 | This is the pronunciation key for IPA transcriptions of Tamil on Wikipedia. It provides a set of symbols to represent the pronunciation of Tamil in Wikipedia articles, and example words that illustrate the sounds that correspond to them. Integrity must be maintained between the key and the transcriptions that link here; do not change any symbol or value without establishing consensus on the talk page first. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Tamil pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
Tamil has phonological process by which voiceless plosives are altered to their respective voiced sounds because of their position in a word (word initial versus word medial) or presence of preceding vowel sounds.
See Tamil phonology for a more thorough discussion of the sounds of Tamil.
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- ^ a b [ɖ] and [ɽ] occur as word-medial and intervocalic allophones of /ʈ/.
- ^ ⟨த⟩ represents [ð] in intervocalic position.
- ^ ⟨க⟩ represents [h] in intervocalic position, but not when it appears as the first letter of a word.
- ^ a b Dental [n̪] and alveolar [n] are allophones in Tamil. Both sound like /n/ to English speakers.
- ^ ⟨ற⟩ represents [dr] and [tːr] after corresponding nasal consonant and when geminated, respectively, in which the [t] and the [d] represent the voiceless and voiced postalveolar stops.
- ^ In spoken Tamil, ⟨ழ⟩ is undergoing merger with ⟨ள⟩ [ɭ], even in the educated speech.
- ^ ⟨ச⟩ represents [s] in intervocalic position.
- ^ a b c Only in loanwords.
- ^ word final /u/ is pronounced as [ɯ]