68-543: The Sri Lanka Transport Board ( Tamil : இலங்கை போக்குவரத்து சபை "Ilaṅkai pōkkuvarattu capai")( Sinhala : ශ්රී ලංකා ගමනාගමන මණ්ඩලය Shri Lanka Gamanāgamana Mandalaya )(formerly: Ceylon Transport Board , CTB) is a bus service provider in Sri Lanka. Between 1958 and 1978, the Ceylon Transport Board (CTB) was the nationalised enterprise which handled all public bus transport in Sri Lanka. At its peak, it
136-468: 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 many suffixes, which would require several words or
204-484: A , as with other Indic scripts . This inherent vowel is removed by adding a tittle called a puḷḷi , to the consonantal sign. For example, ன is ṉa (with the inherent a ) and ன் is ṉ (without a vowel). Many Indic scripts have a similar sign, generically called virama , but the Tamil script is somewhat different in that it nearly always uses a visible puḷḷi to indicate a 'dead consonant' (a consonant without
272-759: A 2001 survey, there were 1,863 newspapers published in Tamil, of which 353 were dailies. Tamil is the primary language of the majority of the people residing in Tamil Nadu , Puducherry , (in India) and in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . The language is spoken among small minority groups in other states of India which include Karnataka , Telangana , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Maharashtra , Gujarat , Delhi , Andaman and Nicobar Islands in India and in certain regions of Sri Lanka such as Colombo and
340-519: A family of around 26 languages native to the Indian subcontinent . It is also classified as being part of a Tamil language family that, alongside Tamil proper, includes the languages of about 35 ethno-linguistic groups such as the Irula and Yerukula languages (see SIL Ethnologue ). The closest major relative of Tamil is Malayalam ; the two began diverging around the 9th century CE. Although many of
408-607: A number of apparent Tamil loanwords in Biblical Hebrew dating to before 500 BCE, the oldest attestation of the language. Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The earliest records in Old Tamil are short inscriptions from 300 BCE to 700 CE. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil-Brahmi . The earliest long text in Old Tamil
476-671: A number of skeletons were found buried in earthenware urns dating from at least 696 BCE in Adichanallur . Some of these urns contained writing in Tamil Brahmi script, and some contained skeletons of Tamil origin. Between 2017 and 2018, 5,820 artifacts have been found in Keezhadi . These were sent to Beta Analytic in Miami , Florida , for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating. One sample containing Tamil-Brahmi inscriptions
544-518: A number of sound changes, in particular, a tendency to lower high vowels in initial and medial positions, and the disappearance of vowels between plosives and between a plosive and rhotic. Contact with European languages affected written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil. The syntax of written Tamil has also changed, with
612-635: A period of decline. The creation of a single nationalised entity made possible long-distance operations and running buses on a large number of rural routes. First broken up into several regional boards, then into several companies, it was finally reconstituted as the Sri Lanka Transport Board in 2005. The move received bipartisan support in Parliament. It was hailed by the Joint Business Forum (J-Biz), which welcomed
680-2535: 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 : போக pōka go முடி muṭi accomplish E01 expressway (Sri Lanka) Interchange 3 → A8 in Gelanigama Interchange 4 → B304 in Dodangoda Interchange 5 → B157 in Welipanna Interchange 6 → B14 in Kurundugahahetekma Interchange 7 → B153 in Baddegama Interchange 8 → B594 in Pinnaduwa Interchange 9 → A17 in Imaduwa Interchange 10 → B465 in Kokmaduwa Interchange 11 → B275 in Kapuduwa Interchange 12 → B284 in Aparekka Interchange 13 → B54 in Beliatta Interchange 14 → B410 in Bedigama Interchange 15 → B387 in Kasagala Interchange 16 → B465 in Agunukolapelessa Interchange 17 → A18 in Barawakumbuka Interchange 18 → B562 in Sooriyawewa Interchange 19 → E06 in Andarawewa The Southern Expressway ( Sinhala : දක්ෂිණ ලංකා අධිවේගි මාර්ගය , romanized: Dakśina Laṃkā adhivēgi mārgaya ; Tamil : தென்னிலங்கை அதிவேக நெடுஞ்சாலை )
748-647: A small number speak the language. In Reunion where the Tamil language was forbidden to be learnt and used in public space by France it is now being relearnt by students and adults. Tamil is also spoken by migrants from Sri Lanka and India in Canada , the United States , the United Arab Emirates , the United Kingdom , South Africa , and Australia . Tamil is the official language of
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#1732790323933816-433: A streamline ticket system between road and rail transport. Buses do not provide dedicated feeder-bus services to the railways, resulting in commuter rail and buses acting as isolated systems in relation to each other, which creates a loss in efficiency. Tamil language Sri Lanka Singapore Malaysia Canada and United States Tamil ( தமிழ் , Tamiḻ , pronounced [t̪amiɻ] )
