in a few villages on the edge of Jaffna town such as Gurunagar , Ariyalai and Navanthurai . This first group

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2024-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current 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 (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel

2116-401: Is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages ,

2208-563: 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. Tamil words consist of

2300-501: Is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela , the Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to a Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that

2392-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change

2484-409: 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,

2576-525: Is home to thousands of migrants from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and over 75.000 migrants immigrated to the Middle East in 2012 alone. However, statistics on the numbers of migrants are scarce. Qatar is the home for about 200,000 Tamils mostly from Tamil Nadu. In December 2000, the "Qatar Tamil Sangam" was inaugurated for conducting Tamil cultural programmes, teaching of Thirukkural and for conducting Tamil elocution contests for Tamil children. According to

2668-410: 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 , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard

2760-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,

2852-632: Is now Cainta, Rizal , just east of Metro Manila . The region in and around Cainta still has many Sepoy descendants. Vietnam had a small minority of about 3,000 Tamils mostly in Saigon (nowadays Ho Chi Minh City ). Dandayuthapani, Subramaniam Swamy and Mariyamman temples are located near Bến Thành Market . They were called Chitty , Chà Chetty, Xã tri, Xét ty but had left the country after 1975 incident . Thailand has about 10,000 Tamils living there while there are 1,000 Tamils in Cambodia . The Middle East

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2944-577: Is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as a classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate

3036-540: Is taught from primary to pre-university level and 100% of them learn the language with interest. The cultural needs of the community are catered to well by round the clock radio/television channels and by numerous Tamil publications - literary and religious. Several Canadian universities contain large Tamil Student Associations (TSAs). As per the 2021 Canadian census , Tamil Canadians number approximately 240,000 and account for roughly 0.7% of Canada's population. There are many more pro-active voluntary organisations keeping

3128-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which

3220-772: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only

3312-551: The Caribbean , and Fiji ; recent, educated Tamil immigrants primarily to the U.S. , Australia , and the U.K. ; Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who resettled primarily in Canada , Western and Northern Europe , and Oceania between the 1980s and 2010s; and recent Tamil migration to the Gulf states of the Middle East as labor. Tamils have a long tradition of seafaring and a history of overseas migration to foreign lands due to close proximity to

3404-644: The Crown colony of Singapore and British Malaya as laborers, army clerks and merchants. During and after the devastation of WW2 , many Tamils and other Indians from Burma fled to India to Manipur , and Tamil Nadu. They established Burmese refugee colonies that still exist today and maintain an identity as Burmese returnees. In Sri Lanka the Sinhalese nationalist SLFP party disfranchised all Indian origin Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and returned 600,000 back to India under

3496-512: The Indian Ocean throughout ancient and medieval times. Many of the Tamil emigrants who left the shores of Tamil Nadu before the 18th century mixed with other ethnicities in other regions. In the medieval period Tamils emigrated as soldiers, traders and laborers settled in Kerala (specially Palakkad ), Karnataka , Maharashtra , Sri Lanka, Thailand , Malaysia , Indonesia and intermixed well with

3588-458: The Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name

3680-500: The Seychelles for purposes of timber trade followed by settlements of Tamils from Tamil Nadu for trading purposes. Later, a trading community was in place here mainly of Tamils and many of them got integrated with the local community. Now there about 4000 Tamils in the trading business as well as in other professions. Canada has a large concentration of Sri Lankan Tamils, almost 90% of the Tamil population - amounting to 120,000. Tamil

3772-894: The Sri Lankan Mukkuvars , the Sri Lankan Chetties , the Bharatha people , the Karava -speaking Sinhalese , the Durava , the Demala Gattara and the Salagama castes of Sri Lanka . An early emigrant group that is not well documented is the Tamil Muslims who emigrated in considerable numbers to the Sultanate of Malacca (in present-day Malaysia ) and were instrumental in spreading Islam amongst

