COIMBATORE: The Tamil language is older than Sanskrit and is "the mother of all languages in the world," said Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi on Wednesday.

Setting the stage for an academic debate on the antiquity of Tamil language at the World Classical Tamil conference in Coimbatore, the CM said more than 20 Tamil words had been found in Vedas by linguist Robert Caldwell, who coined the term Dravidian languages and first declared Tamil as a classical language.

"From this we learn that Tamil had an existence prior to Sanskrit," the CM said.

"Tamil is not only an international language, it is like a mother of all languages in the world,"' he said. Tamil scholar Devaneya Pavanar had established that Tamil is the primary classical language of the world, he said.

"Root Tamil words exist in many languages of the world in various modifications but retaining the semantic meaning. In the world languages, it is difficult to find a basic word that does not have some link with the Tamil word. Hence, Tamil has the status of the mother tongue in the world," the CM said.