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v. t. e. The Tamil script ( தமிழ் அரிச்சுவடி Tamiḻ ariccuvaṭi [tamiɻ ˈaɾitːɕuʋaɽi]) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. [ 5] It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic.
Writing systems are used to record human language, and may be classified according to certain common features. The usual name of the script is given first; the name of the languages in which the script is written follows (in brackets), particularly in the case where the language name differs from the script name.
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamili or Damili, [3] was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil. [4] The Tamil-Brahmi script has been paleographically and stratigraphically dated between the third century BCE and the first century CE, and it constitutes the earliest known writing system evidenced in many parts of Tamil ...
Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc.
From the 11th century AD onwards the Tamil script displaced the Pallava-Grantha as the principal script for writing Tamil. [6] [2] In what is now Kerala, Vatteluttu continued for a much longer period than in Tamil Nadu by incorporating characters from Pallava-Grantha to represent Sanskrit loan words in early Malayalam.
Brahmic scripts descended from the Brahmi script. Brahmi is clearly attested from the 7th century BCE from the potsherds found all over Tamizhagam ( Tamil Nadu) . Northern Brahmi gave rise to the Gupta script during the Gupta period, which in turn diversified into a number of cursives during the medieval period.
Tamil is characterized by its use of more than one type of coronal consonants: like many of the other languages of India, it contains a series of retroflex consonants. Notably, the Tamil retroflex series includes the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ ( ழ) (example Tami ḻ; often transcribed 'zh').
The Pallava court of Mahendravarman I [2] replaced Vattezhuttu with two scripts: Tamil script and Pallava grantha to write Tamil and Sanskrit respectively. [3] Pallava grantha was also divided into early and late forms. Late Pallava grantha is the precursor to the Kawi script. [4]