[guruparan18]

Written scripts have used to change all over time. It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil. Given that about ~55% [1] of written inscription are from Tamil, it is one of the proficient.

How do you measure the language change [2]? There are several approaches, the one I remember reading about is, you fetch the most basic kernel of a language, like very simple key words (like relations, food, feelings and so on) for about 100 words and then see how many of those words have changed since say last 10 years, last 50 years and 100 years and so on. You try going back as long as you can and you loose few words from 100 words you started, that's you delta.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Indian_epigraphy 2. https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/languag...

[yorwba]

> It is not possible to read at the get go, but after some practice, yes, any one can read old Tamil.

The "after some practice" makes this a bit of a squishy claim. For example, Malayalam and Tamil split less than 1000 years ago and are both descendants of Old Tamil. I would be surprised if "after some practice" a Malayalam speaker couldn't also read Old Tamil, or for that matter Modern Tamil (and vice versa for a Modern Tamil speaker learning Malayalam).

So is Tamil somehow older than Malayalam? I think not.

[ido66667]

There are many methods to try to determine how an ancient language was spoken, all of them by definition hypothetical, but since linguistic change does follow sensical rules, and happens in gradual steps (i.e. you can almost be sure that the vowel /u/ won't shift to the vowel /a/ in a single generation, and I bet there isn't a single recorded case of that happening, simply because /u/ and /a/ are very far away from each other in the mouth and acoustically).

For instance, we have very solid evidence (but still circumstantial, and therefore this is technically an hypothesis) that the Greek letter η, that now stands for /i/, had a long eh-like sound, likely /ε:/, for this and due to many other changes, we can say that were a Modern Greek speaker to speak with a Greek from the 5th century BC, they would have understood barely anything, barring certain specific words. From tracing how the language changed, according to the extent evidence, we can probably say that this speaker, however, would have mostly (but with difficulty) understood a speaker from 12th century Constantinople in simple day-to-day conversations. At the very least, the two speakers would have the same sound inventories and similar grammar, but somewhat different vocabularies.

I still agree with you that saying one language is older than another is meaningless. At most we can say that a language is probably more conservative than others.

[guruparan18]

Fortunately, there are Tamil poems written around 200 CE that are still readable and understandable by native speaker. Tamil poems follow strict grammar and structural rules for poems, so they don't change over time (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venpa).

Here is poem that speaks about children being joyous, and how they playfully eat food. A simple ordeal in everyday life. Its about 7 lines and everyday speaker still understands all of it.

https://365paa.wordpress.com/2011/09/06/063/ (poorely translated: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...)

[croh]

Nice poem. thanks for sharing

[guruparan18]

Malayalam split from Tamil around 1000 CE. When I said you might need some expertise and training to read old Tamil scripts, I mean this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWIs17rSCg0&list=PLAU5iw78o0.... The video has closed captions if it is difficult to follow. Hope it helps.

Written Tamil have continuously evolved all along, the recent being around 1950 when printing became prevalent. The language itself changed very little, however only written letters survive and to know what was written 1000 years before you need some training.

Expert opinions might be different. Hope I am getting some information.