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Things to know about Tamil

Tamil is spoken by the Tamil people, who primarily reside in India (particularly the state of Tamil Nadu) and in northeastern Sri Lanka.

Typing Tamil Characters

Tamil is written in a syllabic alphabet, meaning that each character represents a consonant sound followed by an inherent vowel sound, which can be changed by adding dependent vowels. These dependent vowels may have elements that appear before, after, or on both sides of the consonant to which they are attached. Vowels can also appear independently at the beginning of syllables. Tamil text is written from left to right, like English.

To type Tamil characters:

  1. Position your cursor somewhere where you can type, and verify that the keyboard layout is set to Tamil.
  2. Locate the character you want on the virtual keyboard. Additional characters are available by holding down the Shift key and by clicking Special Characters beside the virtual keyboard.
  3. Click the character on the virtual keyboard or press the corresponding key on your physical keyboard to type it. See Typing special scripts for details.

A important note on character order:

To attach a dependent vowel to a consonant, you must type the consonant first, then the vowel. The program will automatically place the vowel correctly, even if it has elements that appear before or on both sides of the consonant. For example, to type கெ, you would first type க, then ெ. Similarly, to type கௌ, you would type க, then type ௌ (which is considered one character, even though it has two elements). Typing the dependent vowel first will result in answers being marked incorrect, even if the word or phrase appears the same.

The same is true if you are using the "Easy Typing" feature, which allows you to spell words by selecting characters rather than typing them in certain activities. You must select the consonant first, even if an element of a dependent vowel appears before that consonant. Also, note that there will only be one asterisk per vowel in Easy Typing mode, even for vowels that have two separate elements on either side of a consonant.

Any time you find yourself getting answers wrong that you think look right, check the order in which you are entering the consonants and vowels.

Using Transliterated Tamil Content

You may have some transliterated Tamil content in addition to content which uses the actual Tamil characters. Transliterated content can help you master vocabulary and pronunciation before tackling a new writing system.

You do not have to type actual Tamil characters in transliterated Tamil content. You can type the transliterations anywhere typed answers are required.

The transliterated Tamil content may use a variety of special characters to indicate certain sounds. See Typing accents or special characters for instructions on typing these characters.

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