Sentence Structure
வாக்கிய அமைப்பு
English word order is rigid in a way Tamil's isn't — and the reason why is the single most useful grammar fact on this page.
Grammar Comparison
இலக்கண ஒப்பீடு
Why Tamil can reorder words and English can't
I ate rice. / *Rice ate I. (only one order is grammatical)
நான் சாதம் சாப்பிட்டேன். / சாதம் நான் சாப்பிட்டேன். (both orders are understandable)
Tamil marks grammatical role with case suffixes (-ஐ for the object, etc.), so the suffix — not the word order — tells you who did what to whom. That gives Tamil freedom to reorder words for emphasis. English lost almost all of its case suffixes over the centuries, so it leans entirely on strict word order (subject, then verb, then object) to carry that same information. Moving the words in an English sentence doesn't just sound odd — it usually changes or destroys the meaning.
Prepositions only, no postpositions
on the table (preposition before the noun)
மேசையின் மேலே (postposition after the noun)
Tamil relation-words (மேலே, கீழே, உள்ளே) come after the noun. English relation-words (on, under, inside) always come before. There's no English equivalent of Tamil's postposition habit — expect to consciously flip the order every time, since it won't feel automatic at first.
Articles: a genuinely new concept
a book / the book
புத்தகம் — no article at all, in either case
Tamil has no equivalent of 'a' or 'the' — a bare noun already works as either a specific or general reference, and context fills in the rest. English requires you to choose one of three options (a/an, the, or nothing) almost every time you use a noun, and the rules for which one depend on things Tamil never marks (whether the listener already knows which one you mean). This isn't a comparison so much as a warning: expect to make article mistakes for a long time, since Tamil gives you no instinct to draw on here.