திண்ணை LearnSome languages build long words by sticking small pieces together, like the carriages of a train. The word is the engine, and every piece you add is a carriage carrying one meaning. Grown-ups call this kind of language agglutinative (say “a-GLOO-ti-na-tiv”), from an old Latin word meaning “glued together”. Tamil is one of them!
Tap the button to add a carriage. Watch the meaning grow with each one.
In Tamil, each carriage carries just one meaning, and it always carries the same one. -கள் always means “more than one”. -இல் always means “in”. -ஏன் at the end of a verb always means “I”. So once you know a piece, you can use it with hundreds of words. That is a superpower!
Sometimes the joins change a little so the word is easy to say, like ம் turning into ங் in மரங்கள். These little changes follow rules too, and the lessons in this app show you each one.
Pick a word, then pick an ending. The same ending works on every word: that is the magic of gluing!
“to the tree”
Some words change a little before the ending joins on, like வீடு → வீட்டு. The lessons on case endings show why.
A Tamil verb is a train with the action at the front, then a carriage for when it happens, then a carriage for who does it. Look how English hardly changes (read, read, reads), but in Tamil the last carriage tells you exactly who is reading. That is why Tamil speakers often leave out “I” or “you”: the verb already says it!
| English | தமிழ் | Pieces |
|---|---|---|
| I read | படிக்கிற்ஏன் | |
| you read | படிக்கிற்ஆய் | |
| he reads | படிக்கிற்ஆன் | |
| she reads | படிக்கிற்ஆள் | |
| we read | படிக்கிற்ஓம் | |
| they read | படிக்கிற்ஆர்கள் |
Trains can get long! Here is “I was reading” in one Tamil word:
“I was reading”
Languages around the world build words in different ways. Here are three, with toys to help you remember.
Like Lego: click pieces together, and you can still see each piece.
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and far away Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean and Swahili.
மரங்களிலிருந்து = மரம் + கள் + இல் + இருந்து
Like a row of blocks: little words stand next to each other.
Modern English works mostly like this, and so does Chinese. Word order does a lot of the work.
from + the + trees
Like modelling clay: the pieces melt together, so you can’t pull them apart.
Latin, Sanskrit and Russian. One ending carries several meanings at once: in Latin amō (“I love”), the -ō means “I” and “now” together.
am + ō (“I” + “now”, melted into one)
English is in the Indo-European family, with Hindi, Sanskrit, Latin and most languages of Europe. Long ago it used lots of endings, like Latin, but over a thousand years it lost most of them. So today English mostly uses separate little words (from, to, in, was, will) and the order of words to show meaning.
The few endings English still has can be tricky. The -s in “she reads” means “now” and “one other person” at the same time. And many English words change in their own odd ways that you just have to remember: go / went, mouse / mice, I / me. Tamil words are much more regular!
Hindi sits in between: it melts some endings into the word (पेड़ “tree” becomes पेड़ों “trees”, ready for an ending) and then puts a separate little word after it: पेड़ों से, “from the trees”.
| English | தமிழ் | Pieces |
|---|---|---|
| from the trees (3 words) | மரம்கள்இல்இருந்து | |
| to the house (3 words) | வீடுக்கு | |
| I was reading (3 words) | படித்துக்கொண்டுஇருந்த்ஏன் | |
| Did he come? (3 words) | வாந்த்ஆன்ஆ | |
| I will not come (4 words) | வரமாட்ட்ஏன் | |
| with my friends (3 words) | என்நண்பர்கள்ஓடு |
“From the trees” is built the same way in Tamil’s cousins: tree, then more-than-one, then from.
Turkish and Finnish are not related to Tamil at all, but they build words the same way! “From the houses” is one word in all three: house + more-than-one + from.
English says who, then the action, then the rest: “I go to school”. Tamil saves the action for the very end, and the “to” is a carriage on the end of “school”. Word for word, Tamil says: “I school-to go-I”.
பள்ளியிலிருந்து = பள்ளி + இல் + இருந்து. What does it mean?
பூனைகள் = பூனை + கள். What does it mean?
வீட்டுக்கு = வீடு + கு. What does it mean?
வருவேன் = வா + வ் + ஏன். Who will come?