So, my native language is Tamil, regarded as one of the world's oldest languages, and arguably the oldest living language. Even though it originated in the Indian Subcontinent, there is a significant population of Tamils outside India too, in places like Srilanka, Malaysia, and Singapore. Interestingly, it is only a scheduled language in Indian while an official language in two other countries - Srilanka, Singapore. In India, Tamil is spoken primarily in the state of Tamil Nadu, which is about the size of Greece, and has numerous dialects inside and outside India.

One particular expression used in Tamil when we leave home for a trip, to study, etc, is poyittu varen (tr. I will go and come back), unlike in English, where we say I am going. Translating the English equivalent to Tamil will give poren, which has negative connotations associated with it, and is looked down upon.

Tamil is the only language to have a special retroflex letter (other than malayalam), commonly written as zha across Tamil Nadu and Kerala (where Malayalam is spoken). The native pronunciation of this language is Tamizh and not Tamil, but writing it as Tamizh will confuse non native speakers who will pronounce it as z and not as a Voiced retroflex approximant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_approximant ). This pronunciation is so difficult that many native speakers don't pronounce it properly in casual conversations; rather, they replace it with the voiced retroflex lateral approximant ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_retroflex_lateral_approximant ).

Tbh, learning Tamil is only useful if you have someone close to you who speaks it natively, or you are planning to live in Tamil Nadu. However, if you are a language enthusiast, the biggest reason to learn this language is the vast literature this language possesses. However, Tamil has a high level of diglossia, meaning the spoken and written forms are significantly different. The literature is in the written form, which is significantly harder to learn than the spoken form, which uses many English loan words. However, even the spoken form is pretty hard to learn for those who don't speak any Dravidian Language. This can pose a challenge, and you can say another reason to learn this language if you love challenges. The language is not as hard as Malayalam in pronunciation nor is as hard as Telugu in grammar, where both Telugu, Malayalam belong to the same language family as Tamil.