Language

Tamil

TAH-mizh

Also Known As தமிழ் (Tamiḻ)

Dravidian Languages

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

ta 3

Speaker Count

75,000,000 3

Status

Living 3

Living 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)

from 300 BCE 4

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.

Region

Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, India; Northern and Eastern provinces, Sri Lanka; Malaysia, Singapore, diaspora communities worldwide 4

Classification

Language Kind

Safe 1

Official Status

Official Language 2

Connections

In Family

Dravidian

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

Written In

Tamil Script

Source Wikipedia: Tamil Script

In the Other Atlases

Cases Where Used

Aastha TV

Also in Divinity Atlas: used in this subject.

Hope Channel

Also in Divinity Atlas: used in this subject.

Radio Veritas Asia

Also in Divinity Atlas: used in this subject.

Tamil Nadu

Also in Divinity Atlas: used in this subject.

Tamil

Also in Society and Culture Atlas: used in this subject.

Source Tamils (Wikipedia)Lead sentence 1

Quote, Lead sentence 1

The Tamils ( TAM-ilz, TAH-milz), also known by their demonym Tamilar, are a Dravidian ethnic group who natively speak the Tamil language and trace their ancestry mainly to the southern part of the Indian subcontinent.