884-610: A subject of study in schools in the French overseas department of Réunion . In addition, with the creation in October 2004 of a legal status for classical languages by the Government of India and following a political campaign supported by several Tamil associations, Tamil became the first legally recognised Classical language of India. The recognition was announced by the contemporaneous President of India , Abdul Kalam , who
952-406: A variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil . These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese , Dutch , and English. In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on
1020-438: A vowel). In other Indic scripts, it is generally preferred to use a ligature or a half form to write a syllable or a cluster containing a dead consonant, although writing it with a visible virama is also possible. The Tamil script does not differentiate voiced and unvoiced plosives . Instead, plosives are articulated with voice depending on their position in a word, in accordance with the rules of Tamil phonology . In addition to
1088-635: Is Sri Lanka 's first expressway . The 222-kilometre-long (138 mi) highway links the Sri Lankan capital Colombo with Galle , Matara and Hambantota , major cities in the south of the island. The Southern Expressway Project (SEP) was introduced by the Road Development Authority and the Ministry of Highways as far back as late 1980s. The University of Moratuwa undertook an Environment Impact Assessment study in 1996, which
1156-635: Is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia . It is one of the two longest-surviving classical languages in India , along with Sanskrit , attested since c. 300 BCE. The language belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian language family and shares close ties with Malayalam and Kannada . Despite external influences, Tamil has retained a sense of linguistic purism, especially in formal and literary contexts. Tamil
1224-457: Is based on the dialect of Jaffna . After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called vaṭṭeḻuttu amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava . The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels , 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam . The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 × 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel
1292-401: Is deemed unlikely by Southworth due to the contemporary use of the compound 'centamiḻ', which means refined speech in the earliest literature. The Tamil Lexicon of University of Madras defines the word "Tamil" as "sweetness". S. V. Subramanian suggests the meaning "sweet sound", from tam – "sweet" and il – "sound". Tamil belongs to the southern branch of the Dravidian languages ,
1360-563: Is extensively described in the oldest known grammar book for Tamil, the Tolkāppiyam . Modern Tamil writing is largely based on the 13th-century grammar Naṉṉūl which restated and clarified the rules of the Tolkāppiyam , with some modifications. Traditional Tamil grammar consists of five parts, namely eḻuttu , col , poruḷ , yāppu , aṇi . Of these, the last two are mostly applied in poetry. Tamil words consist of
1428-511: Is found in Tholkappiyam , which is dated as early as late 2nd century BCE. The Hathigumpha inscription , inscribed around a similar time period (150 BCE), by Kharavela , the Jain king of Kalinga , also refers to a Tamira Samghatta ( Tamil confederacy ) The Samavayanga Sutra dated to the 3rd century BCE contains a reference to a Tamil script named 'Damili'. Southworth suggests that
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#17327903239331496-405: Is generally taken to have been completed by the 8th century, was characterised by a number of phonological and grammatical changes. In phonological terms, the most important shifts were the virtual disappearance of the aytam (ஃ), an old phoneme, the coalescence of the alveolar and dental nasals, and the transformation of the alveolar plosive into a rhotic . In grammar, the most important change
1564-409: Is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, koṭuntamiḻ has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of centamiḻ . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example,
1632-410: Is in koṭuntamiḻ , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of koṭuntamiḻ in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial 'standard' spoken dialects. In India, the 'standard' koṭuntamiḻ , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai . In Sri Lanka, the standard
1700-806: Is mainly centered on the internal services of the Western Province. These include urban services that extend to other cities within the Colombo District, as well as medium-distance intercity services to other urban (rural) destinations in the province (Kalutara, Gampaha). Internal provincial services with the longest destinations operate in the Eastern Province and the Northern Province. Internal provincial long-distance services also operate as limited stops. SLTB also serves many intercity routes. These routes connect many of
