TAMIL is a Dravidian language spoken by predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent.It has official status in the Indian State of TamilNadu.Tamil also is an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore.It is one of the twenty-two scheduled language of India and the first Indian language to be declared as a classic language.Tamil also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia and Mauritius as well as emigrant communities around the world...:-)
Tamil literature has existed for over two thousand years.The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BCE.Inscriptions of Tamil language from 1st century BCE and 2nd century CE has been discovered in Egypt and Thailand.
Old Tamil
The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from around the second century BCE in caves and on pottery this inscriptions written in various Tamil called Tamil Brahmi,Sangam literature,Cilappatikaram and Manimekalai.
Middle Tamil
The evolution of Old Tamil to Middle Tamil,which is generally taken to have been completed by the eight century AD was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes.In phonological terms the most important shift were the virtual disappearance of the aytam,an old phoneme the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals,and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic.
Modern Tamil
The nannuls remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil,which therefor continues to based on middle tamil of the 13th century rather than on modern tamil.
Colloquial spoken tamil in contrast shows a number of changes.The negative conjugation of verb,for example has fallen out of use in modern tamil-negation is instead,expressed either morphologically or syntactically.Modern speaking tamil also shows a number of sound changes,in particular,a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions,and disappearence of vowels between a plosive a rhotic.
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