Spoken and literary variants

Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and is one of 22 nationally recognised languages under the Indian Constitution. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and has constitutional recognition in South Africa.

In addition, Tamil was recognised as a classical language by the Government of India in 2004, following a campaign by several Tamil associations supported by academics from India and abroad, most notably Professor George L. Hart, who occupies the Chair in Tamil Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. (See his statement.) It was the first Indian language to be so recognised. The recognition was announced by the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004. (See item 41 of his address and the BBC news item on the formal approval by the Indian Cabinet.)

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Spoken and literary variants

The opening of the book of Genesis in a 18th century Tamil bible. The language is centamil.

In addition to its various dialects, Tamil also exhibits a rather sharp diglossia between its formal or classic variety, called centamil, and its colloquial form, called koduntamil, a broad term which traditionally referred to all spoken Tamil dialects rather than any one standard form. Diglossia has existed in the language since ancient times - the language used in early temple inscriptions differs quite significantly from the language of classical poetry. In consequence, standard centamil is not based on the speech of any one region, a fact which has helped keep the written language mostly the same across various Tamil speaking regions.

In modern times, centamil is generally used in formal writing and speech. It is, for example, the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koduntamil has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamil. Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in koduntamil, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience.

Spoken dialects did not have much prestige: The grammatical rules of literary centamil were believed to have been formulated by the gods and therefore seen as being the only correct speech (see, for example, Kankeyar, 1840). In contrast to most European languages, therefore, Tamil did not have a standard spoken form for much of its history. In modern times, however, the increasing use of koduntamil has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koduntamil is based on 'educated non-brahmin speech', rather than on any one dialect (Schiffman, 1998), but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. In Sri Lanka the standard is based on the dialect of Jaffna.

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Dialects

Tamil dialects are mainly differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. Thus the word for "here" - inge in chentamil (the classic variety) - has evolved into inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, ingane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, inguttu in the dialect of Ramanathapuram, ingale and ingade in various northern dialects and ingai in some dialects of Jaffna.

Although most Tamil dialects do not differ very significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. The dialect of the Iyers of Palakkad has a large number of Malayalam loanwords, and has also been influenced by Malayalam syntax. Finally, the Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the 11th century, retains many features of the Vainava paribasai, a special form of Tamil designed in the 9th and 10th centuries to reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values.

Tamil dialects vary according to both region and community. Several castes have their own dialects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. Some of these differences have begun to fade away in recent years as a result of the anti-casteist movement, but many traces remain and it is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech.

The Ethnologue lists twenty-two current dialects of Tamil, including Adi Dravida, Aiyar, Aiyangar, Arava, Burgandi, Kasuva, Kongar, Korava, Korchi, Madrasi, Parikala, Pattapu Bhasha, Sri Lanka Tamil, Malaya Tamil, Burma Tamil, South Africa Tamil, Tigalu, Harijan, Sanketi, Hebbar, Tirunelveli and Madurai. Other known dialects are Kongu and Kumari.

Although not a dialect, the Tamil spoken in Chennai (Capital of Tamil Nadu) infuses English words and is called Madras Bashai.