Tamil Grammar Through Sangam Poetry (சங்க இலக்கியம் வழியே தமிழ் இலக்கணம்)
From the Alphabet to the Poems and Everyday Tamil

This book teaches Tamil through the oldest Tamil poetry we have, the Sangam corpus (roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE). It begins with the alphabet and ends with the grammar, meter, and imagery of the poems themselves. Every rule is shown working inside a real poem, so the reader learns the language and the literature together.

Part I, The Tamil Alphabet, takes you from the first vowel to reading whole words in five lessons, from the 12 vowels and 18 consonants to Tamil numerals. By the end of Lesson 5 you will read your first Sangam line.

Part II, Grammar Through Sangam Poems, offers ten chapters, each built on one classical text: letters and sounds, the four parts of speech, nouns, the eight cases, verbs, joining words, akam and puṟam, prosody, and figures of speech.

Part III, Everyday Grammar Through Tirukkuṟaḷ, opens each of its six chapters with a couplet and covers the grammar of modern speech and writing: negatives and questions, commands and wishes, pronouns, postpositions, sentence order, and the difference between written and spoken Tamil.

Explanations are in English, and every letter, word, and poem appears in Tamil script with a Roman pronunciation. Remember boxes, Read and Write exercises, an answer key, a glossary, further reading, and an index support self-study. QR codes link to two companion video lessons on the author’s YouTube channel.

Written for students meeting the Tamil script for the first time and for adults who speak Tamil but never studied how it is written and built.