முதல் எழுத்து · The First Letter — Tamil AI, Episode 02 | களம் · Kalam

அ. Just one letter. But it's where everything starts.

Episode 02 of களம் – Kalam — Tamil AI's build-in-public series — goes back to the very first letter of the Tamil alphabet: அ, the first of Tamil's 12 உயிர் (vowel) letters — which, alongside 18 மெய் (consonant) letters, make up the Tamil script. Not a small detail — it's the entry point into how Tamil AI actually scores pronunciation.

Tamil AI is teaching diaspora children to read, write, and speak Tamil. Long before full sentences or conversation, the app scores pronunciation letter by letter — and முதல் படி (the first step) is getting that letter-level accuracy to 90–95%, before moving on to words, sentences, and eventually dialect-aware speech (Kongu, Madras Bashai, Madurai Tamil).

This is a build-in-public series and an open-corpus data collection effort at the same time — every letter, every voice, documented as we go.

தொடரும் · To be continued. Next up — Episode 03: ஏன் Tamil AI? (Why Tamil AI?) — why build a Tamil-specific AI at all, when ChatGPT, Gemini, and Sarvam already exist.

Built from Rasipuram, Tamil Nadu — not Chennai, not Bangalore.