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My mother language is Tamil (which considered to be a very old language). While creating Russian language did they got any words or characters from Tamil language?

shabunc
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soorapadman
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  • With several notable exceptions (e. g. Esperanto), language age is not a well defined notion. Tamil is no older than Russian or vice versa. What has age is language name - when did the native speakers of the language that eventually evolved into modern Tamil start calling themselves "Tamil", some thousands of years ago. The version of Tamil that they spoke was probably very different from modern Tamil, just like Russian texts from centuries ago (like "Слово о полку Игореве") take quite some effort to comprehend. – Seva Alekseyev Jul 01 '21 at 16:04

2 Answers2

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Obviously nobody created the Russian language, it evolved from Slavic which evolved from some proto-Slavic which evolved from something that we now call Proto-Indo-European language.

Tamil is not PIE language, it belongs to a widely recognized Dravidian family. It's an open issue how this family is related to the PIE but definitely the answer to your question is - no, there's not the slightest hint of Tamil influence on Russian.

The most famous word borrowed from Tamil is катамаран - I guess it's the only relatively widely used Tamil word which is used for describing something not specific for Tamil-only context.

VCH250
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shabunc
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    Some googling also revealed the following loanwords of Tamil origin, which obviously entered Russian via other European languages: анаконда, манго, карри, пария. – ttaaoossuuuu Mar 15 '17 at 21:11
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I found that the word корунд (corundum) also originates from Tamil language, though borrowed through European languages, not directly from Tamil.

Lara
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    I've scanned through foreign language dictionaries and it looks like we can add карри (curry) to the same list. – shabunc Feb 17 '17 at 09:21