Why Indian language support is different
Most browser grammar tools are built for English and Western European languages. When a Tamil, Malayalam, or Hindi speaker types in their native script on Gmail or WhatsApp Web, the tools either ignore the text entirely or produce nonsensical suggestions because they're treating Devanagari or Tamil Unicode as garbled input.
Pinogrammer was built with Indian scripts as first-class targets, not afterthoughts. The language detection pipeline treats Tamil Unicode (U+0B80–U+0BFF), Malayalam Unicode (U+0D00–U+0D7F), and Devanagari (U+0900–U+097F) as distinct script families, not "non-English text to skip". This means corrections work in native script — the suggestion card will show போகிறீர்கள் → சென்றீர்கள், not a transliteration or an error about unrecognised characters.
How language detection works for Indian scripts
When you start typing in a text field, Pinogrammer samples the first significant cluster of text (after 650ms of inactivity) and passes it through two detection layers:
- Unicode block analysis: The majority Unicode block in the text identifies the script family. If the dominant block is Tamil Unicode, the language is flagged as Tamil. If Devanagari, it's flagged as Hindi (or optionally Marathi, based on vocabulary). This runs locally in about 2ms — no model call needed.
- Chrome Language Detector API: For Latin-script languages (English, French, Spanish etc.) and for confirmation of Indic languages in mixed-language text, Pinogrammer calls Chrome's built-in
LanguageDetectorAPI. This is also on-device and returns a confidence score.
The script detected is shown in the suggestion card header as a language badge (e.g., "Tamil detected", "Malayalam detected"). You can see which path was used — Gemini Nano or Translate + Nano — in the card's meta line.
Correction examples by language
Setting up an Indian language keyboard
Pinogrammer corrects Unicode text — it needs your keyboard to output Unicode codepoints in the native script, not transliterated Latin text. Here are the recommended setups per platform:
| Language | macOS | Windows | Android/Chrome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tamil | Tamil keyboard (System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources) | Microsoft Tamil keyboard (Language settings) | Google Indic Keyboard → Tamil |
| Malayalam | Malayalam keyboard (Input Sources) | Microsoft Malayalam keyboard | Google Indic Keyboard → Malayalam |
| Hindi | Hindi — Devanagari QWERTY or Transliteration | Microsoft Hindi (Devanagari) | Gboard → Hindi |
| Telugu | Telugu keyboard (Input Sources) | Microsoft Telugu | Google Indic Keyboard → Telugu |
| Kannada | Kannada keyboard (Input Sources) | Microsoft Kannada | Google Indic Keyboard → Kannada |
Google Input Tools (Chrome extension) is another excellent option for all Indic scripts. It supports phonetic input (type "naan" → converts to நான்) and outputs native Unicode, which is exactly what Pinogrammer reads.
Writing in mixed English and Indian languages
A common pattern for Indian professionals is Tanglish (Tamil + English), Manglish (Malayalam + English), or Hinglish (Hindi + English) — sentences that mix native script words with English words in the same message.
Pinogrammer handles this by segment: if a sentence has Tamil words and English words, the Tamil portion is corrected using Tamil grammar rules and the English portion using English rules. The boundary detection uses script switching as the segment boundary.
Example Gmail compose: "Dear sir, நான் tomorrow meeting க்கு வர முடியாது என்று சொல்கிறேன்." — The English "Dear sir" and "tomorrow meeting" are checked for English grammar. The Tamil segments are corrected independently with Tamil grammar rules.
Offline support for Indic scripts
By default, Tamil and Malayalam corrections use Gemini Nano — Chrome's on-device model. This works fully offline once the model is downloaded. If you frequently write in scripts that use the Translate + Nano path (Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati), you can opt into the M2M100 model download in Pinogrammer Settings → Language Models. This is a one-time 170MB download that enables fully offline multilingual correction for all 46 supported languages.
To enable: open the Pinogrammer settings popup → Language tab → "Download offline model" button. Chrome will prompt you once to confirm the download. After that, correction works identically whether or not you have an internet connection.
Tips for Indic language writers
- Set the right domain profile. If you're writing formal Tamil correspondence (official letters, business proposals), set the profile to Business or Academic. If it's a casual WhatsApp message, leave it on General.
- Use Explain to learn grammar rules. Tense conjugations in Tamil and Malayalam are complex. The Explain feature will give you a plain-language (in English) explanation of why the correction was made — useful for learning the rule, not just accepting the fix.
- Rewrites preserve the script. If you select a Tamil paragraph and click "Concise rewrite", the output will be in Tamil — not transliteration, not English. The rewrite model preserves the input language and script.
- Formal rewrite works in Hindi too. Typing informal Hindi and using the Formal rewrite is an efficient way to draft professional correspondence. The register shift from colloquial to formal Devanagari Hindi is handled by Gemini Nano on-device.