Grammar

Main article: Tamil grammar

An excerpt from Tolkaappiyam

Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest available grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam, with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu, col, porul, yāppu, aṇi. Of these, the last two are mostly applicable in poetry.

Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinative language. Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. In written Tamil, the morphemes that make up individual words are usually easily separable and analysable.

Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English.

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Parts of speech

The first category of words in Tamil is peyarcol or "name-words", a broad classification which includes all nouns, numerals, pronouns and some adjectives. The peyarcol are divided into two classes (tiṇai) - the "rational" (uyartiṇai), and the "irrational" (aḵṟiṇai), each of which has its own sub-classes. Humans and deities are normally classified as "rational", and animals, objects and everything else as irrational. However, these classifications are not absolute - the irrational form can be used contemptuously for humans. The collective form for rational nouns is also used as an honorific, and a gender-neutral singular form. The "many" form of irrational nouns - which technically ought to serve as a plural - is rarely used in speech or writing. Person, number (singular and plural) and gender are often indicated through suffixes.

Suffixes are also used to perform the functions of cases or postpositions. Traditional grammars tried to group the various suffixes into 8 cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit. These were the nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative. Modern grammarians, however, argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case. (Schiffman, 1999). Tamil nouns can also take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to demonstratives in English.

Like Tamil nouns, Tamil verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffixes, which show person, number, mood, tense and voice.

• Person and number are indicated by suffixing the oblique case of the relevant pronoun (ēn in the above example). The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particles, which are added to the stem.
• Tamil has two voices. The first indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem.
• Tamil has three simple tenses - past, present, and future - indicated by simple suffixes, and a series of perfects, indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morphemes which mark tense categories.

Tamil has no articles. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context. In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns that include the listener and exclusive pronouns that do not. Tamil does not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs - both fall under the category uriccol.

Verb auxiliaries are used to indicate attitude, a grammatical category which shows the state of mind of the speaker, and his attitude about the event spoken of in the verb. Common attitudes include pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief felt at the conclusion of an unpleasant event or period, and unhappiness at or apprehension about the eventual result of a past or continuing event.

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Sentence structure

Word order in Tamil is rather rigid. Except in poetry, the subject must precede the object, and the verb must conclude the sentence. In a standard sentence, therefore, the order is usually Subject Object Verb (SOV).

Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct valid sentences that have only a verb - such as muṭintuviṭṭatu ("It is completed") - or only a subject and object, such as atu eṉ vīṭu ("That is my house"). The elements that are present, however, must follow the SOV order. Tamil does not have an equivalent for the word is and the word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning.

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Vocabulary

See also: Wiktionary's list of Tamil words and list of words of Tamil origin

Modern Tamil vocabulary still retains most of the words from classical Tamil. Due to this and because of the emphasis on learning classical works like Tirukkural, classical Tamil is comprehensible in various degrees to most native speakers of today. However, a number of Sanskrit loan words have been adapted and used commonly in modern Tamil. But, unlike some other Dravidian languages, these words are restricted mainly to spiritual terminology and abstract nouns. Besides Sanskrit, there are a few loan words from Persian and Arabic implying trade ties in ancient times. Since around the 20th century, English words have also begun to be used freely in colloquial Tamil. Some modern technical terminology is borrowed from English, though attempts are being made to have a pure Tamil technical terminology. Many individuals, and some institutions like the Government of Sri Lanka and Tamil Virtual University have generated technical dictionaries for Tamil.

There are also many instances of Tamil loan words in other languages. Popular examples are cheroot (churuttu meaning "rolled up"), mango, mulligatawny (from milagu thanni meaning pepper water) and catamaran (from kattu maram, கட்டு மரம், meaning "bundled logs"). For more such words, see here.

