Tamil language

Writing system

Tamil writing is phonetic, and is subject to well-defined rules of elision and euphony. The present script used to write Tamil text is believed to have evolved from the Brahmi script of the Ashoka era. Later, a southern variant of the Brahmi script evolved into the Grantha script, which was used to write both Sanskrit and Tamil texts. Between the 6th and 10th centuries, a new script called vettezhuthu (meaning letters that are cut) evolved in order to make it easy for creating inscriptions on stone. Some people also call this vattezhuthu (meaning curved letters). Some major changes, such as the introduction of the overdot diacritic for pure consonants and the ligatures for the compounds of the vowel "E", etc., were made to the script on suggestions from Veeramaamunivar. Around 1935, Periyar suggested some changes to make it amenable to printing. Some of these suggestions were incorporated by the M.G. Ramachandran government in 1975.

Related Topics:
Phonetic - Elision - Euphony - Brahmi - Ashoka - Grantha - Sanskrit - 6th - 10th - 1935 - Periyar - Printing - M.G. Ramachandran - 1975

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While the script was still evolving, many Sanskrit words were borrowed into Tamil. To facilitate writing these words, some characters from the Grantha script are still retained. However, there are many purists who would argue against the use of such characters as there are well-defined rules in the Tolkāppiyam for Tamilising loan words.

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