Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What language root is Tamil?
Tamil (; "" , ) is a Dravidian language predominantly spoken by the Tamil people of India and Sri Lanka, and by the Tamil diaspora, Sri Lankan Moors, Douglas, and Chindians. Tamil is an official language of two countries: Sri Lanka and Singapore and official language of the Indian state Tamil Nadu. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the Indian Union Territory of Puducherry. It is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. Tamil is spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India.
So, while having unique "tadbhav" sets, modern IA languages have a common, higher "tatsam" pool. Also, "tatsam"s and their derived "tadbhav"s can also co-exist in a language; sometimes of no consequence and at other times with differences in meaning:
What remains are words of foreign origin ("videśī"), as well as words of local origin that cannot be pegged as belonging to any of the three prior categories ("deśaj"). The former consists mainly of Persian, Arabic, and English, with trace elements of Portuguese and Turkish. While the phenomenon of English loanwords is relatively new, Perso-Arabic has a longer history behind it. Both English and Perso-Arabic influences are quite nationwide phenomena, in a way paralleling "tatsam" as a common vocabulary set or bank. What's more is how, beyond a transposition into general Indo-Aryan, the Perso-Arabic set has also been assimilated in a manner characteristic and relevant to the specific Indo-Aryan language it is being used in, bringing to mind "tadbhav".
Tamil has five vowel qualities, namely , , , and . Each may be long or short. There are two diphthongs, and . Long vowels are about twice as long as short vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about 1.5 times as long as short vowels. Most grammatical texts place them with the long vowels.
The Mitanni, a people known in eastern Anatolia from about 1500 BC, were of mixed origins: a Hurrian-speaking majority was dominated by a non-Anatolian, Indo-Aryan elite. There is linguistic evidence for such a superstrate, in the form of:
In particular, Kikkuli's text includes words such as "aika" "one" (i.e. a cognate of the Indo-Aryan "eka"), "tera" "three" ("tri"), "panza" "five" ("pancha"), "satta" "seven", ("sapta"), "na" "nine" ("nava"), and "vartana" "turn around", in the context of a horse race (Indo-Aryan "vartana"). In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, the Ashvin deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and Nasatya are invoked. These loanwords tend to connect the Mitanni superstrate to Indo-Aryan rather than Iranian languages – i.e. the early Iranian word for "one" was "aiva".
The official language of Thailand is Thai, a Tai–Kadai language closely related to Lao, Shan in Myanmar, and numerous smaller languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Yunnan south to the Chinese border. It is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout the country. The standard is based on the dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai alphabet, an abugida script that evolved from the Khmer alphabet.
The sole official language of Thailand is Central Thai, a Kra-Dai language closely related to Lao, Shan in Burma, and numerous smaller languages of southern China and northern Vietnam. It is the principal language of education and government and is spoken throughout the country. The standard is written in the Thai alphabet, an abugida that evolved from the Khmer script. However, Central Thais speak an folk language in Central (including the metropolitan area), Eastern, Southwestern Thailand and Nakhon Ratchasima Province.
Linguistic and phonological research has traced the Roma people's first place of origin to places in the Indian subcontinent, specifically linking Proto-Romani groups to Central India. Many report in extracts from popular literature that Romani emerged from the North-west regions of India, rather than from Central India. Features of phonological developments which emerged during the early transition stage from Old to Middle Indic prove that the history of Romani began in Central India. 
The Romani language shares many features with the Central Indo-Aryan languages such as the Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Rajasthani languages; it also shares connections with Northern Indo-Aryan languages like Kashmiri, and the language itself contains a cluster of Persian and Arabic words. Linguists use these phonological similarities as well as features of phonological developments which emerged during the early transition stage from Old to Middle Indic to conclude that the history of Romani began in Central India.
Other factors such as blood groups and unwritten customs also suggest Central Indian origins of the Roma. The Roma find issues with documenting their own exact origin due to a lack of finding specific records left by ancestors. Their history however is retold by clan family customs, such as singing and storytelling. 
Records cannot identify exactly why the Roma migrated from India; there are a number of possible motives, such as famine and military invasions on the part of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) and/or Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030 CE).
Thai is the official language of Thailand, natively spoken by, according to Ethnologue, over 20 million people (2000). In reality, the number of native Thai speakers is likely to be much higher, since the Thai people of ethnic Chinese origins throughout the country learn it as their first language. The populations of western and eastern parts of Thailand, which had since ancient time formed the core territory of Siam, also speak central Thai as their first language. Moreover, most Thais in the northern and the northeastern (Isaan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects due to the fact that (Central) Thai is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research finds that the speakers of Northern Thai language (or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak standard Thai, such that they are now using mostly central Thai words and seasoning their speech only with "kham mueang" accent. Standard Thai is based on Ayutthaya dialect, and register in the educated classes.
In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages. Although some linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between these regional dialects/languages. Nonetheless, it is often claimed that the language policy of the Thai government has shaped the dominant view that these languages are only regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai".
Central Thai is composed of several distinct registers, forms for different social contexts:
Over 100 different languages are spoken in Tanzania, making it the most linguistically diverse country in East Africa. Among the languages spoken in Tanzania are all four of Africa's language families: Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Khoisan. Swahili and English are Tanzania's official languages. Swahili belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family. The Sandawe people speak a language that may be related to the Khoe languages of Botswana and Namibia, while the language of the Hadzabe people, although it has similar click consonants, is arguably a language isolate. The language of the Iraqw people is Cushitic. Other languages are Indian languages and Portuguese (spoken by Goans and Mozambicans).
Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language, an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the "Ciganos" of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló, Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.
The majority of the vocabulary is of Indo-Aryan origin but there are a number of loanwords from other languages. Welsh loanwords include "melanō" ("yellow", from "melyn"), "grīga" ("heather", from "grug") and "kraŋka" ("crab", from "cranc"). There are also English loanwords such as "vlija" ("village"), "spīdra" ("spider") and "bråmla" ("bramble"). Historically the variants of Welsh and English Romani of the Romanichal, constituted the same variant of Romani, share characteristics and are historically closely related to dialects spoken in France, Germany (Sinti), Scandinavia, Spain, Poland, North Russia and the Baltic states. Such dialects are descended from the first wave of Romani immigrants into western, northern and southern Europe in the late Middle Ages.
Latin is a member of the broad family of Italic languages. Its alphabet, the Latin alphabet, emerged from the Old Italic alphabets, which in turn were derived from the Greek and Phoenician scripts. Historical Latin came from the prehistoric language of the Latium region, specifically around the River Tiber, where Roman civilization first developed. How and when Latin came to be spoken by the Romans are questions that have long been debated. Various influences on Latin of Celtic dialects in northern Italy, the non-Indo-European Etruscan language in Central Italy, and the Greek of southern Italy have been detected, but when these influences entered the native Latin is not known for certain.
The Taensa spoken by these people was a form of the Natchez, a language isolate that may be related to the Muskogean languages. Over time small differences in pronunciation emerged, but the two languages appear, based on the available data, and from this historical vantage point, to have been largely the same. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Taensa people became intermixed with other groups, particularly the Chitimacha. Their language survived into the second half of the nineteenth century, and people identifying as Taensa have been documented from the 1930s through to the present day.
India is home to two major language families: Indo-Aryan (spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by 24% of the population). Other languages spoken in India come from the Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan language families. India has no national language. Hindi, with the largest number of speakers, is the official language of the government. English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a "subsidiary official language"; it is important in education, especially as a medium of higher education. Each state and union territory has one or more official languages, and the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages".
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local language varieties or dialects, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The differences are similar to those within the Romance languages, with variation particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast. A widely quoted classification divides these varieties into seven groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though a more recent classification splits some of these to obtain ten groups, and some varieties remain unclassified.
Baltic languages, such as Baltic Romani, have unique rules that their numerals follow when they are written. Their numerals govern their nominals but not to the degree that Slavic languages do. Baltic genitives mark partial objects and sometimes subjects and also play a prominent role in the syntax of numeral constructions. Baltic languages are very similar as both Latvian and Latvian Romani share the same opposition of preverbs and verb particles.
The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include the Romance languages derived from Latin (Italian, Sardinian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Occitan, etc.); a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, South Picene; and Latin itself. At present, Latin and its daughter Romance languages are the only surviving languages of the Italic language family.
The Italic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages), as well as a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, South Picene, and possibly Venetic and Sicel.
Romani (; also Romany; ) is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own. The largest of these are Vlax Romani (about 500,000 speakers), Balkan Romani (600,000), and Sinte Romani (300,000). Some Romani communities speak mixed languages based on the surrounding language with retained Romani-derived vocabulary – these are known by linguists as Para-Romani varieties, rather than dialects of the Romani language itself.
A direct translation of the word "Taíno" signified "men of the good". Additionally, the name was used by the indigenous people of Hispaniola to indicate that they were "relatives". The Taíno people, or Taíno culture, has been classified by some authorities as belonging to the Arawak, as their language was considered to belong to the Arawak language family, the languages of which were present throughout the Caribbean, and much of Central and South America.
The early ethnohistorian Daniel Garrison Brinton called the Taíno people the "Island Arawak". 
Nevertheless, contemporary scholars have recognized that the Taíno had developed a distinct language and culture.
The following table lists the names of India in its official languages. The sole official language of India is Hindi in Devanagari script as per Article 343 of the Indian constitution and there is no national language for the country. English has the status of a "subsidiary official language". The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as "scheduled" languages and given recognition, status, and official encouragement.
Many Tamils still live in these countries, and the Tamil communities in Singapore, Reunion Island, Malaysia and South Africa have retained much of their original culture and language. Many Malaysian children attend Tamil schools, and a significant portion of Tamil children are brought up with Tamil as their first language. In Singapore, Mauritius and Reunion, Tamil students learn Tamil as their second language in school, with English as the first. In Singapore, to preserve the Tamil language, the government has made it an official language despite Tamils comprising only about 5% of the population, and has also introduced compulsory instruction of the language for Tamils. Other Tamil communities, such as those in South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the Caribbean no longer speak Tamil language as a first language, but still retain a strong Tamil identity, and are able to understand the language, while most elders speak it as a first language. There is a very small Tamil community in Pakistan, notably settled since the partition in 1947.
Tamil culture is the culture of the Tamil people. Tamil culture is rooted in the arts and ways of life of Tamils in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and across the globe. Tamil culture is expressed in language, literature, music, dance, theatre, folk arts, martial arts, painting, sculpture, architecture, sports, media, comedy, cuisine, costumes, celebrations, philosophy, religions, traditions, rituals, organizations, science, and technology.
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" (போகமுடியாதவர்களுக்காக) means "for the sake of those who cannot go" and consists of the following morphemes:
In Tamil, a single letter standing alone or multiple letters combined together form a word. Tamil is an agglutinative language. Tamil words consist of a lexical root to which one or more affixes are attached.