The Segmental Phonemes of Sanskritized Tamil
Murray E. Fowler · Language · 1954
This is a phonemic analysis of the Sanskritized literary Tamil spoken in Madras by those whose vernacular is Tamil and whose fluent knowledge of Sanskrit is due to their heritage and upbringing. This variety of the language is distinct, on the one hand, from the several geographically determined dialects and, on the other, from Taṉittamiḻ, ‘pure Tamil’, which, free (at least in intention) of all Indo-Aryan influences, has records possibly two thousand years old and is in use today by certain people in the Tamil area. Sanskritized Tamil is a cultivated, literary language subject to strict canons of grammar and style, but it is a living speech and not an artificial medium used only by scholars.