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Examples

A sample passage in Tamil script with a Romanised transcription:

ஆசிரியர் வகுப்பறையுள் நுழைந்தார்.
அவர் உள்ளே நுழைந்தவுடன் மாணவர்கள் எழுந்தனர்.
வளவன் மட்டும் தன் அருகில் நின்றுகொண்டிருந்த மாணவி கனிமொழியுடன் பேசிக் கொண்டிருந்தான்.
நான் அவனை எச்சரித்தேன்.

aasiriyar vakuppaRaiyuL nuzhainthaar.
avar uLLE nuzhainthavudan maaNavarkaL ezhunthanar.
vaLavan mattum than arukil ninRu kondiruntha maaNavi kanimozhiyudan pEsik kondirunthaan.
naan avanai echarithEn. 

English translation of the passage given above:

The teacher entered the classroom.
As soon as he entered, the students got up.
Valavan alone was talking to Kanimozhi who was standing next to him.
I warned him.

Notes:

1. Tamil does not have articles. The definite article used above is merely an artefact of translation.
2. To understand why Valavan would want to be warned, it is necessary to comprehend asian social etiquette. It is considered impolite to be distracted when a person of eminence (the teacher in this case) makes an entry and the teacher may feel insulted or slighted.

Word (romanised)	Translation	Morphemes	Part of speech	Person, Gender, Tense	Case	Number	Remarks
aasiriyar	Teacher	aasiriyar	noun	n/a, gender-neutral, n/a	Nominative	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	use of aasiriyai for feminine gender (in honorific sense) is not uncommon
vakuppaRaiyuL	inside the class room	vakuppu+aRai +uL	adverb	n/a	Locative	n/a	Sandhi (called puṇarci in Tamil) rules in Tamil require complicated euphonic changes during agglutination (such as the introduction of y in this case)
nuzhainthaar	entered	nuzhainthaar	verb	third, gender-neutral, past		honorific plural	the masculine and feminine equivalents nuzhainthaan and nuzhainthaaL are almost invariably replaced by the collective nuzhainthaar in a honorific context
avar	He	avar	pronoun	third, gender-neutral, n/a	Nominative	honorific plural indicated by suffix ar	the masculine and feminine forms avan and avaL are not used in a honorific sense
uLLE	inside	uLLE	adverb	n/a		n/a
nuzhainthavudan	upon entering	nuzhaintha + udan	adverb	n/a		n/a	Sandhi rules require a v to be inserted between a a and a u during agglutination.
maaNavarkaL	students	maaNavarkaL	collective noun	n/a, masculine, often used with gender-neutral connotation, n/a	Nominative	plural indicated by suffix aL
ezhunthanar	got up	ezhunthanar	verb	third, gender-neutral, past		plural
VaLavan	VaLavan (name)	VaLavan	Proper noun	n/a, masculine, usually indicated by suffix n, n/a	Nominative	singular
mattum	alone	mattum	adjective	n/a		n/a
than	his (self) own	than	pronoun	n/a, gender-neutral, n/a		singular
arukil	near (lit. "in nearness")	aruku + il	adverb	n/a	Locative	n/a	The postposition il indicates the locative case
ninRu kondiruntha	standing	ninRu + kondu + iruntha	adverb	n/a		n/a	the verb has been morphed into an adverb by the incompleteness due to the terminal a
maaNavi	student	maaNavi	pronoun	n/a, feminine, n/a		singular
kanimozhiyudan	with Kanimozhi (name of a person)	kanimozhi + udan	adverb	n/a	Comitative	n/a	the name Kanimozhi literally means sweet language
pEsik kondirunthaan	had been chatting	pEsi + kondu +irunthaan	verb	third, masculine, past perfect		singular	continuousness indicated by the incompleteness brought by kondu
naan	I	naan	pronoun	first person, gender-neutral, n/a	Nominative	singular
avanai	him	avanai	pronoun	third, masculine, n/a	Accusative	singular	the postposition ai indicates accusative case
echarithEn	cautioned	echarithEn	verb	first, indicated by suffix En, gender-neutral, past		singular, plural would be indicated by substituting En with Om