Tamil script
The Tamil script is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, Irula and Paniya are also written in the Tamil script.
Characteristics
The Tamil script has 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the ஃ. ஃ is called "அக்கு", akku, and is classified in Tamil orthography as being neither a consonant nor a vowel. However, it is listed at the end of the vowel set. The script is syllabic, not alphabetic, and is written from left to right.History
The Tamil script, like the other Brahmic scripts, is thought to have evolved from the original Brahmi script. The earliest inscriptions which are accepted examples of Tamil writing date to the Ashokan period. The script used by such inscriptions is commonly known as the Tamil-Brahmi or "Tamili script" and differs in many ways from standard Ashokan Brahmi. For example, early Tamil-Brahmi, unlike Ashokan Brahmi, had a system to distinguish between pure consonants and consonants with an inherent vowel. In addition, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, early Tamil Brahmi used slightly different vowel markers, had extra characters to represent letters not found in Sanskrit and omitted letters for sounds not present in Tamil such as voiced consonants and aspirates. Inscriptions from the 2nd century use a later form of Tamil-Brahmi, which is substantially similar to the writing system described in the Tolkāppiyam, an ancient Tamil grammar. Most notably, they used the puḷḷi to suppress the inherent vowel. The Tamil letters thereafter evolved towards a more rounded form and by the 5th or 6th century, they had reached a form called the early vaṭṭeḻuttu.The modern Tamil script does not, however, descend from that script. In the 4th century, the Pallava dynasty created a new script called Pallava script for Tamil and the Grantha alphabet evolved from it, adding the Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet for sounds not found to write Sanskrit. Parallel to Grantha alphabet a new script again emerged in Pallava and Chola territories resembling the same glyph development like Grantha, however, heavily reduced in its shapes and not overtaking non-native Tamil sounds, thus, ultimately descending from Pallava script. By the 8th century, the new scripts supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the Pallava and Chola kingdoms which lay in the north portion of the Tamil-speaking region. However, Vaṭṭeḻuttu continued to be used in the southern portion of the Tamil-speaking region, in the Chera and Pandyan kingdoms until the 11th century, when the Pandyan kingdom was conquered by the Cholas who inherited while being feudatory of Pallavas for a short time.
With the fall of Pallava kingdom, the Chola dynasty pushed the Chola-Pallava script as the de facto script. Over the next few centuries, the Chola-Pallava script evolved into the modern Tamil script. The Grantha and its parent script influenced the Tamil script notably. The use of palm leaves as the primary medium for writing led to changes in the script. The scribe had to be careful not to pierce the leaves with the stylus while writing because a leaf with a hole was more likely to tear and decay faster. As a result, the use of the puḷḷi to distinguish pure consonants became rare, with pure consonants usually being written as if the inherent vowel were present. Similarly, the vowel marker called:, a half-rounded u which occurs at the end of some words and in the medial position in certain compound words, marking a shortened u sound, also fell out of use and was replaced by the marker for the simple u ''. The puḷḷi did not fully reappear until the introduction of printing, but the marker kuṟṟiyal-ukaram'' never came back for this purpose into use although its usage is retained in certain grammatical conceptual words whereas the sound itself still exists and plays an important role in Tamil prosody.
The forms of some of the letters were simplified in the 19th century to make the script easier to typeset. In the 20th century, the script was simplified even further in a series of reforms, which regularised the vowel markers used with consonants by eliminating special markers and most irregular forms.
Relationship with other Indic scripts
The Tamil script differs from other Brahmi-derived scripts in a number of ways. Unlike every other Brahmic script, it does not regularly represent voiced or aspirated stop consonants as these are not phonemes of the Tamil language even though voiced and fricative allophones of stops do appear in spoken Tamil. Thus the character க் k, for example, represents but can also be pronounced or based on the rules of Tamil phonology. A separate set of characters appears for these sounds when the Tamil script is used to write Sanskrit or other languages.Also unlike other Brahmi scripts, the Tamil script rarely uses typographic ligatures to represent conjunct consonants, which are far less frequent in Tamil than in other Indian languages. Where they occur, conjunct consonants are written by writing the character for the first consonant, adding the puḷḷi to suppress its inherent vowel, and then writing the character for the second consonant. There are a few exceptions, namely க்ஷ kṣa and ஶ்ரீ śrī.
