The Tamil language
and how it is written

Where Tamil ranks

Tamil is the 24th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Tamil

The design of Tamil script

A Brahmic abugida with the smallest letter set of the major Indian scripts: 12 vowels, 18 consonants and the special letter ஃ (āytam)^[5]. A dot, the pulli, visibly marks a consonant with no vowel^[7].

Abugida (syllabic). Each consonant carries a vowel, changed by marks attached to it.

Kind

Abugida (syllabic)

Direction

Left to right

Took shape

From Tamil-Brahmi, attested in inscriptions from about the 3rd century BCE

Line of descent

Brahmi → Tamil-Brahmi → Vatteluttu / Pallava → Tamil

Traditional surface

Palm leaves

Own digits

௦ ௧ ௨ ௩ ௪ ௫ ௬ ௭ ௮ ௯

Also writes

No other language among the 38 is written mainly in Tamil script.

• Fewer letters, by design

  Tamil has no separate letters for aspirated or voiced stops: one letter க covers k, g and h-like sounds depending on position^[5].

• A visible off-switch

  Where Devanagari often hides the dead consonant inside a conjunct, Tamil writes it plainly with a dot, so க் is a bare k. That makes the script easier to set and to render in software^[7].

• Numbers without zero

  Traditional Tamil numerals had symbols for 10, 100 and 1000 (௰, ௱, ௲) and no zero; the zero ௦ was added later^[7].

• The letter ழ

  Tamil's ழ (ḻa) is a rare retroflex sound, and the language's own name ends in it: Tamiḻ^[5].

• Grantha letters at the edge

  ஜ (ja), ஷ (ṣa), ஸ (sa) and ஹ (ha) were borrowed from the Grantha script to write Sanskrit words; purists often avoid them^[5].

Explore the letters

Numbers in Tamil script

Tamil's relatives among the 38

Tamil belongs to the Dravidian family (South Dravidian). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• ಕನ್ನಡKannadaSame branch: South Dravidian · 59M
• తెలుగుTeluguSouth-Central Dravidian · 96M

Tamil across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Tamil.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Tamil
4. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Dravidian languages
5. Omniglot — Tamil alphabet
6. Ministry of Culture, Government of India — Status of Classical Language: an explainer (2024)
7. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 12: South and Central Asia-I (Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada)
8. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Tamil

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.