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3864-534: The Srimavo-Shastri Pact signed between India and Sri Lanka. Many were repatriated to the Nilgiris region's tea estates. They too maintain a distinct identity as Ceylon returnees in Tamil Nadu. Black July has created another stream of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka refugees in India who have languished for the last 20 years in refugee camps throughout Tamil Nadu while many others have integrated with

3956-815: The United Kingdom (UK) as of 2008 , with a 2006 Human Rights Watch report putting the number of Sri Lankan Tamils in the UK at 110,000. Migration of significant numbers of Tamils to the UK started with labor migrants in the 1940s. These were joined by students moving to the UK for education in the 1970s, and by refugees fleeing the Sri Lankan Civil War in the 1980s and 1990s. About 302,000 Tamils live in France , including 125,000 in Metropolitan France . The first Tamils to arrive in France came from Pondichéry when it

4048-584: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to

4140-486: 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. 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. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak

4232-702: The 18th century). Some of the Tamil groups (especially the Chettiyars, Pillais, Muslims) emigrated as commercial migrants. They then dominated the trade and finance in Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya , Tanzania and other places. The first Indian to own a merchant ship during the British times comes from this group. These Tamilians integrated and assimilated well with their adopted countries, and became well integrated into local populations in Mauritius , South Africa, Guyana , and Fiji . On

4324-444: The 1983 pogroms . In the second half of the 20th century, Tamils from India migrated as skilled professionals to various parts of India and countries like UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UK, USA, Singapore and so on. Some of them got citizenship of respective countries but still having strong family and cultural ties with Tamil Nadu, than those who migrated before 1950, who lost touch with their ancestral links in Tamil Nadu. There

4416-562: The 19th century, the Madras Presidency (of which the Tamil Nadu region was affected by severe famines, such as the Great Famine of 1876–78 . Tamil Nadu was both politically and economically weak. The British thus made use of hungry Tamil workers for their plantations all over the world - Malaysia, Singapore, Myanmar, Mauritius, South Africa , Kenya , Tanzania , Fiji and also Sri Lanka (unrelated to Tamils who migrated to Sri Lanka before

4508-577: The Dutch in the 1860s to build up their plantations. They were used as hard labor, and as the conditions were not conducive many returned in the 1940s. About 30,000 to 40,000 remained in Northern Sumatra , and as a result, there remained a concentration of Tamils in that region. Malaysia has a Tamil population of 1,800,000 making up 6.3% of the Malaysian population as of 2018 starting mainly from 1901 when it

4600-567: The Government of Malaysia. According to the 2020 census, there were 198,449 Tamil citizens and permanent residents living in Singapore, representing 3.5% of the resident population. The number of Tamils among the 1.64 million "non-resident population"—foreigners working, studying or living in Singapore without permanent residence—was not provided. Tamil Language is one of the four official languages in Singapore. An estimation of about 3.2% percent of

4692-476: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by

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4784-469: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in

4876-464: The Tamil Nadu migration survey 2015, there are 400,000 emigrants in the United Arab Emirates having come from Tamil Nadu as professionals and workers in many sectors. This figure doesn't include other ethnic Tamil coming from other Indian states or other countries. Pongal and New Year are celebrated on a grand scale in Dubai and in a few other states. The first Tamil newspaper from the Middle East region

4968-550: The Tamil culture alive. Toronto is home to the largest Tamil-speaking population outside Asia. Central New Jersey contains the largest population concentration of Indian Americans of Tamil descent. Sizeable populations of Indian American Tamils have also settled in New York City , and New Jersey and New York house separate Tamil Sangams . The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area on the East Coast as well as Silicon Valley on

5060-585: The Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows a relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil)

5152-624: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as

5244-409: The West Coast also have Tamil associations. On the other hand, the New York City and Los Angeles metropolitan areas and Central New Jersey are home to the largest concentrations of Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan Americans . According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2012-2016 American Community Survey, there are 438,699 people speaking Tamil at home in the US. Tamil migration to the French West Indies

