Tamil
தமிழ் எழுத்துSample Characters
First 48 characters from Tamil (U+0B82–U+0BFA)
About Tamil
The Tamil script is an abugida used to write the Tamil language, one of the world's oldest living languages with a literary tradition spanning over 2,000 years. Tamil is the official language of Tamil Nadu (India), Sri Lanka, and Singapore.
The Tamil script has 12 vowels, 18 consonants, and one special character (āytam), which combine to form 216 syllabic characters. It is written left-to-right. The script has been relatively resistant to change over the centuries; Old Tamil inscriptions are more readable to modern speakers than equivalent texts in other ancient languages.
Data sourced from the ISO 15924 registry, Unicode CLDR, and the Unicode Character Database.
Script Family & Lineage
Languages Using Tamil 2
Frequently Asked Questions
What type of writing system is Tamil?
What direction does Tamil read?
How many languages use the Tamil script?
When was the Tamil script created?
Does Tamil have uppercase and lowercase letters?
Compare Tamil With Another Script
Direction, characters, languages — side by side.
Key Facts
- ISO Code
- Taml
- ISO Number
- 346
- Script Type
- Abugida
- Direction
- Left-to-right
- Status
- Living
- Region
- South Asian
- Characters
- 123
- Introduced
- 700 CE
- Languages
- 2
- Total Speakers
- ~78M
Unicode Ranges
-
TamilU+0B82–U+0BFA
-
Tamil SupplementU+11FC0–U+11FFF
Script Properties
- Has Case
- No
- Cursive
- No
- Vowels
- inherent