Tamil
A traditional Tamil horoscope from 1920s etched on dried palm fronds.
With over a million speakers, Malaysia has the third-largest Tamil-speaking population in the world after India and Sri Lanka. Although many Tamils are descended from immigrants who arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the links between the Malay Peninsula and the Tamil homeland in southern India are ancient and continuous. This is reflected in the many Tamil loan words in Malay. Today, Tamil is the first language of the second-largest minority group in Malaysia, and maintains an important role in education, religion and the mass media.
- Information in the full article includes
- Tamil heritage
- Tamil as used in Malaysia
- Tamil schools