The great linguistic scholars Emaneau and Burrough have listed thousandsof Tamil words in Sanskrit. There are a lot of differences between the Vedic (Northern) languages and Sanskrit. Even though a few classicallanguages such as Greek and Chinese survived, people can not todayunderstand those languages in their ancient forms. Latin, Sanskrit, andPali are dead languages: people do not speak these languages in everydaylife. Only the Tamil language has retained its original, classicalcharacter.

Tamil literature and words from ancient times can beunderstood by modern-day speakers. Many of those words are still usedtoday in speech and writing. I have seen several old scriptures in Temples. I could understand none.All I could read is few letters.

Tamil gave birth to the Kannada language in the 6th century AD. Thefirst literature in Kannada came into being only in the 9th century AD.Telugu literature was developed by Nannaya only in the 11th centuryduring the period of Chola kings. Malayalam was born out of Tamil asrecently as the 15th century and give rise to folk literature. My understanding about contemporary tamil is that ...There was a language called "tamil" from which contemporary tamilevolved just like kannada/telugu/malayalam etc. We retain the originalname tamil. Others started calling with some other name.

THE DISTINCTION OF TAMIL

1. Only Tamil has been in existence in the Indian subcontinent for 5000years (as a spoken language for the first 2500 years, and as a spoken aswell as a written language for the past 2500 years).

2. Tamil has the capability to be independent and to stand on its own.It does not need to borrow anything from any other languages.Nope. Modern tamil could not invent (or possiblly could not popularize theinventions by few, like ganeenee for computer) enough words. It has borrowed so many words from English, Hindi etc. It has gone to the very roots oftamil mass -- the illiterate --. Go to any cycle shop in any village mithivandiis cycle only. Even they say "over-oil pannanum" which is actually distortedversion of "over-hauling is needed".

3. Twenty-two (22) languages are derived from Tamil. These includeKannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu, Central Dravidian languages, andNorthern Dravidian languages (such as Brahui).Make it 23, first being Tamil.

4. Tamil and Sanskrit are entirely different languages. According toProfessor Kathiresan Chettiar, a scholar of both languages:"The differences between Tamil and Sanskrit are very many. The verbsused in Tamil are dependent on the gender while the verbs in Sanskritare the same for male, female, or neuter genders. For example, the verb"bhavathi" in Sanskrit is used for both human and neuter genders alike;whereas in Tamil, different conjugations of the verb are used dependingon the noun's gender.

The words about males clearly reflect the malegender, while words referring to females denote the female gender. Thisis not the case in Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, referring to wife, the word"paariyai" is in feminine gender, "dhaaram" is in masculine gender, and"kalasthram" is in neutral gender. Nouns in Sanskrit have singularity,duality and plurality. In Tamil, all nouns that are not singular areplural."

5. Tamil is the only language in the world that has literature belongingto all major religions: Saiva Hinduism, Vaishnava Hinduism, Buddhism,Jainism, Islam, and Christianity.

6. The format of Tamil is integrated with Nature. Every word has meaning behind it.

7. Unlike in some other languages, every sound (hard, middle, and soft) in Tamil can be realized without forcing us to extract the word from the throat.

8. A special characteristic of Tamil is that the words are pronouncedexactly as they are written. May be for ancient tamil. (I could not think of a counter example in pure tamil, that is why the "may be".)But ...U write padi and bus. Do you read as it is?U write Subash Chandra Bose and read.If you want to maintain this characteristic then U'll end upchanging the actuals, eg: saveriyaar for Xavier.

9. Tamil has the capability to formulate most of the words within five (5) letters.

10. Tamil has 12 vowels that can stand alone or be combined with 18consonants. Words can be formed by suitably combining the vowels andconsonants.

11. Tamil has the special letters "zha" [siRappuzhakaram] and the hard"Ra"

12. Many languages in the world have characters to produce only twonasal sounds (m and n). Tamil has characters to produce six nasal (soft) sounds: na (initial), na, Na, nga, gna, maAt the same time tamil is incapable of producing sounds likeFi as in "Physics".Bhe as in BaseBha as in ballThe list is quite big if you see the letters in Hindi.

13. The letters stand by themselves, rather than getting entangled withone another.

14. A special letter [aayutha ezhuththu] with three dots arranged inthe shape of an equilateral triangle, is available to denote certainrare sounds where it is necessary. [aayutham = weapon, ezhuththu =letter]

15. Tamil has a special characteristic known as the "shortened u." [kuRRiyalukaram]

16. The grammar of Tamil language has several names that are derived from, and integrated with, Nature