Introducing Tamil

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Corps Foreign Language Training Center, 367 p.Tamil (தமிழ) is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian
language family. Spoken predominantly by Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and
Singapore, it has smaller communities of speakers in many other countries, with over 74
million speakers worldwide. It is one of the official languages of India, Singapore and Sri
Lanka.
Tamil is one of the few living classical languages and has an unbroken literary tradition
of over two thousand years. The written language has changed little during this period,
with the result that classical literature is as much a part of everyday Tamil as modern
literature. Tamil school-children, for example, are still taught the alphabet using the aa-
thi-choodi, an alphabet rhyme attributed to the poet Auvaiyar who lived during the
thirteenth century CE. The name 'Tamil' is an anglicised form of the native name தமிழ.