Tamils are fiercely proud of the Tamil language, one of the few still living classical languages, with two millennia of written tradition. Unlike many other Indian languages, it belongs to the Dravidian language family that includes the other major South Indian languages - Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. As Malayalam and Tamil are closely related, locals may be able to puzzle out spoken Malayalam with some difficulty. Tamil Nadu was the site of violent anti-Hindi riots in 1965 when the union government tried to impose Hindi as the sole official language of India, and there is still some residual hostility towards Hindi, so try to pick up some instant Tamil here. Even if you are in Chennai, do not try to speak to locals in Hindi, as many will find it offensive. English works in almost all the cities.
However, if you don't speak Tamil, most educated Tamils speak English fluently, while many others know some basic English, so you shouldn't have a problem getting by with English in the major cities.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Tamil Nadu
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Tamil Nadu - updated Apr 2024
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Tamil Nadu Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
