Protecting Tamil: A Message to All Tamilians

Dear tamilans I believe English is a bigger threat to Tamil than Hindi. Today, English is becoming the main language for public communication. In schools, colleges, and offices, if you don’t speak English, even if you are a manager or a senior official, people may not give you the respect you deserve. I see young people playing cricket and talking only in English. This is not right. We are focusing on the wrong issue. English is slowly replacing Tamil in daily life. We mix English words and phrases into Tamil without realizing it. Many of us can’t even speak one full Tamil sentence without using English words. I hardly use any Hindi words in my daily Tamil conversations, but in every Tamil sentence, about 30–40% of the words are English. Many people don’t even know the correct Tamil words for the English terms they use. This is the real danger to the Tamil language. If the Tamil Nadu and Indian governments truly want to save native languages, they should encourage people to speak pure Tamil and other regional languages. Only then can we protect our languages for future generations—not by fighting among ourselves.