5336-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), 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 . In modern times, centamiḻ

5428-512: The cinematography were "okay. okay". Poovizhi Vaasalile gained a cult following and has been noted for the villainous performance of Antony and Raghuvaran. Eashvar Karthic regarding his film Penguin (2020), said that "Faazil’s Poovizhi Vaasalile has given me many scary nights. I have always wanted to do a film like that". Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] )

5520-446: The concentration being in Natal and Durban . In South Africa the Tamil Language can be taken in many schools as a Second Additional Language, It is recognised as a level 4 subject and carries points for entrance into university. Mauritius has a Tamil population of 80,000. Most arrived from Tamil Nadu after 1835, shortly after slavery was abolished, to replace the freed African and malgache slaves, to serve as indentured laborers on

5612-506: The culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of the approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004,

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5704-780: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the 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, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of

5796-399: The differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of the formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from

5888-522: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in

5980-420: The emphasis has shifted to bilingualism, where the medium of instruction is English with the mother-tongue as a second language, while the third language is optional. Tamil is taught as a second language in all government schools from the primary to junior college levels. Tamil is an examinable subject at all major nationwide exams. There is a daily Tamil newspaper printed in Singapore, the Tamil Murasu . There

6072-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil

6164-413: The indigenous Malays . Some are descended from immigrants from Arabia (Middle East) , though it is not known which part of the Arab world they were from. During this period the British, Dutch, French, Portuguese and Danish colony administrators recruited many local Tamils and took them to their overseas colonies to work as laborers, petty administration officers, and in clerical and military duties. In

6256-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by

6348-406: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar

6440-425: The local population, while few communities still maintain their language and culture. Many groups still claim descent from medieval-era Tamil emigrants such as the Thigalas , Hebbars of Karnataka who have resided in Karnataka for generations and even adopted Kannada as their mother tongue, Palakkad Iyers of Kerala, Kaikadis of Maharashtra, Chittys of Malaysia and some section of the Sri Lankan Tamils such as

6532-583: The mainstream community or left India for other countries in the west. There is also a movement of native Sri Lankan Tamils to India; some migrated to do white-collar jobs during the British days, but there has been a much bigger diaspora today. The Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora was well established in Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom prior to the 1983 Black July induced dispersal of refugees and asylum claimants in India, Europe , and Canada . Although relatively recent in origin, this subgroup had well-established communities in these host countries prior to

6624-423: The name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this

6716-531: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows

6808-607: The other hand, Karnataka Tamils of Karnataka, Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka of Sri Lanka, and Tamil Malaysians of Malaysia were evolved into distinct communities of their own with unique multilingual sub-culture and identity. Many also left to work in the possessions of the French Empire via its holdings in Pondichéry in Réunion and the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe (see Malabars ). A small group

6900-607: The people in Mauritius do not speak Tamil. The Tamil language is taught in approximately 100 primary schools. Tamil language and literature can be studied at university level to obtain B.A. and M.A. degrees. The Mahatma Gandhi Institute promotes the Indian languages which are present in Mauritius. Tamils are attempting to include their religion and other Hindu practices. Once Tamil priests came from Jaffna in Sri Lanka , they conducted prayers in Tamil. Later, some scholars started to facilitate

6992-735: The population to get access to sacred books. This helped the people to learn Tamil holy Enchantment from Thevarams and Thiruvasagam Tamil settlement in the French department of Réunion started as far back as 1848 as indentured labor, mainly from Pondichéry and Karaikal , the French territories in Southern India. There are now about 126,000 Tamils living in Réunion or "Malabars" as they are known there with many Hindu temples run by voluntary organisations where Hindu and Tamil cultural links are preserved well. Tamil traders from Pondicherry used to visit

7084-465: 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 adopted 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