1768-771: Is not always consistently applied. ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to Latin script , and thus the alphabets of various languages, including English. Apart from the usual numerals, Tamil has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for day, month, year, debit, credit, as above, rupee, and numeral are present as well. Tamil also uses several historical fractional signs. /f/ , /z/ , /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ are only found in loanwords and may be considered marginal phonemes, though they are traditionally not seen as fully phonemic. Tamil has two diphthongs : /aɪ̯/ ஐ and /aʊ̯/ ஔ ,
1836-592: Is predominantly spoken in Tamil Nadu , India, and the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka . It has significant speaking populations in Malaysia , Singapore , and among diaspora communities . Tamil has been recognized as a classical language by the Indian government and holds official status in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Singapore. The earliest extant Tamil literary works and their commentaries celebrate
1904-409: Is the Tolkāppiyam , an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the late 2nd century BCE. Many literary works in Old Tamil have also survived. These include a corpus of 2,381 poems collectively known as Sangam literature . These poems are usually dated to between the 1st century BCE and 5th century CE. The evolution of Old Tamil into Middle Tamil , which
1972-793: Is used as one of the languages of education in Malaysia , along with English, Malay and Mandarin. A large community of Pakistani Tamils speakers exists in Karachi , Pakistan , which includes Tamil-speaking Hindus as well as Christians and Muslims – including some Tamil-speaking Muslim refugees from Sri Lanka. There are about 100 Tamil Hindu families in Madrasi Para colony in Karachi. They speak impeccable Tamil along with Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Many in Réunion , Guyana , Fiji , Suriname , and Trinidad and Tobago have Tamil origins, but only
2040-502: The Asian Development Bank , responsible for the 161 km (100 mi) section between Kurundugahahetekma and Pinnaduwa. The expressway reduces the time taken to travel from Colombo to Galle (116 km (72 mi)) to one hour from three hours, and Colombo to Matara (29.3 km (18.2 mi)) to one and a half hours from four hours taken by the regular A2 highway . The extension of the expressway to Hambantota
2108-465: The Pandiyan Kings for the organization of long-termed Tamil Sangams , which researched, developed and made amendments in Tamil language. Even though the name of the language which was developed by these Tamil Sangams is mentioned as Tamil, the period when the name "Tamil" came to be applied to the language is unclear, as is the precise etymology of the name. The earliest attested use of the name
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2176-599: The University of Madras , was one of the earliest dictionaries published in Indian languages. A strong strain of linguistic purism emerged in the early 20th century, culminating in the Pure Tamil Movement which called for removal of all Sanskritic elements from Tamil. It received some support from Dravidian parties . This led to the replacement of a significant number of Sanskrit loanwords by Tamil equivalents, though many others remain. According to
2244-625: The limited liability omnibus companies by the British around 1940 was the first meaningful step in regularising public passenger transport in the country. The Ratnam Survey in 1948, the Sansoni Survey in 1954 and the Jayaratna Perera Survey in 1956 studied the bus services in Sri Lanka and all recommended that the companies should be nationalised. The history of Sri Lanka Transport Board goes back to 1 January 1958; at
2312-491: The 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai , a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak
2380-481: The Indian state of Haryana , purportedly as a rebuff to Punjab , though there was no attested Tamil-speaking population in the state, and was later replaced by Punjabi , in 2010. In Malaysia, 543 primary education government schools are available fully in Tamil as the medium of instruction . The establishment of Tamil-medium schools has been in process in Myanmar to provide education completely in Tamil language by
2448-474: The Indian state of Tamil Nadu and one of the 22 languages under schedule 8 of the constitution of India . It is one of the official languages of the union territories of Puducherry and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Tamil is also one of the official languages of Singapore . Tamil is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, along with Sinhala . It was once given nominal official status in
