Tamil language

Tamil is a Classical Dravidian language that is natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia and is a member of the Dravidian family. Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign countries of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Union Territory of Puducherry. It is also the language of the United Nations Development program. Tamil is spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, as well as the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. This language is also spoken by members of the Tamil diaspora, who may be found in a variety of countries such as Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Mauritius, among others. Sri Lankan Moors are also fluent in Tamil, which is their native language. Listed as one of India's 22 scheduled languages in the country's constitution, Tamil was the first language to be designated as a classical language of the country.

Tamil is one of the world's oldest classical languages, having been in existence for more than 2,000 years. A. K. Ramanujan defined it as "the only language of modern India that can be recognised as being in continuous continuity with a classical past." As a result of the diversity and quality of ancient Tamil literature, it has been dubbed "one of the major classical traditions and literatures of the world" for its contributions to literature. For more than 2000 years, there has been a written Tamil literature that has been preserved. The oldest period of Tamil literature, known as Sangam literature, may be traced back to around 300 BC and ending around AD 300. Among Dravidian languages, it is the one with the most ancient existing literature. The oldest epigraphic documents, which have been discovered on rock edicts and 'hero stones,' date back to roughly the third millennium BC. Tamil Nadu is home to around 60,000 of the over 100,000 inscriptions discovered by the Archaeological Survey of India across the country. The vast majority of them are in Tamil, with just around 5% of them being in languages other than Tamil. Inscriptions in the Tamil language, written in the Brahmi script, have been unearthed in Sri Lanka, as well as on trade products in Thailand and Egypt. The two oldest manuscripts from India, which were recognised and recorded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Memory of the World register in 1997 and 2005, were written in Tamil.

Thambiran Vanakkam, a Tamil prayer book written in ancient Tamil script and published by Portuguese Christian missionaries in 1578, was the first Indian language to be printed and published, making Tamil the first language in the world to do so. The Tamil Lexicon, published by the University of Madras, was one of the first dictionaries produced in Indian languages and was one of the first dictionaries ever published in any language. According to a 2001 study, there were 1,863 Tamil-language publications published, with 353 of them being daily newspapers.