Old Tamil preserved some features of Proto-Dravidian, including the inventory of consonants, the syllable structure, and various grammatical features. Amongst these was the absence of a distinct present tense – like Proto-Dravidian, Old Tamil only had two tenses, the past and the "non-past". Old Tamil verbs also had a distinct negative conjugation (e.g. ' (காணேன்) "I do not see", ' (காணோம்) "we do not see"). Nouns could take pronominal suffixes like verbs to express ideas: e.g. ' (பெண்டிரேம்) "we are women" formed from ' (பெண்டிர்) "women" + "-" (ஏம்) and the first person plural marker.