2516-590: The Tamil language, Kannada still preserves a lot from its roots. As part of the southern family of Indian languages and situated relatively close to the northern parts of India, Kannada also shares some Sanskrit words, similar to Malayalam. Many of the formerly used words in Tamil have been preserved with little change in Kannada. This shows a relative parallel to Tamil, even as Tamil has undergone some changes in modern ways of speaking. According to Hindu legend, Tamil or in personification form Tamil Thāi (Mother Tamil)
2584-696: The Tamils who settled there 200 years ago. Tamil language is available as a course in some local school boards and major universities in Canada and the month of January has been declared "Tamil Heritage Month" by the Parliament of Canada . Tamil enjoys a special status of protection under Article 6(b), Chapter 1 of the Constitution of South Africa and is taught as a subject in schools in KwaZulu-Natal province. Recently, it has been rolled out as
2652-442: The ancient language ( sankattamiḻ ), a modern literary and formal style ( centamiḻ ), and a modern colloquial form ( koṭuntamiḻ ). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write centamiḻ with a vocabulary drawn from caṅkattamiḻ , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking koṭuntamiḻ . In modern times, centamiḻ
2720-453: The backbone of the fleet, just needed to be half-painted in blue, saving on costs. When aluminium bus bodies became the norm, large areas of the surface were left unpainted, with just red front and back and blue strips down the side, in order to save money. The Logo was originally a blue oval with the words 'CTB' and the equivalents in Sinhala and Tamil painted on it in red. From 1970 this
2788-1016: The bus services covered by the SLTB are general services. These general services can be classified into two main categories, as below: 1. Services with inter-provincial destinations. Inter-provincial services are mainly concentrated in the commercial capital of Colombo. Secondly, it is mostly active in Kandy, Kurunegala and other district cities. In addition, more inter-provincial services are concentrated in several other suburbs such as Panadura, Kataragama and Maharagama. Inter-provincial bus services often start in one city and extend to another urban or rural destination. Most inter-provincial services are Over 100 km intercity or rural long-distance services. However, inter-provincial services are also available along suburban and rural provincial boundaries with shorter destinations. 100 km More than inter-provincial general services often run as limited stops. The SLTB has
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2856-689: The culture associated with the Neolithic complexes of South India, but it has also been related to the Harappan civilization . Scholars categorise the attested history of the language into three periods: Old Tamil (300 BCE–700 CE), Middle Tamil (700–1600) and Modern Tamil (1600–present). About of the approximately 100,000 inscriptions found by the Archaeological Survey of India in India are in Tamil Nadu. Of them, most are in Tamil, with only about 5 percent in other languages. In 2004,
2924-952: The dialect of Madurai , and iṅkaṭe in some northern dialects. Even now, in the Coimbatore area, it is common to hear " akkaṭṭa " meaning "that place". Although Tamil dialects do not differ significantly in their vocabulary, there are a few exceptions. The dialects spoken in Sri Lanka retain many words and grammatical forms that are not in everyday use in India, and use many other words slightly differently. Tamil dialects include Central Tamil dialect , Kongu Tamil , Madras Bashai , Madurai Tamil , Nellai Tamil , Kumari Tamil in India ; Batticaloa Tamil dialect , Jaffna Tamil dialect , Negombo Tamil dialect in Sri Lanka; and Malaysian Tamil in Malaysia. Sankethi dialect in Karnataka has been heavily influenced by Kannada . The dialect of
2992-399: The differences between Tamil and Malayalam demonstrate a pre-historic divergence of the western dialect, the process of separation into a distinct language, Malayalam, was not completed until sometime in the 13th or 14th century. Additionally Kannada is also relatively close to the Tamil language and shares the format of the formal ancient Tamil language. While there are some variations from
3060-647: The district of Palakkad in Kerala has many Malayalam loanwords, has been influenced by Malayalam's syntax, and has a distinctive Malayalam accent. Similarly, Tamil spoken in Kanyakumari District has more unique words and phonetic style than Tamil spoken at other parts of Tamil Nadu. The words and phonetics are so different that a person from Kanyakumari district is easily identifiable by their spoken Tamil. Hebbar and Mandyam dialects, spoken by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in
3128-598: The fleet consists of buses from Ashok Leyland , Dennis , Volvo , Yutong , Tata , Mitsubishi and Isuzu . The SLTB is currently expanding its fleet, by ordering new buses from Volvo . The buses ordered have modern facilities, including low-floor design and air-conditioning. In July 2011, trial runs began in Colombo to gauge passengers' response to the new buses. Most SLTB buses have a red livery and are easily recognisable. The CTB originally painted its buses red and blue. The second-hand London Transport buses, which were
