Sentence Structure
வாக்கிய அமைப்பு
French doesn't bend toward Tamil's word order — it's worth knowing upfront where French and Tamil genuinely part ways, so you don't go looking for parallels that aren't there.
Grammar Comparison
இலக்கண ஒப்பீடு
Fixed SVO, not SOV
Je mange du riz. (I eat rice — verb stays in position 2, always)
நான் சாதம் சாப்பிடுறேன். (I rice eat — verb at the end, always)
French doesn't push the verb to the end anywhere — subject-verb-object order stays fixed almost everywhere, much like English. Don't expect a Tamil-like verb-final pattern to show up anywhere in French.
Two-part negation wraps the verb
Je ne mange pas de riz. (I NE eat NOT rice)
நான் சாதம் சாப்பிடமாட்டேன். (single negative verb ending)
Tamil negates by changing the verb ending itself (சாப்பிடு → சாப்பிடமாட்டேன்). French instead sandwiches the verb between two negation words, ne...pas, with no real Tamil equivalent — this is a place where you'll need a fresh mental model rather than a mapping from Tamil.
No postpositions
sur la table ('on the table' — preposition before the noun)
மேசையின் மேலே ('table-of on-top' — postposition after the noun)
Tamil places location words after the noun. French, like English, places them before (sur, sous, dans, avec) with essentially no postpositions — expect prepositions only.
Compounding by phrase, not fusion
pomme de terre ('apple of earth' = potato — three separate words)
கைக்குட்டை ('hand-cloth' = handkerchief — fused into one word)
Tamil loves fusing two nouns into a single new word. French usually resists that fusion and instead links words with de ('of'), keeping them as separate words in a phrase. So a long French phrase is often just a description strung together with de, not a single compound word to decode.