Words would be voluntarily borrowed by a nation from a foreign language, if at all it is done to supply a deficiency. Otherwise, they may be thrown overboard at any time. Judging by the standard of English, it is very often expressed both in the press and on the platform, that Tamil would only be enriched in proportion to the extent of its borrowings from other languages. But past experience has shown that Tamil would only be pauperised immediately and strangled to death in course of time, by indiscriminate borrowing of words. The seeming growth of Tamil owing to the intrusion of foreign words during the recent centuries, is only a morbid development similar to the swelling of a rheumatic patient, and as a result of this, many a precious Tamil word has either gone into oblivion or has become obsolete or obsolescent.

     Some persons may find justification for the inclusion of the above-mentioned English words in Tamil on the ground that they are being used in the colloquial speech. If this is taken as a criterion, then there would be no limit to the English words to be admitted into Tamil, as the present-day Tamilians have a tendency to use all the English words they know in their everyday speech. The illiterate imitate the educated persons in this respect. This bad habit has spread like an epidemic, and threatens to throttle Tamil and exterminate it in course of time, if proper and effective steps are not taken to check it immediately.

     There is a wrong notion amongst a section of educated people, especially after the introduction of Discriptive Linguistics in universities, that whatever is spoken by the people constitunes the colloquial dialect. They do not know that the colloquial speech comprises two strata, the lower spoken by the masses, and the upper by the classes. Even as the conduct of the lowest order of society is not to be taken as the norm, its barbarous language also is not to be approved. Those Tamilians who cannot speak grammatical Tamil belong to the lower class of society in point of Tamil however highly educated they may be in English. Ancient grammarians defind colloquial dialect at that spoken by the highly cultured, and not by the commonalty.