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The Tamil language is native to Tamil Nadu , Puducherry (India) and Sri Lanka, where most of the native Tamil speaking population is highly concentrated. Tamil is also recognized as a classical language by the Government of India in 2004 and was the first language to achieve such status. [1] Tamil is one of the 22 official languages of India. [2]
Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka predominantly speak Tamil, however depending on where they live in the country, they may also additionally speak Sinhala and or English. According to the 2012 Census 61.5% or 412,685 Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka also spoke Sinhala and 13.0% or 87,435 Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka also spoke English. [23]
The Tamil language is spoken by native Sri Lankan Tamils and is also spoken by Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka and by most Sri Lankan Moors. Tamil speakers number around 4.8 million (29% of the population), making it the second largest language in Sri Lanka. There are more than 40,000 speakers of the Sri Lankan Malay language.
Tamil is a Unicode block containing characters for the Tamil, and Saurashtra languages of Tamil Nadu India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia. In its original incarnation, the code points U+0B82..U+0BCD were a direct copy of the Tamil characters A2-ED from the 1988 ISCII standard.
For example maɳam (smell) in Indian Tamil is manam in ET. ‘ɳ’ in ET occurs only in loan words or preceding /c/ and /ɳ/ in Indian Tamil is realized as /n/ in ET. For example ‘koɳjam’ (a little) in Indian Tamil is ‘koɳcam’ in ET. [1] Morphological differences can be found between Indian Tamil and ET as well.
In spite of the continual contact with India by sea, Sri Lankan Tamils have over the centuries become a distinct people developing dialects that differ in several aspects from the Indian Tamil dialects. [5] The Jaffna Tamil dialect is also distinct to a lesser extent from that of the Eastern, Western and Upcountry Tamil dialects of Sri Lanka. [6]
The Tamil script (தமிழ் அரிச்சுவடி Tamiḻ ariccuvaṭi [tamiɻ ˈaɾitːɕuʋaɽi]) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. [5] It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic.
The 2012 Sri Lanka Census revealed a Buddhist population of 22,254 amongst Sri Lankan Tamils, i.e. roughly 1% of all Sri Lankan Tamils in Sri Lanka. [ 18 ] The Hindu elite, especially the Vellalar , follow the religious ideology of Shaiva Siddhanta (Shaiva school) while the masses practice folk Hinduism , upholding their faith in local village ...