The
consonants are known as '''
' ('body letters'). The
consonants are classified into three categories with six in each category:
valliṉam ('hard'),
melliṉam ('soft' or
nasal), and
iṭayiṉam ('medium'). Tamil has very restricted consonant clusters (for example, there are no word-initial clusters). There are well defined rules for voicing stops in the written form of Tamil,
Centamiḻ (the period of Tamil history before
Sanskrit words were borrowed). Stops are voiceless when at the start of a word, in a consonant cluster with another stop and when
geminated. They are voiced otherwise. Tamil is characterized by its use of more than one type of
coronal consonants: like many of the other languages of India, it contains a series of
retroflex consonants. Notably, the Tamil retroflex series includes the
retroflex approximant () (example Tami
ḻ; often transcribed 'zh'). Among the other Dravidian languages, the retroflex approximant also occurs in
Malayalam, old
Badaga,
old Telugu and
old Kannada. In most dialects of colloquial Tamil, this consonant is seen as shifting to the
retroflex lateral approximant in the south and
palatal approximant /j/ in the north. The proto-Dravidian alveolar stop *ṯ developed into an alveolar trill /r/ in the
Southern and
South Central Dravidian languages while *ṯṯ and *ṉṯ remained (modern ṟṟ, ṉṟ). [n] and [n̪] are mostly in complementary distribution and are predictable; namely, [n̪] occurs word initially and before /t̪/, while [n] occurs everywhere else. [n̪] occurs in other places from compounding of words starting with it and geminates from sandhi, eg. annēram (a-nēram) , ainūṟu (ai-nūṟu) but speakers might use the alveolar nasal there instead. /ɲ/ is rare word initially and is mostly only found before /t͡ɕ/ word medially; it occurs in geminated form as in
āññai or
maññai, mostly from Sanskritic loans with
jñ or sandhi where the 2nd word starts with ñ
aññāṉam, in singular form in some rare words
pūñai, añal and in compounds like
aṟiñaṉ. Only around 5 words have doubled intervocalic [ŋ], all are different forms of the word
aṅṅaṉam "that manner", apart from that [ŋ] only occurs before /k/. A chart of the Tamil consonant
phonemes in the
International Phonetic Alphabet follows: • , , and are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. • Intervocalic is pronounced as [ɣ~h] by Indian Tamils and [x] in Sri Lanka. • For most speakers in spoken Tamil the distinction between the tap and trill is lost except in the southern
Kanyakumari dialect. • In most spoken dialects, /rr/ [tːr] merges with /t̪t̪/ while some others keep them as [tːr] . /nr/ merges with /nn~ɳɳ/ if the preceding vowel is short or /n~ɳ/ if it is long like in literary Tamil. In speech, /parri, onru, muːnru, panri/ are realized as [pɐt̪t̪i, ʷoɳɳɯ, muːɳɯ, pɐnni]. • /t͡ʃ/ in spoken Tamil varies significantly. Some speakers pronounce it as [s] intervocalically and as an affricate initially, while others have [s] both initially and intervocalically. A final group of speakers has [t͡ʃ] before certain vowels and [s] before others, e.g. சின்ன [t͡ʃin:a] "small" but சாவி [sa:ʋi] "key". However, there are words where the pronunciation is fixed—for example,
ceṉṉai and
sēlam cannot be pronounced as [senːaɪ̯] and [t͡ʃeːlam]. /t͡ʃː ɲt͡ʃ/ are always [tːʃ n̠ʲd̠ʒ]. • In spoken Tamil /j/ might cause palatalization to the adjacent consonants and then get assimilated or deleted, e.g. literary Tamil
aintu, spoken Tamil
añju. • In spoken Tamil intervocalic /k, ʋ/ may be deleted sometimes as in /poːkiraːj/ as [poːrɛ] and sometime /ɻ/ with compensatory lengthening of the vowel as in /poɻut̪u/ as [poːd̪ɯ]. Word finally glides, mainly /j/ are generally deleted unless if the word is monosyllabic where its doubled e.g.
cey > seyyi, rūpāy > rūbā. Word final l and ḷ in polysyllabic words are deleted especially in pronouns but reappear when a suffix is added e.g.
nīṅkaḷ > nīṅga, similar to French
liaison. • l and ḷ gets assimilated to ṟ, ṭ before plosives and ṉ, ṇ before nasals in literary Tamil, e.g.