3196-699: The hill country . Tamil or dialects of it were used widely in the state of Kerala as the major language of administration, literature and common usage until the 12th century CE. Tamil was also used widely in inscriptions found in southern Andhra Pradesh districts of Chittoor and Nellore until the 12th century CE. Tamil was used for inscriptions from the 10th through 14th centuries in southern Karnataka districts such as Kolar , Mysore , Mandya and Bengaluru . There are currently sizeable Tamil-speaking populations descended from colonial-era migrants in Malaysia , Singapore , Philippines , Mauritius , South Africa , Indonesia, Thailand, Burma , and Vietnam . Tamil
3264-432: The introduction of new aspectual auxiliaries and more complex sentence structures, and with the emergence of a more rigid word order that resembles the syntactic argument structure of English. In 1578, Portuguese Christian missionaries published a Tamil prayer book in old Tamil script named Thambiran Vanakkam , thus making Tamil the first Indian language to be printed and published. The Tamil Lexicon , published by
3332-461: The latter of which is restricted to a few lexical items. Tamil employs agglutinative grammar, where suffixes are used to mark noun class , number , and case , verb tense and other grammatical categories. Tamil's standard metalinguistic terminology and scholarly vocabulary is itself Tamil, as opposed to the Sanskrit that is standard for most Indo-Aryan languages . Much of Tamil grammar
3400-756: The longest inter-provincial service in Kataragama - Jaffna. The Kataragama (administrative boundary belongs to the Uva Province) depot in the Southern Province can also be pointed out as the only SLTB depot covering all the provinces of Sri Lanka. 2. Services with internal provincial destinations. Most of the internal provincial services are active in the Western, Southern, Northern, Eastern, North Western, Central, Uva, Sabaragamuwa and North Central Provinces. The commercial capital of Colombo
3468-603: The major population centres in the country. As of January 2012, SLTB is the only bus operator on the Southern Expressway . It uses modern Lanka Ashok Leyland buses on the expressway to connect Galle with Maharagama . The buses operate every two hours. As of 2013, the SLTB has started operating on the Katunayake Expressway providing access for people from Negombo , Katunayake , Puttalam , etc. to maintain access within 20 minutes. Most of
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#17327903239333536-423: The name comes from tam-miḻ > tam-iḻ "self-speak", or "our own speech". Kamil Zvelebil suggests an etymology of tam-iḻ , with tam meaning "self" or "one's self", and " -iḻ " having the connotation of "unfolding sound". Alternatively, he suggests a derivation of tamiḻ < tam-iḻ < * tav-iḻ < * tak-iḻ , meaning in origin "the proper process (of speaking)". However, this
3604-476: The old aspect and time markers. The Nannūl remains the standard normative grammar for modern literary Tamil, which therefore continues to be based on Middle Tamil of the 13th century rather than on Modern Tamil. Colloquial spoken Tamil, in contrast, shows a number of changes. The negative conjugation of verbs, for example, has fallen out of use in Modern Tamil – instead, negation is expressed either morphologically or syntactically. Modern spoken Tamil also shows
3672-470: The primary hub for bus transport in Colombo. The road network in Colombo consists of radial links (or arterial routes), which link the city centre and district centres, and orbital links, which intersect the arterial routes; most bus routes run along the radial links without the benefit of dedicated bus lanes owing to the high volume of traffic at peak times. A BRT system for Colombo has been proposed, but has yet to be implemented. Normal Services Most of
3740-463: The revival of the CTB: this was one of the rare occasions on which the business community said a state bus service was better than privatised ventures. SLTB serves both urban and rural routes. In many rural areas, it provides services in unprofitable areas that would be unattractive to private operators. Colombo has an extensive public transport system based on buses , some of which is operated by SLTB. The Central Bus Stand in Pettah functions as
3808-412: The same year, SLTB had a total of 32,640 employees. The first motor omnibus in Sri Lanka was imported in 1907 and bus transport began in Sri Lanka as an owner-operated service. There was no regulation, so when more than one bus operated on a single route, there was a scramble for the load. By the mid-1930s, malpractices in pursuit of maximum profit began to compromise safety and comfort. The setting up of
3876-416: The standard characters, six characters taken from the Grantha script , which was used in the Tamil region to write Sanskrit, are sometimes used to represent sounds not native to Tamil, that is, words adopted from Sanskrit, Prakrit , and other languages. The traditional system prescribed by classical grammars for writing loan-words, which involves respelling them in accordance with Tamil phonology, remains, but
