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Dravidian Languages: Classical Tamil
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Dravidian languages show extensive vocabulary borrowing, but very little phonological or grammatical borrowing from the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in India. In vocabulary, different Dravidian languages borrowed words from other languages to differing degrees. Tamil has the lowest number of Indo-Aryan loanwords, while in Malayalam and Telugu the percentage of loanwords is substantially higher. The most important sources of early loanwords have been Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit; sources of loanwords in modern times are Urdu, Portuguese, and English. Historically, there was very little borrowing from one Dravidian language into another. In Tamil, there is currently a movement to remove as many borrowings from Sanskrit as possible.
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About 23 Dravidian languages are spoken by an estimated 169 million people, mainly in southern India. The 4 major Dravidian tongues are recognized as official state languages—Tamil in Tamil Nadu, Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, Kannada (Kanarese) in Mysore, and Malayalam in Kerala. They have long literary histories and are written in their own scripts. Telugu is spoken by the largest number of people; Tamil has the richest literature, is thought to be extremely ancient, and it is spoken over the widest area, including northwestern Sri Lanka. Other Dravidian languages have fewer speakers and are, for the most part, not written. The Dravidian languages have acquired many loan words from the Indic languages, especially from Sanskrit.
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The Dravidian languages are grouped into Northern, Central and Southern categories. The Northern is mainly Brahui which is spoken in Southern or Southwestern Pakistan . The southern is the most active and mainly consists of the languages Tamil , Kannada , Telugu and Malayalam . It should be noted that Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada are highly influenced by Sanskrit both in vocabulary and grammar. This could be attributed to the dominance of Brahmins in the past and ... to the adaptation of Sanskrit as the principal language of Buddhism, Jainism and Saivism in those societies. In Hindu tradition the creation of the Tamil language is credited to the Rig Vedic sage Rishi Agastya, a view that secular linguists would interpret as a myth designed to link Dravidians to Vedic Indo-Aryan culture. These languages are called Dravidian for purely linguistic reasons; the peoples who use them are of varying racial types.
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While all other groups of Dravidian languages are mostly tribal and have no known written literature, all the languages of the South Dravidian family have an abundant written literature, some of them dating back to 500 BC or earlier. All these languages have linguistic characteristics sharply differing from the IE patterns in many respects. Tamil is a unique language among these. It has remarkably preserved its linguistic features unaltered over two millenia and modern Tamil differs only in minor details from Anciant Tamil. It is the oldest language in the World with a rich literature that has been alive through the ages and was never a dead language. (Further details after presentation and discussion).
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Like other Dravidian languages, Tamil is an agglutinative language which means that suffixes are added to stems for derivation and for expressing various grammatical relationships. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination in Tamil. This can result in very long words. Take for instance, which means "for the sake of those who cannot go" (Wikipedia). As you can imagine, such long agglutinated words can be a translator's nightmare.
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About 23 Dravidian languages are spoken by an estimated 200 million people, mainly in southern India. The 4 major Dravidian tongues are recognized as official state languages—Tamil in Tamil Nādu, Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, Kannada (Kanarese) in Karnātaka, and Malayalam in Kerala. They have long literary histories and are written in their own scripts. Telugu is spoken by the largest number of people; Tamil has the richest literature, which was once thought to be extremely ancient but is now believed to date from about the 1st to the 5th century
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Classical Tamil