Tamil being not only the earliest but also the primary classical language of the world, it had its beginnings in the form of Universal Natural Language, gradually composed of the following six categories of sounds:

(1) Emotional Sounds

e.g	ƒ!, ‡! etc., expressing pain.
	†!, Ai! etc., expressing delight.
	Ai!, ƒ!O! etc., expressing wonder. „
	„; ƒ! etc., expressing regret over past folly.

       When reduplicated, ‘ƒ’ would become ‘ƒhƒ!’ to express admiration and ‘ƒvƒ!’ to express compassion; and ‘†’ would become ‘†h†!’ to express disillusionment.

(2) Vocative sounds

(3) Imitative Sounds

      Imitative sounds are of three kinds, viz., (a) Imitatives of cries of birds and animals, (b) Imitatives of sounds produced by or from inanimate objects, and (c) Imitatives of sounds produced by human actions.
     (a) Imitatives of Cries:

     e.g. Cries: k‡, k‡vu, to coo.