Diverging evolution ofTamil-Brahmi script (center column) into theVatteluttu alphabet (leftmost column) and the Tamil script (rightmost column)
The Tamil script has 12vowels (உயிரெழுத்து,uyireḻuttu, "soul-letters"), 18consonants (மெய்யெழுத்து,meyyeḻuttu, "body-letters") and one special character, theஃ (ஆய்த எழுத்து,āytha eḻuttu).ஃ is called "அக்கு",akku, and is classified in Tamil orthography as being neither a consonant nor a vowel.[7] However, it is listed at the end of the vowel set. The script issyllabic, notalphabetic, and is written from left to right.
The Tamil script, like the otherBrahmic scripts, is thought to have evolved from the originalBrahmi script.[8] The earliest inscriptions which are accepted examples of Tamil writing date to theAshokan period. The script used by such inscriptions is commonly known as theTamil-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 pureconsonants (m, in this example) and consonants with an inherentvowel (ma, in this example). In addition, according toIravatham Mahadevan, early Tamil Brahmi used slightly different vowel markers, had extra characters to represent letters not found inSanskrit and omitted letters for sounds not present in Tamil such as voiced consonants and aspirates.[8] Inscriptions from the 2nd century use a later form of Tamil-Brahmi, which is substantially similar to the writing system described in theTolkāppiyam, an ancient Tamil grammar. Most notably, they used thepuḷḷi to suppress the inherent vowel.[9] The Tamil letters thereafter evolved towards a more rounded form and by the 5th or 6th century, they had reached a form called theearly vaṭṭeḻuttu.[10]
The modern Tamil script does not, however, descend from that script.[11] In the 4th century,[12] thePallava dynasty created a new script calledPallava script for Tamil and theGrantha alphabet evolved from it, adding the Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet for sounds not found to write Sanskrit.[4] Parallel toGrantha alphabet a new script (Chola-Pallava script, which evolved to modern Tamil 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. By the 8th century, the new scripts supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the Pallava andChola 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 theChera andPandyan 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.[3][4]
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 ofpalm leaves as the primary medium forwriting 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 thepuḷḷi to distinguish pure consonants became rare, with pure consonants usually being written as if the inherent vowel were present. Similarly, the vowel marker (ஃ) called:Tamil:குற்றியலுகரம்,romanized: kuṟṟiyal-ukaram,lit. 'short 'u'-sound', a half-roundedu which occurs at the end of some words and in the medial position in certain compound words, marking a shortenedu sound, also fell out of use and was replaced by the marker for the simpleu (ு). Thepuḷḷi (ஂ) did not fully reappear until the introduction ofprinting, but the markerkuṟṟiyal-ukaram (ஃ) 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 Tamilprosody.
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 wassimplified even further in a series of reforms, which regularised the vowel markers used with consonants by eliminating special markers and most irregular forms.
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 aspiratedstop consonants as these are notphonemes of the Tamil language even though voiced and fricativeallophones of stops do appear in spoken Tamil. Thus the characterக்k, for example, represents/k/ but can also be pronounced [g] or [x] based on the rules ofTamil 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 usestypographic 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 thepuḷḷi to suppress its inherent vowel, and then writing the character for the second consonant. There are a few exceptions, namelyக்ஷkṣa andஶ்ரீśrī.
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.
Consonants are called the "body" (mei) letters. The consonants are classified into three categories:vallinam (hard consonants),mellinam (soft consonants, including allnasals), anditayinam (medium consonants).
The order of the alphabet (strictlyabugida) 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 (hard group),mellinam (soft group) andidaiyinam (medium group). All consonants are pronounced for a half unit (māttirai) time length when isolated (consonants combined with vowels will be pronounced with the time length of the vowel).[13]
The Tamil speech has incorporated many phonemes that were not part of theTolkāppiyam classification. The letters used to write these sounds, known asGrantha, are used as part of Tamil. These are taught from elementary school and incorporated inTamil All Character Encoding (TACE16).
There is also the compoundஶ்ரீ (śrī), equivalent toश्री inDevanagari.
Combinations of consonants withஃ (ஆய்த எழுத்து,āyda eḻuttu, equivalent tonuqta) are occasionally used to represent phonemes of foreign languages, especially to writeIslamic andChristian texts. For example: asif =அசிஃப், azārutīn̠ =அஃஜாருதீன்,Genghis Khan =கெங்கிஸ் ஃகான்.[citation needed]
A nuqta-like diacritic is used while writing theBadaga language and double dot nuqta for theIrula language to transcribe its sounds.[15]
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.[16][17]
கka
க₂kha
க₃ga
க₄gha
சca
ச₂cha
ஜja
ஜ₂jha
டṭa
ட₂ṭha
ட₃ḍa
ட₄ḍha
தta
த₂tha
த₃da
த₄dha
பpa
ப₂pha
ப₃ba
ப₄bha
The Unicode Standard uses superscripted digits for the same purpose, as inப²pha,ப³ba, andப⁴bha.[18]
Vowels are also called the 'life' (uyir) or 'soul' letters. Together with the consonants (mei, which are called 'body' letters), they form compound, syllabic (abugida) letters that are called 'living' or 'embodied' letters (uyir mei, i.e. letters that have both 'body' and 'soul').
Tamil language has 12 vowels which are divided into short and long (five of each type) and twodiphthongs.
