Tamil

The Tamil script is an abugida script that is used by Tamil speakers in Tamil Nadu, India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere. The Tamil script has 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the aytam. The script is also known as the Thamizh script. The Tamil script is believed to be derived from the Brahmi script, which is also the origin of the Devanagari, Kannada, Malayalam and Telugu scripts. The earliest inscriptions in the Tamil script date back to the 2nd century BCE. The Tamil script is written from left to right and does not have any case distinctions. Each character in the script represents a single phoneme. The Tamil script is used to write the Tamil language, which is a Dravidian language spoken by around 77 million people. Tamil is the official language of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and is also an official language of Singapore and Malaysia. The Tamil script is also used to write other languages, such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Kannada and Telugu.