3944-442: The time known as the Ceylon Transport Board (CTB). The inaugural trip of the CTB took the Prime Minister and the Transport and Works Minister Maithripala Senanayake on a maroon luxury Mercedes-Benz bus imported from Germany . The bus is still owned by the Nittambuwa Bus Depot. At its peak, it was the largest omnibus company in the world — with about 7,000 buses and over 50,000 employees. With privatization in 1979, it underwent
4012-419: The word for "here"— iṅku in Centamil (the classic variety)—has evolved into iṅkū in the Kongu dialect of Coimbatore , inga in the dialects of Thanjavur and Palakkad , and iṅkai in some dialects of Sri Lanka . Old Tamil's iṅkaṇ (where kaṇ means place) is the source of iṅkane in the dialect of Tirunelveli , Old Tamil iṅkiṭṭu is the source of iṅkuṭṭu in
4080-467: Was a Tamilian himself, in a joint sitting of both houses of the Indian Parliament on 6 June 2004. The socio-linguistic situation of Tamil is characterised by diglossia : there are two separate registers varying by socioeconomic status , a high register and a low one. Tamil dialects are primarily differentiated from each other by the fact that they have undergone different phonological changes and sound shifts in evolving from Old Tamil. For example,
4148-435: Was claimed to be dated to around 580 BCE. John Guy states that Tamil was the lingua franca for early maritime traders from India. Tamil language inscriptions written in Brahmi script have been discovered in Sri Lanka and on trade goods in Thailand and Egypt. In November 2007, an excavation at Quseir-al-Qadim revealed Egyptian pottery dating back to first century BCE with ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions. There are
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#17327903239334216-419: Was created by Lord Shiva . Murugan , revered as the Tamil God, along with sage Agastya , brought it to the people. Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, ultimately descends from the Proto-Dravidian language , which was most likely spoken around the third millennium BCE, possibly in the region around the lower Godavari river basin. The material evidence suggests that the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were of
4284-430: Was inaugurated on 4 July 2015. The extension will be four lanes (with allowance of further two lanes in future), the cost of US$ 180M being funded by the Exim Bank of China . On 10 August 2015, a Highway Traffic Management system was inaugurated and currently covers the length of the expressway, including the Outer-Circular Expressway . On 23 February 2020, The final stage of the expressway which links to Hambanthota
4352-546: Was replaced by an oval with a lion rampant or on field azure . The present SLTB logo returns to the 1970s symbols, but with 'SLTB' instead of 'CTB' in Roman lettering, with 'Sri' added to the Sinhala script and no change in the Tamil script. SLTB buses compete with private buses throughout the country, as well as with rail services by Sri Lanka Railways . Sri Lanka Transport Board has not integrated its services with other modes of transport, such as rail. Unlike transport systems in some other countries, Sri Lanka does not have
4420-445: Was submitted to the government in early 1997. Construction of the highway began in 2003 and completion up to Galle was achieved by November 2011. March 2014 saw the section from Galle to Matara being declared open to the public. The construction of the expressway was partly funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation , who were responsible for the 65 km (40 mi) section between Kurundugahahetekma and Kokmaduwa, and
4488-504: Was the lingua franca for early maritime traders, with inscriptions found in places like Sri Lanka , Thailand , and Egypt . The language has a well-documented history with literary works like Sangam literature , consisting of over 2,000 poems. Tamil script evolved from Tamil Brahmi, and later, the vatteluttu script was used until the current script was standardized. The language has a distinct grammatical structure, with agglutinative morphology that allows for complex word formations. Tamil
4556-451: Was the emergence of the present tense. The present tense evolved out of the verb kil ( கில் ), meaning "to be possible" or "to befall". In Old Tamil, this verb was used as an aspect marker to indicate that an action was micro-durative, non-sustained or non-lasting, usually in combination with a time marker such as ṉ ( ன் ). In Middle Tamil, this usage evolved into a present tense marker – kiṉṟa ( கின்ற ) – which combined
4624-405: Was the largest omnibus company in the world — with about 7,000 buses and over 50,000 employees. With privatization in 1979, it underwent a period of decline. First broken up into several regional boards, then into several companies, it was finally reconstituted as the Sri Lanka Transport Board in 2005. In 2016, the number of buses in the fleet was 7769, of which 6178 were in operation. In
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