by groups of Tamil Vaishnavites who migrated to Karnataka in the 11th century, retain many features of the Vaishnava paribasai, a special form of Tamil developed in the 9th and 10th centuries that reflect Vaishnavite religious and spiritual values. Several castes have their own sociolects which most members of that caste traditionally used regardless of where they come from. It is often possible to identify a person's caste by their speech. . For example, Tamil Brahmins tend to speak a variety of dialects that are all collectively known as Brahmin Tamil. These dialects tend to have softer consonants (with consonant deletion also common). These dialects also tend to have many Sanskrit loanwords. Tamil in Sri Lanka incorporates loan words from Portuguese, Dutch, and English. Spoken and literary variants In addition to its dialects, Tamil exhibits different forms: a classical literary style modelled on the ancient language (), a modern literary and formal style (), and a modern colloquial form (). These styles shade into each other, forming a stylistic continuum. For example, it is possible to write with a vocabulary drawn from , or to use forms associated with one of the other variants while speaking . In modern times, is generally used in formal writing and speech. For instance, it is the language of textbooks, of much of Tamil literature and of public speaking and debate. In recent times, however, has been making inroads into areas that have traditionally been considered the province of . Most contemporary cinema, theatre and popular entertainment on television and radio, for example, is in , and many politicians use it to bring themselves closer to their audience. The increasing use of in modern times has led to the emergence of unofficial ‘standard' spoken dialects. In India, the ‘standard' , rather than on any one dialect, but has been significantly influenced by the dialects of Thanjavur and Madurai. In Sri Lanka, the standard is based on the dialect of Jaffna. Writing system After Tamil Brahmi fell out of use, Tamil was written using a script called amongst others such as Grantha and Pallava. The current Tamil script consists of 12 vowels, 18 consonants and one special character, the āytam. The vowels and consonants combine to form 216 compound characters, giving a total of 247 characters (12 + 18 + 1 + (12 x 18)). All consonants have an inherent vowel a, as with other