Tamil is a Dravidian language, official in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in Sri Lanka and in Singapore, with a continuous literary tradition attested from at least the early centuries CE in the Sangam corpus, among the longest unbroken literary traditions of any living language. India formally recognizes Tamil as a Classical Language, a designation reserved for a small number of languages with an ancient independent literature, a status Tamil holds alongside its ordinary status as a living language with tens of millions of native speakers, not instead of it. It is written in its own Tamil script, descended from Brahmi and distinct from Devanagari.
Facts
ISO 639-3 Code Speaker Count StatusLiving by native-speaker count; India also separately recognizes Tamil as a Classical Language for the antiquity of its literature, a status this schemas classical value does not capture since that value is defined here as no native speakers. Attested From (Year)Circa 300 BCE; the Tolkappiyam, the oldest extant Tamil text, is dated as early as the 2nd century BCE, and Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions from Keezhadi have been claimed to date to around 580 BCE, an earlier date debated among scholars. RegionTamil Nadu and Puducherry, India; Northern and Eastern provinces, Sri Lanka; Malaysia, Singapore, diaspora communities worldwide 3 Classification
Official Status Connections
In Family
Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Written In
Source Wikipedia: Tamil Script
Sources
1. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010Official status, Tamil entity page
Tamil is a Dravidian language, official in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, in Sri Lanka and in Singapore, with a continuous literary tradition attested from at least the early centuries CE in the Sangam corpus, among the longest unbroken literary traditions of any living language.
- In Family: Dravidian
2. Ethnologue: Languages of the World
3. Wikipedia: Tamil Language
Wikipediainfobox
concentrated in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry
Quote
attested since c. 300 BCE
View the Source Wikipedia: Tamil Script
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