Tamil speaking countries
Tamil is an official language in Sri Lanka and Singapore and is spoken in 3 other countries as monther tongue by a part of the population. The Tamil language (native name: தமிழ்) has its roots in the Dravidian language family.With 84.12 million native speakers, Tamil has the highest prevalence in India. As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 18 percent is in Sri Lanka. A total of about 89.7 million people worldwide speak Tamil as their mother tongue.
| Country | Region | Official language | Distribution | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| India | South Asia | no | 5.9 % | 84,121,000 |
| Sri Lanka | South Asia | yes | 18.0 % | 3,988,000 |
| Malaysia | Southeast Asia | no | 3.9 % | 1,309,000 |
| Singapore | Southeast Asia | yes | 4.4 % | 240,000 |
| Mauritius | Eastern Africa | no | 0.8 % | 10,000 |
Unless otherwise described in the text, this page is about native speakers — not the total number of speakers. How many people understand or speak Tamil as a subsequently learned language is not the subject of this page. Countries where native speakers make up only a few thousand, or even a few hundred people, or countries with a percentage well below 1% are unlikely to be listed here.