This summer I’ve been learning Tamil. Not only is it the primary language spoken in Tamil Nadu, a state in Southern India, it’s my mother tongue — a language everybody else in my family speaks.

In a world moving towards linguistic homogenisation, the call to revive spoken Tamil rings louder than ever, urging communities to act before the silence becomes irreversible.

What is Tamil? For some it's a language, for some it's a religion, for the uninitiated, wikipedia to the rescue. There is of course also the the Wikipedia in Tamil. For those who don't like reading ...