Tamil phonology

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of "true-subapical" retroflex consonants and multiple rhotic consonants. Its script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word, voiced intervocalically and after nasals except when geminated.^[1] Tamil phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can never be word initial.

A Tamil tongue twister

The sentence literally means, "A poor old man slipped on a banana peel and fell sprawling." ("ஏழை கிழவன் வாழைப்பழத் தோல் மேல், சருசருக்கி வழுவழுக்கி கீழே விழுந்தான்.")

---

Problems playing this file? See media help.