Tamil grammar governs morphology, syntax, and semantics on the one hand and the proper use of nouns, verbs, voices, and their meanings on the other. It reflects aspects of Tamil society, culture, history and religions.
Young children learn it as they grow among the Tamil people. By contrast, adults belonging to a different cultural or national background learn Tamil differently. Their nuanced
understanding combines elements of their native upbringing and of their new language. Merchants engaged in trade transcending cultural boundaries, families with relatives living or working in different cultural settings, travellers, religious missionaries, and a few colonial administrators have been in the forefront of learning and propagating the languages and customs of other people. This article demonstrates how Germans, mostly Christian missionaries, learnt, perceived and presented Tamil grammar to their contemporaries from the sixteenth century onward
