Words R Us
- Tamil (tam)

Tamil is spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia, in southern India and Sri Lanka. It is also spoken in Malaysia, the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Singapore, France, Mauritius, and many other countries. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian Union territory of Puducherry.

There are approximately 60.8 million speakers of Tamil in India. There are approximately just over 3 million Tamils in Sri Lanka, and 1.8 million Tamils in Malaysia. There are also Tamil populations of more than 100,000 in the UK, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Singapore, France and Réunion. The total number of Tamil speakers is about 78 million.

Tamil is used as a language of education in Malaysia and Singapore. Tamil is one of the longest-surviving classical languages of India. The earliest known inscriptions in Tamil date back to about 500 BC. Tamil literature started to apper in 300 BC, and the language used until the 700 AD is known as Old Tamil. From 700-1600 AD the language is known as Middle Tamil, and since 1600 the language has been known as Modern Tamil.

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. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect, Kongu Tamil, Madras Bashai, Madurai Tamil, Nellai Tamil, Kumari Tamil in India; Batticaloa Tamil dialect, Jaffna Tamil dialect, Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada.

Sources: Wikipedia
https://omniglot.com/writing/tamil.htm