Quintessentially, Tamil is a language that has its roots spread deep down. It is a Dravidian language that has an official status in India. It is the administrative language of the state of Tamil Nadu in India. It is also one of the official languages of the union territories of Pondicherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
It is also declared as the classical language by the government of India in 2004. Tamil is also one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and Singapore. Inscriptions in Tamil Language have been discovered in Egypt and Thailand as well.
The development of this language since many years led to the rich formation and growth of Tamil literature. This literature has existed for over two thousand years now. The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BC. The earliest period of Tamil literature (called the Sangam literature) is dated from the third century BC to sixth century AD.
According to a 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is also spoken by small groups of minorities in other parts of India such as Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Maharashtra. Apart from India, Tamil is also spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Mauritius, Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. However, the number of Tamil speaking people is very few in these countries.
Tamil language is written using a script called the ‘vatteluttu’. The Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character that is called the ‘āytam’. There are a total of 216 compound characters if one combines the vowels and the consonants.
There has been accelerating growth in the popularity of
Tamil songs and literature especially after the 1980s with leading writers such as Subha, Pattukkottai Prabakar and Rajesh Kumar contributing significantly to Tamil language and literature.
It is indeed fascinating to know how Tamil has survived great periods of time and is still very much in use. Because of the unusually diverse but rich literature that has been produced in Tamil, the language has flourished and spread far and wide.