Ezhil: A Tamil Programming Language

TL;DR

Ezhil is a pioneering interpreted programming language designed in Tamil, enabling native speakers to program using familiar language constructs, thereby making programming more accessible to Tamil speakers.

Contribution

The paper introduces Ezhil, the first freely available Tamil programming language, with grammar and examples, facilitating programming in Tamil for novices.

Findings

Ezhil successfully represents logical constructs in Tamil.

Initial implementation using Python demonstrates feasibility.

Ezhil is aimed at Tamil-speaking novice programmers.

Abstract

Ezhil is a Tamil language based interpreted procedural programming language. Tamil keywords and grammar are chosen to make the native Tamil speaker write programs in the Ezhil system. Ezhil allows easy representation of computer program closer to the Tamil language logical constructs equivalent to the conditional, branch and loop statements in modern English based programming languages. Ezhil is a compact programming language aimed towards Tamil speaking novice computer users. Grammar for Ezhil and a few example programs are reported here, from the initial proof-of-concept implementation using the Python programming language1. To the best of our knowledge, Ezhil language is the first freely available Tamil programming language.