Languages

Tamil Language

Tamil is a language with a long and ancient literary tradition that has been spoken in southern India for several millennia. The Tamil language is a member of the Dravidian language family, including about thirty languages. The Dravidian language family is distinct from the Indo European language family, including Hindi and many other Indian languages, Farsi, and the Germanic and Romance languages. The Tamil language is spoken in a wide range of countries, including India, Northern Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Fiji, South Africa, and parts of East Africa, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Trinidad, Guyana, and Mauritius. It is an official language in India, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. The number of second language speakers in Tamil may number in the millions. In northern Sri Lanka about 20 percent of the population speaksTamil, around 4 million people.

Tamil is a diglossic language, which meansthere is a large difference between the written form of the language and the spoken form. These differences include grammatical, vocabulary, and  pronunciation differences. The literary form is considered prestigious, while the spoken from is used in informal settings by all social classes.There are six regional dialects of Tamil which are classified as, East, West, North, South,Central, and Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan Tamil has retained older features while continental dialects have lost them or changed in different directions.Tamil has been influenced by other languages. Sanskrit,an Indo-European language and a parent language of Hindi, Bengali, and other northern Indian languages has influenced

Tamil significantly. However, since colonial times increased cultural interaction with  the British, English has become the most influential language on the Tamil language.