Tamil: a very old language

We start with the everyday stories of South India, and of course, better to start with one of the languages ​​spoken there: Tamil.

It was the first renowned classical language official in India, part of the 22 languages ​​recognized in India, along with the Malayalam spoken in Kerala and Lakshadweep Islands, and the Kannada spoken in Karnataka, those ones that we are going to talk about in the next stories.

It is a Dravidian language spoken mainly in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and in an area of Sri Lanka. Besides, there are other areas in the world where the language is spoken, such as Malaysia, Singapore (where they are official languages), Vietnam, Zanzibar and other emerging places in Europe such as London.

In total, it is estimated that about 80 million people speak this about 2200 years old language!!
Yes, yes, 2200 years old! Its origin is unclear, although it is known that was developed in India. Many of the ancient writings found there used Tamil language.

Its alphabet has 247 different sounds, including vowels and consonants, vowels and consonants combine to have syllabic sounds unique!

And you don't know how hard it is to recognize all of these sounds: when Murali is trying to teach the different sounds, poor boy!! On the other side, for him is much easier to learn Spanish and Catalan because all our sounds are already included in theirs!

Not to mention about writing, buffffff, vowels seem easy, but when they combine with the consonants, you cannot imagine how difficult is it...
But when you can write a phrase or repeat a word and Murali's family understands us (something that does not happen often ...) is really AMAZING!!

Here we include a picture of the alphabet, and you can start practicing them!!

First the vowels ...

Now, consonants....

You have to combine both, consonants and vowels to get all the possible sounds, you will see how much combinations...

And you know, if you have any question, Murali can help ypu for sure!!!!

To entertain you a little bit, you can try to find out the different sounds of this message:

அனைவரையும் அன்புடன் வரவேற்கிறோம் Wonderful South India

All of you, be wellcomed to Wonderful South India.

We will meet next story...