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Language Lineage

Tamil-Malayalam

*k became c (a palatal) before front vowels: Kannada gey- 'do' corresponds to Tamil and Malayalam cey-.

c. 1st millennium BCE – presentTamil Nadu, Kerala and northern and eastern Sri Lanka; diaspora in Southeast Asia, South Africa and beyond
On this page
  1. Old Tamil
  2. Malayalam Branches Off
  3. Language and Identity
  4. In its own words
  5. Where it's spoken
  6. Turning points

01

Old Tamil

Tamil has the oldest literature of any Dravidian language. Inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script, carved in caves used by Jain and Buddhist monks, go back to at least the 2nd century BCE. Recent excavations at Keezhadi have been argued to push the script's origin earlier, a claim still under discussion. The Tolkāppiyam, a grammar of the language and its poetics, and the Sangam anthologies of love and war poetry are usually dated to the first centuries CE, though their exact dates are debated.

A characteristic change of this group is the palatalisation of k before front vowels: Kannada gey- 'do', but Tamil cey-.

02

Malayalam Branches Off

Malayalam grew out of the western dialects of Tamil, on the Kerala coast behind the Western Ghats. Between about the 9th and 13th centuries it became a separate language. It dropped the personal endings on verbs, and its literary style, Maṇipravāḷam ('rubies and coral'), mixed Malayalam with Sanskrit. Today it has around 38 million speakers.

03

Language and Identity

Few languages are as bound up with identity as modern Tamil. From 1916 the scholar Maraimalai Adigal led the Tanittamiḻ ('pure Tamil') movement to replace Sanskrit words with Tamil ones, and resistance to Hindi as a national language in 1937–40 and 1965 shaped the politics of Tamil Nadu. In 2004 Tamil became the first language India declared 'classical'. It is an official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

A sample

In its own words

Old Tamil

யாதும் ஊரே யாவரும் கேளிர்
yātum
every
ūrē
town-EMPH
yāvarum
everyone
kēḷir
kin
‘Every town is our town, everyone our kin.’
Sources (2)
  • Kaṇiyaṉ Pūṅkuṉṟaṉār, Puṟanāṉūṟu 192.
  • Hart, George L. & Hank Heifetz (trans.). 1999. The Four Hundred Songs of War and Wisdom: An Anthology of Poems from Classical Tamil, the Puṟanāṉūṟu. New York: Columbia University Press.

On the map

Where it’s spoken

Singapore
Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. Indiac. 104 million
  2. Sri Lankac. 5 million
  3. Malaysiac. 2 million
  4. Singapore

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Sound lawBefore the earliest Tamil records

    *k becomes c before front vowels

    *k → c / _ front V (Tamil cey- 'do'; Kannada gey-)

    Before front vowels, *k palatalises to c: Tamil and Malayalam cey- 'do', against Kannada gey-. The change is not complete, and there are many exceptions, some of them later borrowings.

    Compare with other assimilation and strengthening across families →

    Sources (1)
    • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  2. Writingc. 2nd century BCE (possibly earlier)Contested

    Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions

    Short Tamil inscriptions in an adapted Brahmi script appear in rock shelters and on pottery. Whether finds at Keezhadi and elsewhere show writing several centuries earlier is debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Mahadevan, Iravatham. 2003. Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  3. Splitc. 9th – 13th century CEContested

    Malayalam becomes a separate language

    The Tamil dialects of the Kerala coast develop into Malayalam, which loses verbal person endings and develops a Sanskrit-mixed literary style. When it should be counted as a separate language is debated.

    Sources (1)
    • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  4. Revitalization1916 onward

    The pure Tamil movement

    Maraimalai Adigal's Tanittamiḻ movement sets out to purge Sanskrit loans from Tamil, and it becomes part of a wider Tamil political identity. In 2004 Tamil is the first language declared classical by India.

    Figures · Maraimalai Adigal (1876–1950)

    Sources (1)
    • Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 1997. Passions of the Tongue: Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970. Berkeley: University of California Press.