7176-459: The sugar cane plantations. Tamil culture has flourished in Mauritius. Since 1835, the Tamil community has built almost 125 Tamil temples and Murugan is a popular deity. Tamil holidays and festivals such as Tamil New Year Varusha Pirapu, Pongal , Timiti and Thaipusam are celebrated on a national level. Thiruvalluvar and Bharathi days are also celebrated while Deepavali , Thaipusam, Maha Shivaratri and Pongal are public holidays. But most of

7268-402: The total population in Singapore speaks Tamil at home, while about 5% is literate in Tamil language. Almost all official documents printed in Singapore are translated and distributed in Tamil as well as three other national languages. In 1956, the Singapore government decided to adopt a trilingual policy. Students were taught English, a second language, as well as Malay as a third language. Today

7360-517: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , 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 iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in

7452-583: Was a Shiva temple called the "Madras Sivalayam" or the Caura Road temple. The Deepavali celebration by the Tamils there displayed extraordinary pluralism. A large community of Tamils exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes approximately 1,000 Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as much larger numbers of Muslims - including some refugees from northern Sri Lanka. Tamil festivals such as Pongal, Panguni uthiram, and Thaipoosam are celebrated in Pakistan. Burma had

7544-526: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,

7636-431: Was a starting point for future immigration to Norway. Norway has about 10,000 - 13,000 Tamils most of whom are Sri Lankan refugees. The city of Bergen is the home for about 400 Tamil families and it has become the centre for Tamil gatherings. Around 7,000 Tamils also live in the capital Oslo . Sweden has a Tamil population of about 2,000 and is of recent origin. Community estimates suggest that 150,000 Tamils lived in

7728-530: Was called British Malaya . Initially the migration was to work in the rubber plantations but later turned to trade and other professions mostly in the government sector such as the railways and the Public Works Department. The first Tamil school was there as early as 1876 but by 1925 it rose to 235 and by 2018 they had 530 schools. Due to intense brain drain and citizenship problems, there is an estimated 250–300,000 Tamils which are yet to be recognized by

7820-535: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are

7912-528: Was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of

8004-1004: Was hired by the Dutch colonial government in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to work in Sumatra (namely in Medan ). Roughly about 40,000 (est.) descendants of these immigrants are still found in Medan . Many independent Tamil merchant guilds, such as the Nagarathar , also left for these areas in an age-old tradition of their ancestors who had traded in these areas for the last 2,000 years. Britain also hired many Sri Lankan Tamils as clerical and other white-collar workers, especially in Malaysia and Singapore. All these different streams have combined to create vibrant Tamil communities in these countries. Also, many Tamils from India and Sri Lanka migrated to

8096-436: Was launched from Dubai on 10 December 2014. Tamil 89.4 FM radio is a Tamil radio broadcasting from Dubai, UAE. According to the Tamil Nadu migration survey 2015, there are 350,000 emigrants having come to Saudi Arabia from Tamil Nadu as workers. This figure doesn't include other ethnic Tamil coming from other Indian states or other countries. Bahrain is home for over 7000 Tamils mostly professionals and workers. Kuwait

8188-671: Was mainly sailings from Pondicherry and Karaikal during the years 1853 to 1883 and since 1893 almost all of them got well integrated with the people there. There are about 36,000 ethnic Tamils in Guadeloupe and 15,000 in Martinique but the language has been lost there. Presently a microscopic minority of 17 who are in the age range 60-70 could speak the Tamil language. Guyana had many Tamils in its plantations since 1838. Most of them were from Madras and in 1860, 2500 from Madras alone settled there. Tamils were spread in about 60 towns. There

8280-437: Was still a French colony. However, a majority of Parisian Tamils are of Sri Lankan origin who fled the country and came to France as refugees in the 1980s, escaping the violent civil conflict. Germany has well over 50,000 Tamils and more than half of them went as refugees from Sri Lanka. Religious fervor among Tamil Germans intensified as their numbers swelled. Due to the inspirational encouragement of Hawaii Subramaniaswami –

8372-504: Was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil

8464-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined

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