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 the Latin script.
Letters
Basic consonants
Consonants are called the "body" letters. The consonants are classified into three categories: vallinam, mellinam, and itayinam.There are some lexical rules for the formation of words. The Tolkāppiyam describes such rules. Some examples: a word cannot end in certain consonants, and cannot begin with some consonants including r-, l- and ḻ-; there are six nasal consonants in Tamil: a velar nasal ங், a palatal nasal ஞ், a retroflex nasal ண், a dental nasal ந், a bilabial nasal ம், and an alveolar nasal ன்.
The order of the alphabet in Tamil closely matches that of the nearby languages both in location and linguistics, reflecting the common origin of their scripts from Brahmi.
Tamil language has 18 consonants - mey eluttukkal. Traditional grammarians have classified these 18 into three groups of 6 letters each. This classification is done based on the method of articulation and hence the nature of these letters. Vallinam, mellinam and idaiyinam. All consonants are pronounced for a half unit time length when isolated.
| Consonant | ISO 15919 | Category | IPA |
| க் | vallinam | ||
| ங் | mellinam | ||
| ச் | vallinam | ||
| ஞ் | mellinam | ||
| ட் | vallinam | ||
| ண் | mellinam | ||
| த் | vallinam | ||
| ந் | mellinam | ||
| ப் | vallinam | ||
| ம் | mellinam | ||
| ய் | idaiyinam | ||
| ர் | idaiyinam | ||
| ல் | idaiyinam | ||
| வ் | idaiyinam | ||
| ழ் | idaiyinam | ||
| ள் | idaiyinam | ||
| ற் | vallinam | ||
| ன் | mellinam |
Extra consonants used in Tamil
The Tamil speech has incorporated many phonemes that were not part of the Tolkāppiyam classification. The letters used to represent these sounds, known as Grantha, are regarded as supplementary to the standard alphabet. They are taught from elementary school and are incorporated in Tamil All Character Encoding.| Consonant | ISO 15919 | IPA |
| ஜ் | ||
| ஶ் | ||
| ஷ் | ||
| ஸ் | ||
| ஹ் | ||
| க்ஷ் |
There is also the ligature ஶ்ரீ, equivalent to श्री in Devanagari.
Combinations of consonants with ஃ are occasionally used to represent phonemes of foreign languages, especially to write Islamic and Christian texts. For example: asif = அசிஃப், azārutīn̠ = அஃஜாருதீன், Genghis Khan = கெங்கிஸ் ஃகான்.
A nuqta-like diacritic is used while writing the Badaga language and double dot nuqta for the Irula language to transcribe its sounds.
There has also been effort to differentiate voiced and voiceless consonants through subscripted numbers – two, three, and four which stand for the unvoiced aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated respectively. This was used to transcribe Sanskrit words in Sanskrit–Tamil books, as shown in the table below.
| க | க₂ | க₃ | க₄ |
| ச | ச₂ | ஜ | ஜ₂ |
| ட | ட₂ | ட₃ | ட₄ |
| த | த₂ | த₃ | த₄ |
| ப | ப₂ | ப₃ | ப₄ |
The Unicode Standard uses superscripted digits for the same purpose, as in ப², ப³, and ப⁴.
Vowels
Vowels are also called the 'life' or 'soul' letters. Together with the consonants, they form compound, syllabic letters that are called 'living' or 'embodied' letters.Tamil language has 12 vowels which are divided into short and long and two diphthongs.
| Independent | Vowel sign | ISO 15919 | IPA |
| அ | |||
| ஆ | ா | ||
| இ | ி | ||
| ஈ | ீ | ||
| உ | ு | ||
| ஊ | ூ | ||
| எ | ெ | ||
| ஏ | ே | ||
| ஐ | ை | ||
| ஒ | ொ | ||
| ஓ | ோ | ||
| ஔ | ௌ |