Tamil letter Ta

Dental ta: the tongue touches just behind the upper teeth. The consonant carries a short built-in a; a vowel sign replaces it to make another syllable, as in த + இ → தி.

At a word's start or in doubled த்த, the stop is voiceless. After a nasal it is voiced; between vowels it is softer. A small mark called the pulli cancels the vowel, leaving த். Romanized spellings may use t or d because the letter's spoken value shifts with its position.

How did Tamil letter ta reach modern writing?

Tamil writing developed through connected script stages. The earliest documented Tamil-Brahmi records in South India date from the 3rd century BCE. Tamil-Brahmi was an early script used to write Old Tamil.

Those records appear on cave surfaces, stone beds, potsherds, coins, seals, and rings. They record religious donations, personal and place names, trade, and other durable matters.

Later Tamil writing appears in Vatteluttu, another historic script used for Tamil, and in Tamil-script traditions. Many histories trace these traditions to Tamil-Brahmi, though the precise route remains debated. From the 7th century CE, inscriptions use Tamil, Vatteluttu, and Grantha in different settings; Grantha served Sanskrit records.

Type it as a Tamil consonant sequence.

Choose a Tamil keyboard layout such as Tamil99, InScript, or phonetic input. Check which layout is selected; key maps differ.

In Tamil99, pair the consonant key with a vowel key, as in த + இ → தி. Some sequences add the pulli automatically when you repeat a consonant. Tamil99 and Typewriter are different layouts, so a sequence for one may fail in the other.