Tamil Script

The Tamil script (தமிழ் எழுத்து) is an abugida writing system used to write the Tamil language, spoken by 75+ million people primarily in Tamil Nadu (India), Sri Lanka, Singapore, and the global Tamil diaspora. It descends from the ancient Brahmi script via the Tamil-Brahmi variant, with a continuous written tradition of over 2,000 years. Tamil script has 12 vowels, 18 consonants, and a special ayudha ezhuthu (ஃ). Unlike Devanagari or most other Indic scripts, Tamil uses a much smaller consonant inventory — it does not encode the aspirated-unaspirated or voiced-unvoiced distinctions that Sanskrit-derived scripts do. Instead, a single letter represents a phoneme family whose specific pronunciation (voiced vs unvoiced, aspirated or not) is determined positionally within a word. Tamil also has distinctive letters for classical and Vedic sounds (retained for religious and literary texts). The script is written left-to-right and uses matras (vowel signs) attached to consonants, similar to other Indic scripts.

How it works

Tamil letters include: vowels அ ஆ இ ஈ உ ஊ எ ஏ ஐ ஒ ஓ ஔ; consonants க ங ச ஞ ட ண த ந ப ம ய ர ல வ ழ ள ற ன; plus Grantha letters ஜ ஶ ஷ ஸ ஹ used for Sanskrit-derived loanwords; and ஃ (ayutham). Notable features: the retroflex letters ட (retroflex t), ண (retroflex n), ழ (retroflex approximant — unique to Tamil, hard to pronounce for non-natives), ள (retroflex l). Tamil does not have letters for aspirated consonants (like Hindi's फ /pʰ/ or भ /bʱ/) because Tamil phonology doesn't distinguish them. Tamil script uses the Grantha letters (ஜ ஶ ஷ ஸ ஹ) only for Sanskrit loanwords — formal Tamil avoids them. Unicode block U+0B80–U+0BFF covers Tamil. Proper rendering of Tamil requires fonts that handle the pulli (dot) above consonants and the complex matra positions.

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