Tamil to Hindi Translation

How Tamil and Hindi Differ

Tamil is a Dravidian language and Hindi is Indo-Aryan, a branch of Indo-European, so the two are not related at the root. They have still lived side by side for many centuries, and Tamil took in a large stock of Sanskrit words that Hindi also inherited. That is why அர்த்தம் and अर्थ, or புத்தகம் and पुस्तक, look like relatives while the grammar around them works very differently.

Both languages put the verb last, so a Tamil sentence can usually be translated word by word in the same order: நான் கடைக்குப் போகிறேன் is मैं दुकान जा रहा हूँ. The difference is in what each word carries. Tamil glues case endings and person endings onto the word (கடைக்கு, "to the shop"), while Hindi uses separate small words called postpositions (दुकान को, दुकान में).

Gender is the biggest trap. Every Hindi noun is masculine or feminine, and verbs and adjectives change to match, even when the speaker talks about themself: a man says मैं जा रहा हूँ and a woman says मैं जा रही हूँ. Tamil marks gender only for people in the third person (அவன், அவள்) and never on "I" or "you", so a Tamil sentence often does not contain the information Hindi needs.

Where Machine Translation Goes Wrong

Because Tamil நான் and நீங்கள் carry no gender, translation engines usually default to the masculine Hindi verb. If you are a woman writing "நான் வருகிறேன்", check that the Hindi says आ रही हूँ and not आ रहा हूँ. The phrase notes above flag every line where this happens.

Kinship words lose detail. அண்ணன் and தம்பி both come out as भाई, and பாட்டி becomes दादी even when you mean your mother's mother (नानी). Going the other way, Hindi कल means both tomorrow and yesterday, so a translated நாளை and நேற்று can collapse into one word unless the tense makes it clear.

Shared Sanskrit words tempt engines and people alike. Tamil கல்யாணம் is a wedding, but Hindi कल्याण means welfare; Tamil அவசரம் is a hurry, but Hindi अवसर is an opportunity. Customs travel badly too: சாப்பிட்டீர்களா? is a routine Tamil greeting, while its literal Hindi क्या आपने खाना खाया? sounds like a real question about lunch.

Engines are also trained mostly on written Tamil. Spoken forms such as வரேன் or பண்றீங்க often come back garbled, so convert colloquial Tamil to the written form (வருகிறேன், செய்கிறீர்கள்) before you translate.

Reading and Typing Devanagari

Devanagari and the Tamil script both come from Brahmi, so they work the same way: each consonant carries a built-in "a", vowel signs attach to it, and a mark called the virama (्) removes the vowel, just as the Tamil புள்ளி does. The big difference is size. Tamil has 18 native consonants, while Devanagari writes every voiced and aspirated sound separately, so the one Tamil letter க stands for क, ख, ग and घ depending on the word.

When you type Hindi, you always type in sound order. The short-i sign ि is drawn before its consonant (कि), but you type the consonant first and the sign second, exactly as you type கெ in Tamil. To join two consonants, type the first, then the virama, then the second: क + ् + ष gives क्ष.

Windows ships Hindi Traditional and Devanagari INSCRIPT layouts (Microsoft lists them in its keyboard layout reference). INSCRIPT puts vowels on the left hand and consonants on the right, and the same key positions are used for Tamil, Malayalam and other Indian scripts, so learning it once helps with all of them.

Who Speaks Hindi and Tamil

In the 2011 Census of India, 52,83,47,193 people (43.63 per cent of the population) returned Hindi as their mother tongue and 6,90,26,881 (5.70 per cent) returned Tamil. The Hindi total groups dozens of related mother tongues, such as Bhojpuri and Rajasthani, under one heading.

For a Tamil speaker, Hindi is most useful for work and travel across north and central India, for Indian Railways and central government offices, and for following Hindi cinema. In the other direction, short and clear Tamil to Hindi phrases help you talk to a colleague, tenant or customer from a Hindi-speaking state without falling back on English.