TAMIL LANGUAGE

It is an official language of {{link=Tamil Nadu">Tamil Nadu state in India and one of the official languages of Sri Lanka. Large Tamil-speaking communities also reside in Malaysia and Singapore, South Africa, and the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius. The earliest Tamil inscriptions date from с 200 BC; literature in the language has a 2,000-year history. Tamil script is descended from the southern Indian Pallava script (see Indic writing systems ). Tamil has several regional dialects, Brahman and non-Brahman caste dialects, and a marked division between literary and colloquial forms (see diglossia ).