Tamil Vowels

ST has a ten-vowel system with long and short É i Ê ii, Í e Î ee, Ç a È aa, Ð o Ñ oo, and Ë Ì uu.The diphthongs Ï ai and ÑÄ au found in LT are not usual in ST; a few loan words contain ÑÄ au, but often these can be represented by Çé avu as in ½éýà pavundu `pound'. We use throughout this grammar the double-letter representation of long vowels, except where we are being explicitly phonetic. That is, È will be transcribed as aa except when a purely phonetic representation is wanted, then it will be [a '161 ].

• Initial Position
• Final Position
• Words ending in a vowel plus nasal.
• The epenthetic vowel Ë u
• Words ending in Sonorants, Liquids and Glides
• Rhotics, final and otherwise.