Minorities In Words - Research

Brief 

Tamil Typography Research 

Expressive Typography Research

Tamil Language

Tamil (தமிழ்)

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken mainly in southern India and Sri Lanka, and also in Malaysia, the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Singapore, France, Mauritius, and many other countries.

According to the 2001 Indian census, there were 60.8 million speakers of Tamil in India. According to 2012 censuses, there were just over 3 million Tamils in Sri Lanka, and 1.8 million Tamils in Malaysia. There are also Tamil populations of more than 100,000 in the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Singapore, France and Réunion. The total number of Tamil speakers is about 67.5 million. 

Tamil at a glance

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• Native name: தமிழ் (tamiḻ) [ˈtæmɪl]
• Linguistic affliation: Dravidian, Southern
• Number of speakers: c. 67.5 million
• Spoken in: India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, UK, South Africa, Canada, USA, Singapore, France, Mauritius
• First written: 500 BC
• Writing system: Tamil script
• Status: official language in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Recognised minority language in Malaysia, Mauritius and South Africa

Notable features

• Type of writing system: syllabic alphabet
• Direction of writing: left to right in horizontal lines
• When they appear the the beginning of a syllable, vowels are written as independent letters.
• Some of the non-standard consonant-vowel combinations are not used in official documents.
• The alphabet was originally written on palm leaves. As a result, the letters are made up mainly of curved strokes which did not rip the leaves.

Shape and Form Research