Tamil

Tamil stands a little apart in the Brahmic family for how few letters it uses. Where Sanskrit-oriented scripts like Devanagari keep separate letters for voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops — k, g, kh, gh and so on — Tamil has just one letter per place of articulation. The letter க does the work of k, g, h and more, its exact sound decided by its position in the word.

This suits the Tamil language, which does not treat those as different sounds, and it keeps the consonant inventory strikingly small. Where a script must spell Sanskrit or foreign words, Tamil borrows a few extra letters — the Grantha letters — but its own words never need them.

One letter where other scripts keep four — the sound is left to the ear.

For all its economy, it remains a strict abugida: the consonant carries an inherent 'a', vowel signs attach around it, and a dot above — the puḷḷi — cancels the vowel. Its descent from Brahmi through Tamil-Brahmi is set out in the site's descent diagram in the Hall of Lineages.

Tamil writes each place of articulation with a single consonant letter and leaves voicing and aspiration to context — one sign where a Sanskrit-oriented script keeps four. The consonant carries an inherent a; the vowels reshape it with signs that attach on the right, above, below or the left, and a dot above the letter — the puḷḷi (virāma ்) — strips the vowel away to leave a bare consonant.