Links

I have found the following resources excellent for learning Tamil. I present them here since I believe they are very beneficial, and thus deserving special distinction. For learning Tamil, truly good resources are hard to come by.

I must stress that all of the comments in this page are my personal opinions, and that not everyone will necessary agree with those opinions. In other words, use your own judgement in reading this page and following up any of these resources.

Reading

  • Vaaranam Books - thick board-books for 2-3 year olds to be introduced to the language. Not geared towards second language acquisition, but worth mentioning anyways for the good quality.
  • StoryWeaver - free and open-source stories for children in several languages, including Tamil. The stories are sorted by level of difficulty. So you can start with Level 1 (Emergent) and choose when to move to Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4. They can be read online or downloaded in formats like ePub.
  • Asher, R.E., and R. Radhakrishnan. A Tamil Prose Reader: Selections from Contemporary Tamil Prose with Notes and Glossary. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, England. (1971.)
    This book is a collection of stories from various authors that have been arranged with the purpose of increasing one’s reading comprehension. The stories are arranged in order of increasing difficulty, with footnotes and a glossary covering all new words. The lessons require a mastery of the basic set of Thamil grammar (lessons in Parts 1-3 on this website).
  • The Smile of Murugan - this book examines the various genres of Tamil literature throughout the 2000+ years of history. It is an analysis of Tamil literature, and it also describes Tamil cultural values of the society at the time, as reflected in the literary works. It also points out the uniqueness of the Tamil literary tradition among anicent civilizations, in terms of social focus, themes/values, and linguistics.
  • Thirukkural - a famous book of ancient poetic Tamil proverbs written around 1400 years ago

Listening

  • Netflix - Tamil movies & TV shows on Netflix
  • Youtube - Tamil songs and stories for kids and clips of movies exist on Youtube
  • Narration of Ponniyin Selvan - the transcription and narration of an epic novel in Tamil. It is good for matching pronunciation to writing, although there is no assistance for understanding the meaning, and the level of writing is fairly advanced.

Educational Games and Interactive Resources

  • iPaatti digital books & games - interactive and digital books for learning to write & read in Tamil, along with board games & other fun products to make learning Tamil fun