தமிழ்
Lingo7 lets you read books with a translation under every sentence in 49 languages. Tamil is not one of them yet. Ask for it below, and see what adding it takes and what reading Tamil involves.
Lingo7 does not read Tamil yet: the app has no Tamil dictionary, audio or shelf of books. You can vote for Tamil here. Leave your email to vote; we add the most requested languages first and write to you once, when Tamil is ready.
We add the most requested languages first. Leave your email and we'll write to you once, when Tamil is ready.
Thank you!
We use your email only to tell you when Tamil launches, and delete it whenever you ask. Privacy policy
The demo below is the live reader with a German book. Tamil would work the same way once it is added.
Spoken in: India (Tamil Nadu, Puducherry), Sri Lanka, Singapore; communities in Malaysia
The Tamil script is an abugida with a small core: 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special sign, the aytham (ஃ), which combine into 216 vowel-consonant letters, 247 in all. It stays lean because one letter covers sounds that other Indian scripts keep apart: க can be read k, g or a soft kh-like sound depending on its place in the word. A dot on top, the pulli, removes a consonant's built-in vowel, so க் is a bare k.
For Sanskrit and English words there are extra Grantha letters, ஜ (j), ஷ (sh), ஸ (s), ஹ (h) and க்ஷ (ksh), which schools teach from the start. Tamil is strongly diglossic: newspapers, books and public speeches use formal literary Tamil, while daily talk is colloquial and noticeably different. Modern fiction now writes the colloquial style as well, so a reader meets both.
Tamil has one of the oldest literatures in India, from the Sangam poems to the Tirukkural, a book of 1,330 couplets dated to around 500 CE and translated into at least 57 languages. For beginners, StoryWeaver, a free online library, has more than 3,000 illustrated Tamil stories sorted by reading level. Sri Lanka also offers its state school textbooks as free downloads in Tamil.
Our free tools cover the 49 languages in the app.
There is no date yet. We add the most requested languages first, and Tamil needs the work described on this page. Leave your email in the form and we will write to you once, when Tamil is ready.
Not yet. Lingo7 has no Tamil dictionary, audio or shelf of books, so a Tamil book would not get the sentence-by-sentence translation and word lookups the app is built on. The 49 languages it does read are listed on the home page.
One vote per email address per language. The count on this page shows a number once at least 10 people have asked, and refreshes within a minute of a new vote. Your email is stored only to tell you when Tamil launches, and deleted whenever you ask at support@lingoseven.com.
The script has one letter for each place in the mouth rather than one for each sound. க can be read k, g or a soft kh-like sound depending on where it falls in the word, and letters such as ச, ட, த and ப work the same way. The choice follows the letter's position, so it can be learned as a set of rules.
No. Newspapers, books and speeches use formal literary Tamil, while everyday talk is colloquial and differs in word forms and vocabulary. Modern fiction also writes the colloquial style, so a learner who wants to read usually learns both.
A classic of Tamil literature: 1,330 couplets of seven words each, dated to around 500 CE and never out of print since its first printing in 1812. It has been translated into at least 57 languages and is the most quoted work of Tamil literature.