Tamil (தமிழ், Tamiḻ, pronounced [t̪amiɻ] ) is a classical Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India, along with Sanskrit, attested since c. 300 BCE. The term "Tamil" has its origins in the ancient Tamil Sangams, where it was first recorded in the Tholkappiyam around the 2nd century BCE. The language belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada. Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Egypt. The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature, consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu, India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka. It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia, Singapore, and among diaspora communities. Tamil has been recognized as a classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Singapore. The language has seen efforts to purify it by reducing the influence of Sanskrit and other foreign loanwords. Tamil maintains its classical literary tradition while adapting to modern changes in colloquial speech and writing. Its phonology is characterized by a rich set of consonants and vowels, and it has a script that differs from other Indic scripts by its use of visible marks to indicate vowel omission. Source: Wikipedia (en)