Some truths of today's world!! Take a look.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: sampath PERUMAL <bioteksampath@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:08:47 +0900
Subject: Fwd: Some truths of today's world!! Take a look.
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Hi friends,
This is a master piece.
If you have not read it, take the time to read it now. If you have read it,
take time to read it again!
*
*
*GEORGE CARLIN
*
*(His wife recently died...and George followed her, dying this month July
2008.) **

*[image: []]*
Isn't it amazing that George Carlin - comedian of the 70's and 80's - could
write something so very eloquent...and so very appropriate.* *
A Message by George Carlin:
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but
shorter tempers, wider Freeways **,**but narrower viewpoints. We spend more,
but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and
smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but
less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more
problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too
little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.** **
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too
much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to
life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but
have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer
space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom,
but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but
accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more
computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we
communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small
character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of
two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are
days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night
stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to
quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and
nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to
you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just
hit delete...
Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going
to be around forever.
Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because
that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.
Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the
only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.
Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most
of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep
inside of you.
Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will
not be there again.
Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious
thoughts in your mind.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments
that take our breath away.
If you don't send this to at least 8 people....Who cares?
George Carlin*







Thiruvananthapuram
+919809017472(mob)
04712529530(lab)
http://www.freewebs.com/hmgrgcb/index.htm
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--
Mahesh P P
Ph.D Scholar
Mycobacterium Research Group
Molecular Microbiology
Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology
Thiruvananthapuram,India

--
************************************************************
Sampath Perumal
PhD Scholar
Department of Crop Science and Biotechnology
Collage of Agricultural and Life Science
Seoul National University
South Korea - 151 742
Phone : 0082-10-2372-0067
sampathsnu@snu.ac.kr
http://im-crop.snu.ac.kr/

--
REGARDS,
SHOBAN CHAKRAVARTHY.K

Amazing Optical Illusions

Amazing Optical Illusions

Moving Cogs:

Appears to be a sort of perpetual motion which is actually no the case, this illusion is creation of Mr. Shebzukhov from Moscow, Russia.

Scintillation Grid:

It comes with different names, but Scintillation Grid is probably the right name. Thanks to Elke Lingelbach of the Institut fur Augenoptik Aalen in Germany, this optical illusion is available to us. Illusion: Just count the number of black points!



The Amazing Dots:

This illusion is designed by Jeremy L. Hinton of Bristol, UK. What is the point? Just concentrate on the mark ‘X’ and you will see start seeing a green dot rotating instead of pink and then these pink dots will disappear and only green rotating dot will remain.

The science behind it is ‘Negative Retinal Afterimage’ or after image effect.


Dragon Illusion:

Getting millions of hits, this is the most wonderful illusion you will come across. Put it on a table and move around it, you see the head of the dragon move across.

Theory is that on viewing a solid object, brain figures out how the object we are looking at will behave. But dragon gives us wrong impression or to our brain. The thing is shape of it, we misinterpret it by assuming that nose is pointed towards us but actually the head of the dragon is concave.

Square:

The letter ‘X’ seems to be made of different shades of colur actually it is not. It is made of single colur and can you guess which colur is that?

Mona Lisa Illusion:

Two most famous paintings in the world placed up side down. Can you tell the difference?

If you spin the image right way up, you find that one of Mona Lisa looks ghastly. The reason is that your mind is not used to looking pitures up side down, thats why it could not diffrentiate between two pictures

ROTATING DISCS

The disks appear to rotate because the concentric gray circles give the impression off spirals.

PERIPHERAL DRIFT ILLUSION

The peripheral drift illusion gives the idea of a waving image.

Simultaneous Contrast

We see shift in identical colors when there is a different background on which they are framed resulting in a phenomena called “simultaneous contrast†. This results in a a variety of affects on how we see objects.

For this illusion, look at the diagrams below. Do you see different colors on each side of the stripe? In each picture, you observe that squares present at the left side of the image are more darker compared to those at the right. To clearly see the simultaneous contrast effect, watch the images from the side of your picture.

