Dravidian languages

The Dravidian languages or Dravidian languages constitute a linguistic family that includes approximately 26 languages, spoken mainly in southern India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), as well as some areas of Pakistan, Nepal, and western and central India. The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million people.

History

The origin of the Dravidian languages, as well as their later development, and the time of their differentiation are unclear. The fact is due in part to the little linguistic research that has been carried out on these languages. There are some similarities between the Dravidian and the Uralic and Altaic languages, which could suggest long contact between these language families at some point, although a common origin seems ruled out ^{[citation needed]}. There have been attempts to relate the group to the Japonic languages, Basque, Korean, Sumerian, Australian Aboriginal languages, and the unknown language of the Indus Civilization. Another proposal is the one that relates the Dravidian languages with the Elamite language.

Legends common to many Dravidian language-speaking groups place their origin in a vast continent in the south that has sunk into the ocean. However, many linguists favor the theory that the languages have spread south and east across the Indian subcontinent, based on the fact that the southern Dravidian languages show traces of contact with other languages than the northern ones. own. The Proto-Dravidan probably divided into three varieties: Northern, Central and Southern around 1500 BC. C., although some linguists, relying on the great differentiation of the subfamilies, mention earlier dates.

The existence of the Dravidian language family was first mentioned in 1816 by Alexander D. Campbell in his Telugu grammar Grammar of the Teloogoo Language. In the book, he and Francis W. Ellis claimed that Tamil and Telugu were descendants of a common non-Indo-European ancestor. However, it was not until 1856 that Robert Caldwell published his Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages, which greatly expanded the number of languages belonging to the family and established it as one of the major language families in the world. Caldwell coined the term "dravidans" from Sanskrit drāvida, which was used in a seventh-century text to refer to the languages of South India. The publication of the Dravidian etymological dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau was a milestone in Dravidian linguistics.

Classification

Phylogeny

The Dravidian family tree would be the following:

Dravidic	Northern Driving Central Dravídico surcentral Southern Driving

List of Dravidian languages

In bold the official languages in India:

Southern

• Tamil (about 68 million speakers)
• I'll sing (kanna referenceaapproximately 41 million speakers)
• Malabar (o) Malayalamabout 35 million speakers)
• Tulu (also called) Kanara)
• All (about 800 speakers)
• Kodagu (or Kota)
• Koraga
• Badaga
• Kurumba
• Irula
• Kodava thakk

Southwestern

• Télugu (IDA; has some 74 million speakers)
• Gondi (about 2 million speakers)
• Konda (about 13,000 speakers)
• Manda
• Pengo (about 1,300 speakers)
• Kui (Khondiabout 5100,000 speakers)
• Kuvi

Centres

• Kolami (67,000 speakers)
• Naiki (about 1,500 speakers)
• Paryi (or Parjiabout 44,000 speakers)
• Gadaba (about 8,800 speakers)

Northerns

• Brahui (the only Arabic language not spoken in India, spoken in Baluchistan, Pakistan)
• Kúruj (1,140,000 speakers)
• Malto (about 90,000 speakers)

Relations with other languages

Most linguists believe that the Dravidian languages are not related to any other language family. However, there are other minority hypotheses about the origin of these languages.

Some scholars consider the Dravidian languages to be part of the hypothetical Nostratic macrofamily, and therefore distantly related to other Eurasian language families, although this hypothesis is highly disputed. Some scholars include the Dravidian languages in a larger family called Elamo-Dravidan, which includes the ancient Elamite spoken in present-day southwestern Iran.

A genetic relationship between the Dravidian languages and the Uralic languages has also been proposed. Tyler compiled in 1968 a corpus of 153 cognates between both families, which include both common lexicons and some grammatical morphemes. Similarly, Bouda found 137 cognates between Uralic and Proto-Dravidian languages and 28 common cognates between Proto-Uralic and Proto-Dravidian and Proto-Altaic.

Linguistic description

Phonology

The Dravidian languages are notorious for their lack of distinction between voiceless and voiced stops, like Finnish. Although the Dravidian languages (especially Kannada, Malabar, and Telugu) have many loanwords from Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, which distinguish between voicing and aspiration of sounds, loanwords are often mispronounced by monolingual speakers. In fact, the Tamil alphabet does not have symbols for voiced or aspirated stops.

Dravidian languages are also characterized by a three-way distinction between dental, alveolar, and retroflex articulations and by having a large number of liquid consonants. The consonant inventory of Proto-Dravidian is given by:

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retrofleja	Palatal	Velar	Gloss
Nasal	♪	♪	*	*	♪	(*)
Occlusive	♪	*t *	*	♪	*c	♪
Fridge				*) (*,,))			(*h)
Vibrante			♪
Approximately	♪		♪	*	♪

Grammar

Reversor Property

<p Over time, one word means the general case and the other a particular case. For example:

was his 'recoger' / seru 'joint'

kanu 'Look at' / inuku 'Look in hiding'

Palindromes

A large number of reversals result in the same word. In other words, words are consonant palindromes. For example: amma, appa, aNNa, akka, anna (rice).

Note: this is only true when the language is written in the Latin alphabet, in the proper script they are not palindromes.

Words that start with a vowel

A large number of words begin and end with a vowel, which makes it easier to use in an agglutinative language.

karanu (CHUCKLES) elumbu (bones) adu (That) avide (alli) . (this) illai (no, absent)

adu-idil-illai (that-this-in-absente = that's absent in this)

Lexical comparison

The numerals in different Dravidian languages are:

GLOSA	Dravidicseptentrional	Department	Dravidicsuroccidental	Dravidicomeridional	PROTO- DRAVÍDICO
'1'	*or-	*okut	*ogna	♪	♪ oru-~ ♪
'2'	♪	♪iru-	*irunati	*irānafiru	♪iru-~ ♪
'3'	*mur-	*muv-	*mūna	♪	*muv-~ *mū-
'4'		*nāl-	*nāl-	*nālaku	*nāl
'5'		♪ CayNd-	*(s)ayu)g	♪	♪ CayN-
'6'		*cāru	*(s)āru	*āru	*ca lady- ♪ cāng
'7'		*ēdivu	*ēnnau	*ēuu	*ēr-u-
'8'		♪ ini...	♪ ennimidi	*eṭṭu	*eṭṭu~ ♪
'9'		*tom-	*tommidi	♪	♪o--pak-tu
'10'		♪ Padi	♪ Padi	*pattu	*pak-tu

In the table above we have written <d, ḍ> they are only allophones of nasal or intervocalics of /t, ṭ/. The special signs used in the table above use signs traditionally used for the languages of India which have the following IPA equivalents:

• The signs /ṭ, TED,,,).,)./ represent retroflexes that in AFI are removed as /).,).,).,).,).,)./).
• The sign /./ represents the nose watch designated in AFI as /φ/.
• The vowels /ā, ī, ū/ represent long vowels (AFI /atile, itile, ucore/)

Sanskrit Influence

Kannarian, Malabar and Telugu have been relatively more influenced by Sanskrit and have taken aspirated consonants. Sanskrit words and derivatives are common in all three languages. Tamil is the least influenced and retains the closest proto-Dravidian form.