On Pronunciation

Tamil pronunciation is hard for me since the vowel sounds are a little off from what I would expect. For example "a"  "அ" is more like the u in "cut."  I have been finding some resources for working on this.

The book, First Steps in Tamil teaches the writing system and has some pronunciation tips along the way.

The book, Tamil Self Taught, does not use the writing system except in the introduction, but does give both a transliteration and a pronunciation for lists of words English-Tamil.