Tamil

Tamil (tamiz.) belongs to the South Dravidian branch of the Dravidian family: like other members of this branch it lost Proto-Dravidian *c-, e.g. il ‘not be’ from *cil-, ı-y-‘give’ from *cı-y-, a-Ru ‘six’ from *ca-Ru; and it replaced the Proto-Dravidian copula *maN ‘be located’ with iru ‘be located’. It has been spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka from prehistoric times. The earliest records of Tamil, lithic inscriptions in a variety of As´o-kan Bra-hmı-script, date from 200 BC. Alongside these inscriptions stands a vast and varied literature, preserved on palm-leaf manuscripts and by rote memory, covering two thousand years. Within this literary corpus is an indigenous grammatical tradition, separate from the Sanskrit grammarians: its two outstanding texts are tolka-

ppiyam (c. 200 BC) and naNNu-l (c. AD 1000). There are three distinct stages of Tamil revealed in these records: Ancient Tamil, 200 BC to AD 700; Medieval Tamil, AD 700 to 1500; and Modern Tamil, AD 1500 to the present. Ancient Tamil has just two tenses, past and non-past; Medieval and Modern Tamil

have three, past, present and future. Ancient Tamil has many subject-verb agreement markers for each member of the paradigm, e.g. the first person singular is signalled by -e-N, -eN, -aN, -al, -ku, -t.u, -tu. But Medieval Tamil retains only the first three, while Modern Tamil keeps only the first. In Ancient and Medieval Tamil, as opposed to their modern successor, predicate nominals can be inflected for subject-verb agreement, so

nı-na-t.. 1 2’ -e-N marks the first person singular in na-N pa-vi-(y)e-N ‘I1 (am a) sinner2’. In Medieval Tamil the set of verbal bases was open and accommodated many Sanskritic loanwords, e.g. Tamil aNupavikka ‘to experience’, derived from Sanskrit anubhava ‘experience’, but it is closed in Modern Tamil. Between AD 800 and 1000 the western dialects of Tamil, geographically separated from

the eastern by the Western Ghats, broke off and developed into Malaya-l.am. Malaya-l.am lost its rules of subject-verb agreement while Tamil maintained them, and it welcomed into its lexicon a great number of Sanskrit loanwords. The Irul.a language, spoken in the hilly spurs of the Nilgiris between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, is also closely related to Tamil. During the past two thousand years, Tamil dialects have evolved along three dimen-

sions: geography, caste-based society and diglossia. Today there are six regional dialects: (1) Sri Lanka; (2) Northern, spoken in the Chingleput, North Arcot and South Arcot districts; (3) Western, spoken in the Coimbatore, Salem and Dharmapuri districts; (4) Central, spoken in the Tirichirapalli, Tanjore and Madurai districts; (5) Eastern, spoken in the Putukottai and Ramanathapuram districts; and (6) Southern, spoken in the Nagercoil and Tirunelveli districts. Sri Lankan Tamil seems to be the most conservative: it preserves the four-way deictic contrast lost in the continental dialects during the Medieval period, e.g. ivaN ‘this man’, uvaN ‘that man nearby’, avaN ‘that man yonder’, evaN ‘which, any man’. It still resists the use of initial voiced stops so that continental Tamil do-cai ‘rice pancake’ becomes to-cai ‘id.’ in Sri Lankan Tamil. Throughout its history, but most notably during the Chola Empire, AD 850 to 1250, Tamil travelled beyond South Asia to kingdoms in Burma, Cambodia, Sri Vija-ya and Indonesia. During the British Raj of the nineteenth century, it was carried to South Africa, British Guiana and other parts of the British Empire. The social dialects of Tamil particularly accentuate the distinction between brahmin

and non-brahmin castes. Among brahmins the word for ‘house’ is a-m, among nonbrahmins vı-t.u; among brahmins the polite imperative of vara ‘come’ is va-nk̇o-, among non-brahmins va-nk̇a. For ‘drinking water’ Vaisnavite brahmins say tı-rttam, Saivite brahmins jalam and non-brahmins tan. n. ı-r. Even finer gradations of caste dialects can be found in kinship terminology and proper names. Finally, Tamil dialects show diglossic variation in which a ‘high’ formal variety

(centamiz.) contrasts with a ‘low’ informal variety (kot.untamiz.). The difference between these two corresponds only roughly to the difference between written and spoken Tamil. The high variety is used in most writing, radio and television broadcasts, political oratory and public lectures. While the low variety is used in virtually all face-toface communication, it also appears in the cinema, some political oratory and some modern fiction. In Akilan’s novel ciNe-kiti ‘The Girl-Friend’ (1951), both dialogue and narration are in the high variety; in Janakiraman’s amma-vanta-l. ‘Here Comes Mother’ (1966) the former is in low, the latter in high Tamil; and in Jeyakantan’s cila ne-rank̇al.il cila maNitarkal. ‘Certain Men at Certain Moments’ (1970) both are in low Tamil. In high Tamil the animate and inanimate locative case markers are -it.am and -il, respectively; but in low Tamil they are -kit.t.a and -le. The polite imperative of vara ‘come’ is va-runk̇al. in high Tamil, but va-nk̇a or va-nk̇o-in low. The word for ‘much’ or ‘very’ is mika in high Tamil, but rompa in low (both come from the infinitives of verbs that mean ‘exceed’ or ‘fill’). Palatalisation of -nt-and -tt-following i, ı-or ai is common in low Tamil, but not in high, e.g. low at.iccu ‘beating’ corresponds to high at.ittu ‘id.’ All

situation, must navigate between the phonological, lexical and grammatical differences that distinguish them. The Pure Tamil Movement (taNit tamiz. iyakkam) of the 1900s, a cultural branch of

the politically oriented Dravidian Movement, attempted to purge Tamil of its foreign elements, especially its Sanskritic vocabulary. The first part of the legacy of this movement is the intense loyalty that Tamils feel for their language; the second is that the scientific and bureaucratic gobbledygook is ultra-Tamil, not Sanskrit as in other Indic languages. At the turn of the century, the brahmin dialect of Madras City (Chennai) seemed destined to become the standard dialect of Modern Tamil. Today, however, it is the high non-brahmin dialect of the Central dialect, including the cities of Tanjore, Tirichirapalli and Madurai, that is emerging as the standard dialect. This chapter describes modern standard Tamil, which is based upon and shares features of both the written language and the standard spoken Central dialect. Tamil is recognised as one of India’s fourteen national languages in the Eighth Schedule

of the Indian Constitution (1951). The Tamil Nadu Official Language Act of 1956 establishes Tamil as the first official language of Tamil Nadu and English as the second. In Sri Lanka, Tamil shares with Sinhalese the title of official language. Today, Tamil is spoken by over sixty million in India, three million in Sri Lanka, and one million elsewhere.