Kanizsa Triangle

Let me guess, you perceived a white equilateral triangle in the above picture. But, as a matter of fact none is drawn. This effect is called as illusory contour.

You will also observe that the white triangle is more brighter than the surrounding, but in fact it has same level of brightness as does the background have.

NEW WAY OF EATING NOODLES.....

The new way to eat Noodles.       (Warning: Don't try this in your home J)

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Life of MAN

God created the donkey and said to him. "You will be a donkey. You will work un-tiringly from sunrise to sunset carrying burdens on your back. You will eat grass, you will have no intelligence and you will live 50 years." The donkey answered: "I will be a donkey, but to live 50 years is much. Give me only 20 years" God granted his wish. ............ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ..... !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!! God created the dog and said to him: "You will guard the house of man. You will be his best Friend. You will eat the scraps that he gives you and you will live 30 years. You will be a dog. " The dog answered: "Sir, to live 30 years is too much,give me only 15 years. " God granted his wish. ............ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ...... !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! God created the monkey and said to him: "You will be a monkey. You will swing from branch to branch doing tricks. You will be amusing and you will live 20 years. " The monkey answered: "To live 20 years is too much, give me only 10 years." God granted his wish. ............ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ..... !!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! !!!!!! Finally God created man ... and said to him: "You will be man, the only rational creature on the face of the earth. You will use your intelligence to become master over all the animals. You will dominate the world and you will live 20 years." Man responded: "Sir, I will be a man but to live only 20 years is very little, give me the 30 years that the donkey refused, the 15 years that the dog did not want and the 10 years the monkey refused. " God granted man's wish ............ ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... ......... .... And since then, man lives 20 years as a man , marries and spends 30 years like a donkey, working and carrying all the burdens on his back. Then when his children are grown, he lives 15 years like a dog taking care of the house and eating whatever is given to him, so that when he is old, he can retire and live 10 years like a monkey, going from house to house and from one son or daughter to another doing tricks to amuse his grandchildren.

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1 GB 20 years ago and 1GB now

1 GB 20 years ago and 1GB now

.

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Thought Breaker

Life in a typical day of an American

John Smith started the day early having set his
alarm clock
(MADE IN JAPAN) for 6am.
While his
coffeepot
(MADE IN CHINA)
was perking, he shaved with his
electric razor
(MADE IN HONG KONG)
He put on a
dress shirt
(MADE IN SRI LANKA),
designer jeans
(MADE IN SINGAPORE)
and
tennis shoes
(MADE IN KOREA)
After cooking his breakfast in his new
electric skillet
(MADE IN INDIA)
he sat down with his
calculator
(MADE IN MEXICO)
to see how much he could spend today. After setting his
watch
(MADE IN TAIWAN)
to the
radio
(MADE IN INDIA)
he got in his
car
(MADE IN GERMANY)
filled it with
GAS
(from Saudi Arabia)
and continued his search
for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging
and fruitless day checking his
Computer
(Made In Malaysia),
John decided to relax for a while.
He put on his
sandals
(MADE IN BRAZIL)
poured himself a glass of
wine
(MADE IN FRANCE)
and turned on his
TV
(MADE IN INDONESIA),
and then wondered
why he can't find
a good paying job
in AMERICA
AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM A
PRESIDENT
MADE IN KENYA

INTERESTING FACTS

1. Coca-Cola was originally green.

2. The most common name in the world is "Mohammed".

3. The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that they
start with.

4. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

5. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States..

6. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be typed using the letters
only on one row of the keyboard.

7. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

8. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

9. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different

10. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,
your heart stops for a millisecond.

11. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

12. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the
toughest tongue twister in the English language.

13. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to
suppress a sneeze; you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck
and die.

14. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from
History."Spades" King David; "Clubs" Alexander the Great; " Hearts"
Charlemagne; "Diamonds" Julius Caesar.

15. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =12,345,678,987, 654,321

16. If a statue of a warrior on a horse has both front legs in the
air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the
air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the
horse has a all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural
causes.

17. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and
laser printers all have in common? Answer: All invented by women.

18. Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.

19. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

20. A snail can sleep for three years.

21.All polar bears are left-handed.

