Tamil Words
Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinative language. Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached.
Most Tamil affixes are suffixes. Tamil suffixes can be derivational suffixes, which either change the part of speech of the word or its meaning, or inflectional suffixes, which mark categories such as person, number, mood, tense, etc. There is no absolute limit on the length and extent of agglutination, which can lead to long words with a large number of suffixes, which would require several words or a sentence in English. To give an example, the word pōkamuṭiyātavarkaḷukkāka means "for the sake of those who cannot go", and consists of the following morphemes:
| pōka | muṭi | y | āta | var | kaḷ | ukku | āka | ||||||||||||||||
| go | accomplish | word-joining letter | negation (impersonal) |
nominalizer he/she who does |
plural marker | to | for |
Words formed as a result of the agglutinative process are often difficult to translate. According to Today Translations, a British translation service, the Tamil word "செல்லாதிருப்பவர்" (sellaathiruppavar, meaning a certain type of truancy †) is ranked 8th in The Most Untranslatable Word In The World list.
Read more about this topic: Tamil Grammar
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