CHENNAI: Chief minister MK Stalin on Saturday launched a new mission “Tamil Parappurai Kazhagam” to teach and spread Tamil language across the globe and released first-level textbooks to teach Tamil in 24 different languages including Spanish, Japanese, French, Chinese, German and in Indian languages.

Inaugurating the education management platform  ‘Payil’  for learning Tamil virtually, Stalin said, “Tamils are living in more than 60 countries but in some countries they forgot to read and speak their mother tongue. The new mission will teach them to read and speak in Tamil,” he said.

He said Tamils are not in a position to use their language fully due to education, employment and living abroad. “So, we prepared textbooks, audio books, video lessons and flash cards to kindle their interest to read Tamil,” he added.

While urging all to read Tamil literature which stresses on morality, he said, Tamil culture is not a dividing but an uniting culture.

The mission will be implemented by Tamil virtual Academy. While the printed textbooks are available in 24 languages, audio books are available in 12 languages. In the next phase, textbooks will be prepared till Class V level to simplify reading and writing in Tamil.

In the first phase, textbooks will be sent to Tamil schools overseas, contact centres, Tamil enthusiasts in 26 countries and 20 states in India. There are 120 contact centres of Tamil Virtual Academy in 24 countries. More than 25,000 students will benefit from this mission during the first phase. The textbooks and audio lessons will be available on www.tamilvu.org

Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy, IT Minister Mano Thangaraj, Health Minister Ma Subramanian, Tamil Virtual Academy Chairman T Udhayachandran and IT Department Secretary Neeraj Mittal among others participated at the function.