Why are there 247 Tamil letters?

The Tamil set has 12 uyir vowels, 18 mei consonants, 216 uyirmei formed by combining each of the 18 consonants with each of the 12 vowels, and 1 aytam. That totals 247: 12 plus 18 plus 216 plus 1.

A uyirmei is a living-body letter, a consonant joined with a vowel. The first column uses the bare consonant, which already carries the inherent vowel a, and the other columns add a dependent vowel sign to form syllables like கா and கி.

How is the mei column formed?

The first labelled column shows the pure consonant, or mei, written with the pulli mark ். The pulli silences the inherent vowel, so க becomes க், the bare k sound.

Can I copy individual characters?

Yes. Click any glyph in the table and it is copied to your clipboard, which is handy when a character is hard to type on your keyboard layout.

Does the chart load any data online?

No. The grid is generated in your browser by combining the consonant and vowel tables, so nothing is fetched from a server.

Tamil Script Reference

The Tamil script is an abugida with a famously regular structure: a small set of vowels and consonants combine to produce the full character inventory. This free reference lays out all 247 letters — the 12 uyir vowels, the 18 mei consonants, the 216 uyirmei combinations, and the aytam — with romanization, search, and click-to-copy.

The three categories of Tamil letters

uyir — vowels (உயிர், “life letters”)

Tamil has 12 vowels. Five short vowels (அ, இ, உ, எ, ஒ), five long vowels (ஆ, ஈ, ஊ, ஏ, ஓ), and two diphthongs (ஐ, ஔ). When a vowel follows a consonant it appears as a dependent vowel sign rather than as the standalone glyph; the standalone forms are used only at the start of a syllable.

mei — consonants (மெய், “body letters”)

Tamil has 18 consonants, traditionally grouped into three classes by phonological strength:

vallinam (hard): க, ச, ட, த, ப, ற — corresponding roughly to k, c/ch, ṭ, t, p, ṟ.
mellinam (soft/nasal): ங, ஞ, ண, ந, ம, ன — the nasal consonants.
idaiyinam (medium): ய, ர, ல, வ, ழ, ள — semivowels and laterals.

Each mei is written with the pulli diacritic (்) to suppress the inherent a vowel: க (ka) becomes க் (k).

uyirmei — combined letters (உயிர்மெய், “life-body letters”)

When a consonant combines with a vowel other than the inherent a, a dependent vowel sign is added to the base consonant form. The 18 consonants × 12 vowels produces 216 uyirmei. The result is a grid with 18 rows and 12 columns.

aytam (ஆய்தம்)

A single special character ஃ (ஆய்தம்) representing a rough-breathing or aspiration sound found in loanwords and a few native words. It counts as the 247th letter.

How the 247 total adds up

12 standalone uyir vowels
18 mei consonants
216 uyirmei (18 × 12)
  1 aytam
───
247 total

How the grid is built

Each of the 18 consonant rows is paired with each of the 12 vowel columns:

The first column shows the bare consonant க (inherent vowel அ needs no sign).
Columns 2–12 attach dependent vowel signs: கா, கி, கீ, கு, கூ, கெ, கே, கை, கொ, கோ, கௌ.
A prefix cell on each row shows the pure consonant written with the pulli: க்.

The grid is generated in the browser from the 18 × 12 combination table — no data is fetched.

Learning the script efficiently

The regular structure of the uyirmei grid means that once you have memorized the 18 consonants and the 12 vowel signs, you can read all 216 combinations without separate memorization. Each cell follows the same assembly rule: consonant base + vowel sign.

Note that some uyirmei have irregular or visually distinctive forms:

க + ஆ = கா (predictable sign)
க + இ = கி (short sign on the right)
ள, ர, ழ have forms that look significantly different from their base consonant when combined with certain vowels.

Use the filter box to focus on one consonant row at a time. Click any glyph to copy it for documents, messaging, or code — useful even on keyboards that lack a Tamil input layout.