22.American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive
from each salad served in first-class.

23.Butterflies taste with their feet.

24.Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

25.In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

26.On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

27.Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

28.Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left-hand.

29.The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

30.The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

31.The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.

32.Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have
over million descendants.

33.Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in
your ear by 700 times.

34.The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

35.Most lipstick contains fish scales.

35. It is impossible to lick your elbow.

37.And finally over 90% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

Best joke in Britan

Best joke in Britan A Chinese walks into a bar in America late one night and he saw Steven Spielberg. As he was a great fan of his movies, he rushes over to him, and asks for his autograph. Instead, Spielberg gives him a slap and says, "You Chinese people bombed our Pearl Habour, get outta here." The astonished Chinese man replied, "It was not the Chinese who bombed your PearlHarbour, it was the Japanese". "Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, you're all the same," replied Spielberg. In return, the Chinese gives Spielberg a slap and says, "You sank the Titanic, my forefathers were on that ship." Shocked, Spielberg replies, "It was the iceberg that sank the ship, not me." The Chinese replies, "Iceberg, Spielberg, Carlsberg, you're all the same." ( This particular joke won an award for the best joke in a  competition organized in Britain )

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Love Cricket? Check out live scores, photos, video highlights and more. Click here.

Which country is this????

Which country is this???? JUST IMAGINE WHICH PLACE IS THIS   WHETHER DUBAI  ????? MALAYASIA ????? SINGAPORE  ??????? USA  ????????? GERMANY  ????????? OR ANY OTHER ????????????????? ? Guess   . . . . . . . . . . . .Guess ' ' ' ' ' ' ' IT IS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SAHARA AMBY VALLEY  LOCATED IN LONAVALA NEAR PUNE INDIA !!!!!!!!!!

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Beauty Of Innocence

Beauty Of Innocence

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Thanks for Being My Friend

Thanks For Being a Friend

Latest trend of Wedding Invitation..!!!

என் தாய் தமிழை பற்றி ........

Tamil

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in Malaysia, Mauritius, Vietnam, Reunion as well as emigrant communities around the world.It is the administrative language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and the first Indian language to be declared as a classical language by the government of India in 2004, followed by Sanskrit.

Tamil literature has existed for over two thousand years. The earliest epigraphic records found date from around the third century BCE. The earliest period of Tamil literature, Sangam literature, is dated from the 3rd century BC to 6th century AD.
Tamil ranks 17th amongst the top twenty of the world's most spoken languages.

Classification:

Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages, a family of around twenty-six languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is sometimes classified as being part of a Tamil language family, which alongside Tamil proper, also includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula, and Yerukula languages. The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam. Until about the ninth century, Tamil and Malayalam were dialects of one language called "Tamil" by the speakers of both. Although many of the differences between Tamil and Malayalam evidence a pre-historic split between eastern and western dialects, the process of separation of the two into distinct languages was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century.

The Study of Word Origins:

The exact period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. Southworth suggests that the name comes from tam-miz --> tam-iz 'self-speak', or 'one's own speech'. Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iz, with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and "-iz" having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternately, he suggests a derivation of tamiz <-- tam-iz <-- *tav-iz <-- *tak-iz, meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)."

History:

Tamil is one of the ancient languages of the world with records in the language dating back over two millennia. Its origins are not precisely known, but it developed and flourished in India as a language with a rich literature. With an estimated 30,000 inscriptions, Tamil has the largest number of inscriptions in South Asia. Tamil has the oldest extant literature amongst the Dravidian languages, but dating the language and the literature precisely is difficult. Literary works in India were preserved either in palm leaf manuscripts (implying repeated copying and recopying) or through oral transmission, making direct dating impossible. External chronological records and internal linguistic evidence, however, indicate that the oldest extant works were probably compiled sometime between the 2nd century BCE and the 10th century CE.

Tamil scholars categorize the history of the language into three periods, Old Tamil (300 BC - 700 CE), Middle Tamil (700 - 1600) and Modern Tamil (1600-present). Epigraphic attestation of Tamil begins with rock inscriptions from the 3rd century BC, written in Tamil-Brahmi, an adapted form of the Brahmi script. The earliest extant literary text is the Tolkappiyam, a work on poetics and grammar which describes the language of the classical period, dated variously between the 3rd century BCE and 5th century CE.

The Sangam literature contains about 50,000 lines of poetry contained in 2381 poems attributed to 473 poets including many women poets. Many of the poems of Sangam period were also set to music. During the post-Sangam period, important works like Thirukkural, and epic poems were composed, including Silappatikaram, Manimekalai, Sivakacintamani, Valaiyapathi and Kundalakesi which are known as the five great epics. The Bhakthi period is known for the great outpouring of devotional songs set to pann music, including over eight thousand Tevaram verses on Saivism and four thousand verses on Vaishnavism. The early mediaeval Period gave rise to a popular adaptation of the Ramayana in Tamil, known as Kamba Ramayanam and a story of 63 Nayanmars known as Periyapuranam.

Geographic Distribution:

Tamil is the first language of the majority in Tamil Nadu, India and North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. The language is spoken by small groups of minorities in other parts of these two countries such as Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur and Maharashtra in case of India and Colombo and the hill country in case of Sri Lanka.

There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, South Africa, and Mauritius. Some people in Guyana, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only a small number speak the language there. Groups of more recent migrants from Sri Lanka and India exist in Canada (especially Toronto), USA, Australia, many Middle Eastern countries, and most of the western European countries.

Legal Status:

Tamil is the official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Pondicherry and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It is one of 23 nationally recognised languages in the Constitution of India. Tamil is also one of the official languages of Sri Lanka and Singapore. In Malaysia, primary education in government schools is also available fully in Tamil.

In addition, with the creation in 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations. Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on June 6, 2004.

Dialects:

Region specific variations:
Tamil is a diglossic language. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example, the word for "here" —inku in Sentamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into inku in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore, inga in the dialect of Thanjavur, and inkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka. Old Tamil's inkan (where kan means place) is the source of inkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli, Old Tamil inkattu is the source of inkuttu in the dialect of Ramanathapuram, and inkane in various northern dialects. Even now in Coimbatore area it is common to hear "akkatta" meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently.

Loanword variations:
The dialect of the district of Palakkad in kerala has a large number of Malayalam loanwords, has also been influenced by Malayalam syntax and also has a distinct Malayalam accent. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the eleventh century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai, a special form of Tamil developed in the ninth and tenth centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person’s caste by their speech.

Spoken and literary variants:

In addition to its various dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (sangattamil), a modern literary and formal style (sentamil), and a modern colloquial form (kotuntamil). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write Sentamil with a vocabulary drawn from sangattamil, or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking kotuntamil.

In modern times, Sentamil is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, kotuntamil has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of Sentamil . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, in kotuntamil, and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of kotuntamil in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial ‘standard’ spoken dialects. In India, the ‘standard’ kotuntamil is based on ‘educated non-brahmin speech’, rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. In Sri Lanka the standard is based on the dialect of Jaffna.

Writing system:

Tamil is written using a script called the vatteluttu. The Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the aytam. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters. As with other Indic scripts, all consonants have an inherent vowel a, which in Tamil, is removed by adding an overdot called a pulli, to the consonantal sign. Unlike most Indic scripts, the Tamil script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced plosives. Instead, plosives are articulated with voice or unvoiced depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology.

In addition to the standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script, which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words borrowed from Sanskrit, Prakrit and other languages.

The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology remains, but is not always consistently applied.

Sounds:

Tamil phonology is characterized by the presence of retroflex consonants, and strict rules for the distribution within words of voiced and unvoiced plosives. Tamil phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can never be word initial. Native grammarians classify Tamil phonemes into vowels, consonants, and a "secondary character", the aytam.

Vowels:
Tamil vowels are called uyireluttu (uyir – life, eluttu – letter). The vowels are classified into short (kuril) and long (five of each type) and two diphthongs, /ai/ and /au/, and three "shortened" (kurriyal) vowels.

The long (netil) vowels are about twice as long as the short vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as the short vowels, though most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.

Consonants:
Tamil consonants are known as meyyeluttu (mey—body, eluttu—letters). The consonants are classified into three categories with six in each category: vallinam—hard, mellinam—soft or Nasal, and itayinam—medium.

Unlike most Indian languages, Tamil does not have aspirated consonants. In addition, the voicing of plosives is governed by strict rules in Sentamil . Plosives are unvoiced if they occur word-initially or doubled. Elsewhere they are voiced, with a few becoming fricatives intervocalically. Nasals and approximants are always voiced.

Though many characters sound alike, the different tongue-teeth vocal co-ordinations produce different sound tones. Many of the characters that sound alike are differentiated by a sizing or specific description. For instance the character and have the same pronunciation. Contrary to popular belief, is truly the bigger of the two consonants and is known as 'big ra' whereas is actually 'small ra'. Phonemes in brackets are voiced equivalents. Both voiceless and voiced forms are represented by the same character in Tamil, and voicing is determined by context. The sounds /f/ and /s/ are peripheral to the phonology of Tamil, being found only in loanwords and frequently replaced by native sounds. There are well-defined rules for elision in Tamil categorized into different classes based on the phoneme which undergoes elision.

Aytam:
Classical Tamil also had a phoneme called the Aytam, written as ‘’. Tamil grammarians of the time classified it as a dependent phoneme (or restricted phoneme) (carpeluttu), but it is very rare in modern Tamil. The rules of pronunciation given in the Tolkappiyam, a text on the grammar of Classical Tamil, suggest that the aytam could have glottalised the sounds it was combined with. It has also been suggested that the aytam was used to represent the voiced implosive (or closing part or the first half) of geminated voiced plosives inside a word. The Aytam, in modern Tamil, is also used to convert pa to fa (not the retroflex zha) when writing English words using the Tamil script.

Numerals & Symbols:
Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil also has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, numeral are present as well.

Grammar:

Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class, number, and case, verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most other Dravidian languages.

Much of Tamil grammar is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkappiyam. Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th century grammar Nannul which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkappiyam, with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eluttu, sol, porul, yappu, ani. Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry.

Similar to other Dravidian languages, Tamil is characterized by its use of retroflex consonants. It also uses a liquid l () (example Tamil), which is also found in Malayalam (example Kozhikode), but disappeared from Kannada at around 1000 AD (but present in Unicode), and was never present in Telugu. Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached. Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes.

Morphology:
Tamil nouns (and pronouns) are classified into two super-classes (tinai)—the "rational" (uyartinai), and the "irrational" (akrinai)—which include a total of five classes (pal, which literally means ‘gender’). Humans and deities are classified as "rational", and all other nouns (animals, objects, abstract nouns) are classified as irrational. The "rational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of three classes (pal)—masculine singular, feminine singular, and rational plural. The "irrational" nouns and pronouns belong to one of two classes - irrational singular and irrational plural. The pal is often indicated through suffixes. The plural form for rational nouns may be used as an honorific, gender-neutral, singular form.

Suffixes are used to perform the functions of cases or postpositions. Traditional grammarians tried to group the various suffixes into eight cases corresponding to the cases used in Sanskrit. These were the nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative. Modern grammarians argue that this classification is artificial, and that Tamil usage is best understood if each suffix or combination of suffixes is seen as marking a separate case. Tamil nouns can take one of four prefixes, i, a, u and e which are functionally equivalent to the demonstratives in English.

Tamil verbs are also inflected through the use of suffixes. A typical Tamil verb form will have a number of suffixes, which show person, number, mood, tense and voice.
• Person and number are indicated by suffixing the oblique case of the relevant pronoun. The suffixes to indicate tenses and voice are formed from grammatical particles, which are added to the stem.
• Tamil has two voices. The first indicates that the subject of the sentence undergoes or is the object of the action named by the verb stem, and the second indicates that the subject of the sentence directs the action referred to by the verb stem.
• Tamil has three simple tenses—past, present, and future—indicated by the suffixes, as well as a series of perfects indicated by compound suffixes. Mood is implicit in Tamil, and is normally reflected by the same morphemes which mark tense categories. Tamil verbs also mark evidentially, through the addition of the hearsay clitic am.

