Letters Tamil script

1 letters

1.1 basic consonants
1.2 grantha consonants used in tamil
1.3 vowels

1.3.1 isolated form
1.3.2 compound form
1.3.3 compound table of tamil letters

letters

mangulam tamil brahmi inscription in mangulam, madurai district, tamil nadu dated tamil sangam period c. 400 bce c. 200 ce.



explanation mangulam tamil brahmi inscription in mangulam, madurai district, tamil nadu dated tamil sangam period c. 400 bce c. 200 ce.










basic consonants

consonants called body (mei) letters. consonants classified 3 categories: vallinam (hard consonants), mellinam (soft consonants, including nasals), , itayinam (medium consonants).

there lexical rules formation of words. tolkāppiyam describes such rules. examples: word cannot end in consonants, , cannot begin consonants including r-, l- , ḻ-; there 2 consonants dental n - 1 should used depends on whether n occurs @ start of word , on letters around it. (historically, 1 n pronounced alveolar consonant, still true in malayalam.)

the order of alphabet (strictly abugida) in tamil closely matches of nearby languages both in location , linguistics, reflecting common origin of scripts brahmi.

table: tamil consonants.

grantha consonants used in tamil

the tamil speech has incorporated many phonemes not part of tolkāppiyam classification. letters used write these sounds, known grantha , used part of tamil. these taught elementary school , incorporated in tamil nadu government encoding called tamil character encoding (tace16).

table: grantha consonants in tamil.

there compound ஸ்ரீ (śrī), equivalent श्री in devanagari.

in recent times 4 combinations of tamil basic letters used depict sounds of english letters f , z , , x . east asian names containing kh sounds. writing english , arabic names , words in tamil. combinations ஃப f, ஃஜ z, ஃஸ் x, , ஃக் kh. example: asif = அசிஃப், azaarudheen = அஃஜாருதீன், rex = ரெஃஸ், genghis khan = செங்கிஸ் ஃகான்.

there has been effort differentiate voice , unvoiced consonants through superscripted , subscripted integers - one, two, 3 , 4 standing unvoiced, unvoiced aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated, respectively - used transcribe sanskrit words in tamil, in sanskrit-tamil books. example: க₁ - ka க₂ - kha க₃ - ga க₄ - gha extension of tamil script not yet recognized unicode. place numbers should placed neighbouring root consonant character; unicode renders கௌ₂ or க₂ௌ on possible permutations.

vowels

vowels called life (uyir) or soul letters. consonants (mei, called body letters), form compound, syllabic (abugida) letters called living letters (uyir mei, i.e. letters have both body , soul ).

tamil vowels divided short , long (five of each type) , 2 diphthongs.

isolated form

table: tamil vowels (isolated form).

compound form

using consonant k example:

the special letter ஃ (called akh) visarga. traditionally served purely grammatical function, in modern times has come used diacritic represent foreign sounds. example, ஃப used english sound f, not found in tamil.

the long (nedil) vowels twice long short (kuṟil) vowels. diphthongs pronounced 1 , half times long short vowels, though grammatical texts place them long (nedil) vowels.

as can seen in compound form, vowel sign can added right, left or both sides of consonants. can form ligature. these rules evolving , older use has more ligatures modern use. see on page depends on font selection; example, code2000 show more ligatures latha.

there proponents of script reform want eliminate ligatures , let vowel signs appear on right side.

unicode encodes character in logical order (always consonant first), whereas legacy 8-bit encodings (such tscii) prefer written order. makes necessary reorder when converting 1 encoding another; not sufficient map 1 set of codepoints other.

compound table of tamil letters

the following table lists vowel (uyir or life) letters across top , consonant (mei or body) letters along side, combination of gives tamil compound (uyirmei) letters.