vil, kēḷ, nal, veḷ > viṟka, kēṭka, naṉmai, veṇmai, before c, ṇ too becomes ṭ, eg.
kāṇ-ci > kāṭci; in spoken Tamil it is deleted and the next consonant is doubled. Before coronal stops, the stops assimilate to the lateral's POA and the lateral is deleted like in the past tense forms of verbs ending with l and ḷ, e.g.
kol-ntu, koḷ-ntu, vil-ttu > koṉṟu, koṇṭu, viṟṟu. • As in Proto Dravidian, literary Tamil words can't begin with an alveolar or retroflex consonant but in spoken Tamil some words begin with r and l because of deletion of the initial vowel, e.g. literary Tamil
iraṇṭu, ulāttu, spoken Tamil
raṇḍu~reṇḍu, lāttu. In loanwords, a short i, u or a is added before them, e.g. Skt.
loka, Tamil
ulakam. • In loanwords, the voiced and aspirated plosives are all loaned as the plain plosive. Of the fricatives, h is loaned as k, the sibilants as c, ts as cc and kṣ as ṭc; sometimes s and ṣ are loaned as t and ṭ as in
mātam, varuṭam, ilaṭcam (Skt.
māsa, varṣa, lakṣa) and kṣ as k(k) or c(c) as in
kēttiram~cēttiram, piccai from Sanskrit
kṣetra, bhikṣā. • Words can only end with /m, n, ɳ, l, ɭ, ɾ, ɻ, j/ in literary Tamil. • Natively the only allowed clusters are C:, ṭP, NP, RP, RP:, RNP (where P = plosive, N = nasal, R = liquid, : = gemination, C = any consonant) most common are C: and NP; any heterorganic cluster indicates a morpheme boundary. Others clusters occurring in loanwords are split by vowels or simplified, e.g.
varṣa > varuṭam. • In
Sri Lankan Tamil dialects, word initial voiceless plosives may be aspirated dialectally, intervocalic /k/ may be [x~ɣ~h] and /t̪/ maybe [d̪~ð] or rarely [θ~t̪]; word final nasals are always preserved; tends to be [t͡ʃ~ʃ~s] or rarely [t͡s] initially depending on the dialect and speaker, a rare [z] was noted for a speaker intervocalically, eg
kaṭutāci [kɐɖuðaːzi]; may be [tt~t̪t̪, nd~ɳɖ]. • Some colloquial dialects merge ṇ, ḷ with n, l. •
Kongu Tamil has word final /ŋ/ as word final /ŋkV/ becomes /ŋ/, e.g. literary Tamil
vāṅka, Kongu Tamil
vāṅ. The voiceless consonants are voiced in different positions. In modern Tamil, however, voiced plosives occur initially in loanwords. Geminate stops get simplified to singleton unvoiced stops after long vowels, suggesting the primary cue is now voicing (cf. kūṭṭam-kūṭam becoming kūṭam-kūḍam in modern speakers). Altogether, we see a shift in progress towards phonemic voicing, more advanced in some dialects than others. Historically [j] was a possible allophone of medial -c- now the terms with [j] have solidified, compare Kannada which only had [s] as the medial allophone, Tamil
ñāyiṟu, Kannada
nēsaru. In some cases both remained as in
ucir, uyir. There are also cases where the opposite happened due to hypercorrection, eg. Tamil
kayiṟu, Madurai Tamil
kacaru, kacuru, kaciru even though the word didn't originally have a
-c-. There are also cases where it became t
mutalai/mutaḷai/mucali, Kannada
mosaḷe and disappeared after lengthening the previous vowel
nilā, Kodava
nelaci.
Āytam Old Tamil had a phoneme called the
āytam, which was written as ‘'. Tamil grammarians of the time classified it as a dependent phoneme (or restricted phoneme) (''
). The rules of pronunciation given in the Tolkāppiyam, a text on the grammar of old Tamil, says that the āytam
in old Tamil patterned with semivowels and it occurred after a short vowel and before a stop; it either lengthened the previous vowel, geminated the stop or was lost if the following segment is phonetically voiced in the environment. It is said to be the descendant of Proto Dravidian laryngeal *H. The āytam'' in modern Tamil is used to transcribe foreign phones like ஃப் (ஃp) for [f], ஃஜ (ஃj) for [z], ஃஸ (ஃs) for [z, ʒ] and ஃக (ஃk) for [x], similar to a
nuqta. ==Overview==