The special letterஃ, represented by three dots, is calledāyta eḻuttu oraḵ. It originally represented an archaic Tamil retention of the Dravidian sound ḥ, which has been lost in almost all modern Dravidian languages, and in Tamil traditionally serves a purely grammatical function, but in modern times it has come to be used as a diacritic to represent foreign sounds. For example,ஃப is used for the English soundf, not found in Tamil. It also served before palm leaves became the primary writing medium for words ending with an inherent consonsant-vowelu as a pronouncing rule for a shortu, called – Tamil:குற்றியலுகரம்,romanized: kuṟṟiyal-ukaram,lit. 'short 'u'-sound'. Following consonants rendered this behaviour:கு,சு,டு,து,பு,று. Instead of writing like in modern days without any markers, for example (Tamil:அது,romanized: Atu), it was written with a precedingஃ, like – Tamil:அஃது,romanized: Aḥtu.
Another archaic Tamil letterஂ, represented by a small hollow circle and calledAṉuvara, is theAnusvara. It was traditionally used as ahomorganic nasal when in front of a consonant, and either as a bilabial nasal (m) or alveolar nasal (n) at the end of a word, depending on the context.
The long (nedil) vowels are about twice as long as the short (kuṟil) vowels. Thediphthongs are usually pronounced about one and a half times as long as the short vowels, though some grammatical texts place them with the long (nedil) vowels.
As can be seen in the compound form, the vowel sign can be added to the right, left or both sides of the consonants. It can also form aligature. These rules are evolving and older use has more ligatures than modern use. What you actually see on this page depends on your font selection; for example,Code2000 will show more ligatures thanLatha.
There are proponents of script reform who want to eliminate all ligatures and let all vowel signs appear on the right side.
Unicode encodes the character in logical order (always the consonant first), whereas legacy 8-bit encodings (such asTSCII) prefer the written order. This makes it necessary to reorder when converting from one encoding to another; it is not sufficient simply to map one set of code points to the other.
The following table lists vowel (uyir or life) letters across the top and consonant (mei or body) letters along the side, the combination of which gives all Tamil compound (uyirmei) letters.
Apart from the usual numerals (from 0 to 9), Tamil also has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols forfraction and other number-based concepts can also be found.[19]
Tamil script was added to theUnicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.0. The Unicode block for Tamil is U+0B80–U+0BFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points. Most of the non-assigned code points are designated reserved because they are in the same relative position as characters assigned in other South Asian script blocks that correspond to phonemes that don't exist in the Tamil script.
Efforts to unify the Grantha script with Tamil have been made;[16][20] however the proposals triggered discontent by some.[21][22] Eventually, considering the sensitivity involved, it was determined that the two scripts should be encoded independently, except for the numerals.[23]
Proposals to encode characters used forfractional values in traditionalaccounting practices were submitted.[24] Although discouraged by theICTA of Sri Lanka,[25] the proposal was recognized by the Government ofTamil Nadu[26] and were added to the Unicode Standard in March 2019 with the release of version 12.0. The Unicode block for Tamil Supplement is U+11FC0–U+11FFF:
Like other South Asian scripts in Unicode, the Tamil encoding was originally derived from theISCII standard. BothISCII andUnicode encode Tamil as anabugida. In an abugida, each basic character represents a consonant and default vowel. Consonants with a different vowel or bare consonants are represented by adding a modifier character to a base character. Each code point representing a similar phoneme is encoded in the same relative position in each South Asian script block in Unicode, including Tamil. Because Unicode represents Tamil as an abugida all the pure consonants (consonants with no associated vowel) and syllables in Tamil can be represented by combining multiple Unicode code points, as can be seen in the Unicode Tamil Syllabary below. In Unicode 5.1, named sequences were added for all Tamil consonants and syllables.
Unicode 5.1 also has a named sequence for the Tamil ligature SRI (śrī), ஶ்ரீ, written using ஶ (śa). The name of this sequence is TAMIL SYLLABLE SHRII and is composed of the Unicode sequence U+0BB6 U+0BCD U+0BB0 U+0BC0. The ligature can also be written using ஸ (sa) to create an identical ligature ஸ்ரீ composed of the Unicode sequence U+0BB8 U+0BCD U+0BB0 U+0BC0; but this is discouraged by the Unicode standard.[27]
^Rajan, K. (December 2001). "Territorial Division as Gleaned from Memorial Stones".East and West.51 (3/4). Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente (IsIAO): 363.JSTOR29757518. (table showing Tamil in row for the 601–800 period)
^Diringer, David (1948).Alphabet a key to the history of mankind. p. 385.
^Selvakumar, V. (2016). History of Numbers and Fractions and Arithmetic Calculations in the Tamil Region: Some Observations.HuSS: International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(1), 27–35.https://doi.org/10.15613/HIJRH/2016/V3I1/111730
^Nalankilli, Thanjai. (2018). Attempts to "Pollute" Tamil Unicode with Grantha Characters.Tamil Tribune. Retrieved 12 March 2019 fromhttp://www.tamiltribune.com/18/1201.html
Mahadevan, Iravatham (2003),Early Tamil Epigraphy from the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D.,Harvard Oriental Series, Volume 62, Cambridge: Harvard University Press,ISBN0-674-01227-5