Unable to write Tamil and English together in LaTeX

Question

I want to find a way by which I can write: This is my country and இது என் நாடு in consecutive lines. So far, the solutions require me to write the Tamil in a separate page, save it as an image and paste it after the English text which makes the output rather undesirable. Using xelatex also doesn't seem to work on my system.

Is there a way to use pdflatex and generate this document?

Things I have tried:

1. I tried to only write in Tamil using the information provided here in xelatex (LaTeX/XeTeX setup Tamil/Indic languages). I keep getting the error that the font Latha was not found.

2. I simply tried pasting the text as suggested here (Writing in தமிழ் (Tamil)), but as mentioned before, the output is very ugly.

Even a basic simple code using standalone documentclass would be sufficient for me. I am using MXLinux as the operating system.

Answer 1

In 2022, you can do this in LuaLaTeX with Babel: You will need to either use language tagging (especially if you want to change layout) or enable auto-detection as below, and to use the HarfBuzz renderer.

\documentclass{article}
\tracinglostchars=3
\usepackage[bidi=basic, english]{babel}
\usepackage{fontspec}

\babelprovide[import, onchar=ids fonts]{tamil}

\defaultfontfeatures{ Scale=MatchLowercase, Ligatures=TeX, Renderer=HarfBuzz }
\babelfont{rm}{Latin Modern Roman}
\babelfont[tamil]{rm}{Latha}

\begin{document}
\noindent
This is my country\\
இது என் நாடு
\end{document}

Change this to your fonts of choice. Catamaran is free, open-source and available in a number of weights, and the Noto fonts are gratis, but any font that works in your word processor should work here too.

You could add a short phrase in Tamil to a document created in PDFTeX using the technique I demonstrate here (but changing the language).

Answer 2

As suggested by David, xelatex is the choice for inputting indic text. The following can be compiled with xelatex:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontface\tamfont{Noto Sans Tamil}
  
\begin{document}

  This is my country and 
  {\tamfont இது என் நாடு}.

\end{document}