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Tamil Script

Abugidas
Origin from 300 BCE

An abugida used to write Tamil and, with added letters, several other Dravidian and minority languages of South and Southeast Asia. It descends from Tamil-Brahmi, a regional variety of the Brahmi script attested in cave inscriptions from around the third century BCE, and later absorbed letters from the Grantha script to represent Sanskrit sounds Tamil itself lacks. Its distinctive rounded letterforms, the product of centuries of writing on palm leaves where straight strokes tear the material, and its restricted consonant inventory (Tamil phonology merges several consonant series that Sanskrit-derived scripts keep separate) set it apart from its Brahmic relatives. It remains one of the oldest continuously used scripts in the world.

Facts
Script Type
Abugida 1
Directionality
left-to-right 1
In Use Since (Year)
from 300 BCE 1
Connections

Descends From

Brahmi, Scripts
Source Wikipedia: Tamil Script

Script Of

Tamil, Languages
Source Wikipedia: Tamil Script
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Tamil Script

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