The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, south-west Pakistan and some regions of Nepal. Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.
Kannada, previously also known as Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 44 million native speakers, and is additionally a second or third language for around 15 million non-native speakers in Karnataka.
The Kannada script is an abugida of the Brahmic family, used to write Kannada, one of the Dravidian languages of South India especially in the state of Karnataka. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. Kannada script is also widely used for writing Sanskrit texts in Karnataka. Several minor languages, such as Tulu, Konkani, Kodava, Sanketi and Beary, also use alphabets based on the Kannada script. The Kannada and Telugu scripts share very high mutual intellegibility with each other, and are often considered to be regional variants of single script. Other scripts similar to Kannada script are Sinhala script, and Old Peguan script (used in Burma).
The Badagas are an ethno-linguistic community living in the Nilgiri district in Tamil Nadu, India. Throughout the district the Badugas live in nearly 400 villages, called Hattis. The Badagas speak a language called Badaga.
Tulu is a Dravidian language whose speakers are concentrated in Dakshina Kannada and in the southern part of Udupi of Karnataka in south-western India and also in the northern parts of the Kasaragod district of Kerala. The native speakers of Tulu are referred to as Tuluva or Tulu people and the geographical area is unofficially called Tulu Nadu.
The Nilgiris district is one of the 38 districts in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Nilgiri is the name given to a range of mountains spread across the borders among the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. The Nilgiri Hills are part of a larger mountain chain known as the Western Ghats. Their highest point is the mountain of Doddabetta, height 2,637 m. The district is contained mainly within the Nilgiri Mountains range. The administrative headquarters is located at Ooty. The district is bounded by Coimbatore to the south, Erode to the east, and Chamarajnagar district of Karnataka and Wayanad district of Kerala to the north. As it is located at the junction of three states, namely, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, significant Malayali and Kannadiga populations reside in the district. Nilgiris district is known for natural mines of Gold, which is also seen in the other parts of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve extended in the neighbouring states of Karnataka and Kerala too.
An r-colored or rhotic vowel is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis.
South Dravidian is one of the four major branches of the Dravidian languages family. It includes the literary languages Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Tulu, as well as several non-literary languages such as Badaga, Irula, Kota, Kurumba, Toda and Kodava.
Toda is a Dravidian language noted for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. The Toda language originated from Toda-Kota subgroup of South Dravidian. Krishnamurti (2003) doesn't consider a single Toda-Kota branch and says Kota split first and later Toda did as Kota doesn't have the centralized vowels of other Tamil-Toda languages.
Irula is a Dravidian language spoken by the Irulas who inhabit the area of the Nilgiri mountains, in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, India. It is closely related to Tamil. It is written in the Tamil script.
The Betta Kurumba language is a Dravidian language closely related to Kannada and Tamil, and is spoken by 32,000 people in the Nilgiri mountains and in adjoining areas in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Beṭṭa (ಬೆಟ್ಟ) means “hills” in Kannada and kurumba (ಕುರುಬ) means “shepherd”.
Vandicholai is a Panchayat village in Coonoor Taluk of The Nilgiris District, Tamil Nadu, India. The settlement takes its name from a nearby Shola. The Chinna Vandicholai is a settlement adjoining Wellington Cantonment. The village gets its name from the conjunction of two Badaga words [bandu+so:le; 'moth+woods'].
Tamil phonology is characterised by the presence of "true-subapical" retroflex consonants and multiple rhotic consonants. Its script does not distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants; phonetically, voice is assigned depending on a consonant's position in a word, voiced intervocalically and after nasals except when geminated. Tamil phonology permits few consonant clusters, which can never be word initial.
Kota is a language of the Dravidian family with about 900 native speakers in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu state, India. It is spoken mainly by the tribal Kota people (India). In the late 1800s, the native speaking population was about 1,100. In 1990, the population was only 930, out of an ethnic population of perhaps 1,400, despite the great increase in the population of the area. The language is 'critically endangered' due to the greater social status of neighbouring languages. The Kota language may have originated from Tamil-Kannada and is closely related to Toda language. The Kota population is about 2500. The origin of the name Kota is derived from the Dravidian root word 'Ko' meaning Mountain. Traditionally Kota and Toda are seen as from a single branch Toda-Kota which separated from Tamil-Kota but recently Krishnamurti considers it to have diverged first from Tamil-Kota and later Toda as it doesnt have the centralized vowels characterized for Tamil-Toda.
Tamil Nadu is one of the 28 states of India. Its capital and largest city is Chennai. Tamil Nadu lies in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula and is bordered by the States of Puducherry, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It is the tenth-largest state in India and the seventh most populous state.
Kannada dialects, in the broad sense incorporating the Kannada–Badaga languages, are spoken in and around Karnataka. Apart from literary Kannada, used in television, news and literature, there are many spoken dialects.
Kundha Hosahutty is a small village which is 30 km far from Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India. It has known to be Kundha Hosahutty because the area around is known as Kundha Semay. Badaga is a southern Dravidian language spoken by approximately 400,000 people in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. It is known for its retroflex vowels. It has similarities with neighbouring Kannada language and is considered a dialect of Kannada and now claimed as an independent language by a French linguistic scholar, Christiane Pilot-Raichoor. The word Badaga refers to the Badaga language as well as the Badaga indigenous people who speak it.
Wayanad Chetti, or Chetti, is a Southern Dravidian language of India spoken by Wayanadan Chetti community in the Wayanad district of Kerala, India. It has 62-76% lexical similarity with Gowder, 65% with Jen Kurumba and 52% with Kannada. Kannada is the closest major language. Their language is also very similar to Badaga.
Paul Hockings is an anthropologist whose prime areas of focus are the Dravidian languages, social, visual and medical anthropology.
Maundadan Chetti or Chetti is a Kannadoid Southern Dravidian language of India spoken by Maundadan Chetti community in the Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu and in the Wayanad district of Kerala, India. Its highest lexical similarity is with Badaga, which one calculation put at 57%, and it has somewhat lower similarities (47%–41%) with Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Wayanadan Chetti. The people have requested the Tamil Nadu government to recognize them as distinct.
