Tamil is a Dravidian language related to Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam among others. As one of the few living classical languages, it has an unbroken literary tradition of over two millenia with the earliest writings having been dated to circa 500 B.C. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is agglutinative and the writing is largely phonetic. It is spoken by a majority of people in Tamil Nadu and northern and north-eastern Sri Lanka while a significant emigrant population lives in Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of the world. It is officially recognised in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and South Africa.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1828: Spelling reformer Noah Webster copyrighted the first edition of his dictionary of American English. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster)

1865: John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln with a Deringer pistol at Ford's Theatre. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth)

1912: The transatlantic ocean liner RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic)

1931: The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed by a provisional government led by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niceto_Alcal%E1-Zamora)

1970: An oxygen tank aboard the NASA spacecraft Apollo 13 exploded. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true." -- James Branch Cabell (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell)