Tamil language
- noun
:
idioma tamil
- The Tamil language is rich in literature and has a long history in southern India.
Examples
-
Up-country Tamils and Sri Lankan Tamils share the Tamil language and Hindu religion, but are divided on various caste, class, geographical, and historical lines.
Academic text (2008) -
Moreover, even the in-country Tamil language newspapers still tended to focus on Jaffna at the expense of the hinterlands, especially the eastern hinterlands.
Academic text (2004) -
Many students in Sri Lanka learn the Tamil language from an early age.
-
During the festival, people celebrated by speaking the Tamil language and sharing traditional songs.
Synonyms
A language spoken mainly in southern India and Sri Lanka
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the language of the Tamil people' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'Tamil' (denoting the Tamil people or their speech) with 'language' (a named speech system). This is a regular, cross-linguistic noun + noun/adjunct composition with no idiomatic shift, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand it.
Etymology
Tamil language comes from an old local word Tamil that people used to mean 'our own speech' or 'the way we speak'. So the name shows it is the language of the Tamil people.