Traditional grammars of Tamil do not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, including both of them under the category urichol, although modern grammarians tend to distinguish between them on morphological and syntactical grounds. Tamil has a large number of idiophones that act as adverbs indicating the way the object in a given state "says" or "sounds".

Tamil does not have articles. Definiteness and indefiniteness are either indicated by special grammatical devices, such as using the number "one" as an indefinite article, or by the context. In the first person plural, Tamil makes a distinction between inclusive pronouns nam (we), namatu (our) that include the addressee and exclusive pronouns nankal (we), ematu (our) that do not.

Syntax:
Tamil is a consistently head-final language. The verb comes at the end of the clause, with typical word order Subject Object Verb (SOV). However, word order in Tamil is also flexible, so that surface permutations of the SOV order are possible with different pragmatic effects. Tamil has postpositions rather than prepositions. Demonstratives and modifiers precede the noun within the noun phrase. Subordinate clauses precede the verb of the matrix clause.

Tamil is a null subject language. Not all Tamil sentences have subjects, verbs and objects. It is possible to construct grammatically valid and meaningful sentences which lack one or more of the three. For example, a sentence may only have a verb—such as mutintuvittatu ("completed")—or only a subject and object, without a verb such as atu en vitu ("That [is] my house"). Tamil does not have a copula (a linking verb equivalent to the word is). The word is included in the translations only to convey the meaning more easily.

Vocabulary:

The vocabulary of Tamil is mainly Dravidian. A strong sense of linguistic purism is found in Modern Tamil, which opposes the use of foreign loan-words. Nonetheless, a number of words used in classical and modern Tamil indicate borrowing from languages of neighboring groups, or with whom the Tamils had trading links, including Munda (e.g. tavalai "frog" from Munda tabeg), Malay (e.g. cavvarici "sago" from Malay sagu), Chinese (e.g. campan "skiff" from Chinese san-pan) and Greek (e.g. ora from Greek ). In more modern times, Tamil has imported words from Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Marathi, reflecting groups that have ruled the Tamil area at various points of time, and from neighboring languages such as Telugu, Kannada and Sinhala. During the modern period, words have also been borrowed from European languages, such as Portuguese, French and English.

The strongest impact of purism in Tamil has been on loanwords from Sanskrit. During its history, Tamil, along with other Dravidian languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam etc., was influenced by Sanskrit in terms of vocabulary, grammar and literary styles, reflecting the increased trend of Sanskritisation in the Tamil country. Tamil vocabulary never became quite as heavily Sanskritised as that of the other Dravidian languages, and unlike in those languages, it was and remains possible to express complex ideas - including in science, art, religion and law - without the use of Sanskrit loan words. In addition, Sanskritisation was actively resisted by a number of authors of the late medieval period, culminating in the 20th century in a movement called tanit tamil iyakkam (meaning pure Tamil movement), led by Parithimaar Kalaignar and Maraimalai Adigal, which sought to remove the accumulated influence of Sanskrit on Tamil. As a result of this, Tamil in formal documents, literature and public speeches has seen a marked decline in the use Sanskrit loan words in the past few decades, under some estimates having fallen from 40-50% to about 20%. As a result, the Prakrit and Sanskrit loan words used in modern Tamil are, unlike in some other Dravidian languages, restricted mainly to some spiritual terminology and abstract nouns.

In the twentieth century, institutions and learned bodies have, with government support, generated technical dictionaries for Tamil containing neologisms and words derived from Tamil roots to replace loan words from English and other languages.

Words of Tamil origin occur in other languages. Popular examples in English are cheroot (curuttu meaning "rolled up"), mango (from mangai), mulligatawny (from milaku tannir meaning pepper water), pariah (from paraiyar), ginger (from ingi), curry (from kari), and catamaran (from kattu maram, , meaning "bundled logs"), pandal (shed, shelter, booth), tyer (curd), coir (rope).