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The vowels are divided into short and long (five of each type) and two diphthongs. The consonants are classified into three categories with 6 in each category: vallinam - hard, mellinam - soft or nasal, and idayinam - medium. Unlike Devanagari, Tamil has neither conjunct consonants nor aspirated and voiced stops. Some scholars have suggested that in Sentamil (which refers to Tamil as it existed before Sanskrit words were borrowed), stops were voiceless when at the start of a word and unvoiced otherwise. However, no such distinction is observed by modern Tamil speakers.
The script is sometimes called Vattezhuthu, literally round alphabet. This characterstic has partly to do with the fact that in ancient times, writing involved carving with a sharp point on palm leaves (olaichuvadi) and it was apparently easier to produce curves than straight lines by this method. Some scholars state that the script was originally called vettezhuthu meaning script that was cut (on stone), standing for ease of carving in stones. The script is syllabic, in the sense that each letter is a syllable. However, the signs for the syllables are derived from that of the inherent consonant; thus it is of the abugida type. Some syllables are written by modifying the shape of the consonant in a way that is inherent to the vowel, others are written by adding vowel-inherent suffix to the consonant, yet others a prefix, and finally some vowels require adding both a prefix and a suffix to the consonant. In every case the vowel symbol is different from the vowel standing alone. An overdot (see image) - equivalent to Devanagari sign virama - suppresses the inherent trailing a sound of the consonant sign - that is, it is a pure consonant.
There are some lexical rules for formation of words. Tolkaappiyam describes such rules. Some examples: a word cannot end in certain consonants, and cannot begin with some consonants including 'r' 'l' and 'll'; there are two consonants for the dental 'n' - which one should be used depends on whether the 'n' occurs at the start of the word and on the letters around it.
Consonants are also called the 'body' (mei) letters.
| Consonant | Sound | Category |
|---|---|---|
| க | ka | vallinam |
| ங | nga (N-yuh: one sound) | mellinam |
| ச | ca | vallinam |
| ஞ | nja | mellinam |
| ட | tta | vallinam |
| ண | nna | mellinam |
| த | tha | vallinam |
| ந | na | mellinam |
| ப | pa | vallinam |
| ம | ma | mellinam |
| ய | ya | idaiyinam |
| ர | ra | idaiyinam |
| ல | la | idaiyinam |
| வ | va | idaiyinam |
| ழ | zha | idaiyinam |
| ள | lla | idaiyinam |
| ற | rra | vallinam |
| ன | nnna | mellinam |
Also called " Grantha" letters, these letters are used almost exclusively for writing words that are borrowed from Sanskrit (or sometimes other languages such as English). Seeing one of these letters in a word is a good indication that the word is probably borrowed from Sanskrit though of course not all such words include these letters.
| Consonant | Sound |
|---|---|
| ஜ | ja |
| ஷ | sha |
| ஸ | sa |
| ஹ | ha |
| க்ஷ | ksha |
Vowels are also called the 'life' (uyir) or 'soul' letters. Together with the consonants (which are called 'body' letters), they form compond, syllabic ( abugida) letters that are called 'living' letters (uyirmei ie. letters that have both 'body' and 'soul').
| Vowel | Sound |
|---|---|
| அ | Short a |
| ஆ | Long A |
| இ | Short i |
| ஈ | Long I |
| உ | Short u |
| ஊ | Long U |
| எ | Short e |
| ஏ | Long E |
| ஐ | Diphthong AI |
| ஒ | Short o |
| ஓ | Long O |
| ஔ | Diphthong AU |
Using the consonant 'k' as an example.
| Compound | Transliteration |
|---|---|
| க் | k |
| க | ka |
| கா | kA |
| கி | ki |
| கீ | kI |
| கு | ku |
| கூ | kU |
| கெ | ke |
| கே | kE |
| கை | kAI |
| கொ | ko |
| கோ | kO |
| கௌ | kAU |
Special letter ஃ (pronounced 'akh') is rarely used by itself - normally serves purely grammatical function as independent vowel form of the dot on consonants that suppresses the inherent 'a' sound in plain consonants.
The long ('nedil') vowels are about twice as long as the short ('kuRil') vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as the short vowels, though some grammatical texts place them with the long ('nedil') vowels.
As can be seen in the compound form, the vowel sign can be added to the right, left or both sides of the consonants. It can also form a ligature. These rules are evolving and older use has more ligatures than modern use. What you actually see on this page depends on your font selection. 'Code 2000' will show more ligatures than 'Latha'.
There are proponents of script reform who want to eliminate all ligatures and let all vowel signs appear on the right side.
Unicode encodes the character in logical order (always the consonant first), wheras legacy 8-bit encodings (like TSCII) prefer the written order. This is a problem in transcoding these.
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