Chenchu language

Last updated

Chenchu
చెంచు
Native to India
RegionAndhra Pradesh (highest concentration in Kurnool district, Prakasam district, Guntur district), Telangana (Mahabubnagar district), Karnataka and Orissa
Ethnicity Chenchu people
Native speakers
26,000 (2007) [1]
Telugu alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3 cde
Glottolog chen1255

Chenchu language is a Dravidian language which belongs to the Telugu branch of its South-Central family. This language is spoken mostly in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states in India by about 280,764 people (1981 census) of the Chenchu Aboriginal forests hunter-gatherer tribe. It is also called Chenchukulam, Chenchwar, Chenswar or Choncharu.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dravidian languages</span> Language family mostly of southern India

The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.

Tolkāppiyam, also romanised as Tholkaappiyam, is the most ancient extant Tamil grammar text and the oldest extant long work of Tamil literature. It is the earliest Tamil text mentioning Gods, perhaps linked to Hindu deities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chenchu people</span> Indigenous Scheduled Tribe from India

The Chenchus are a Dravidian tribe, a designated Scheduled Tribe in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Odisha. They are an aboriginal tribe whose traditional way of life been based on hunting and gathering. The Chenchus speak the Chenchu language, a member of the Dravidian language family. In general, the Chenchu relationship to non-tribal people has been largely symbiotic. Some Chenchus have continued to specialize in collecting forest products for sale to non-tribal people. Many Chenchus live in the sparse and deciduous Nallamala forest of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

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.

Proto-Dravidian is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Dravidian languages native to the Indian subcontinent. It is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian, although the date of diversification is still debated.

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.

Allar is a Dravidian language spoken in Kerala, India. Due to a lack of scholarly study, Allar cannot be classified within Dravidian at this time and may be a dialect of some other Dravidian language.

The Sholaga (Soliga) language is a Dravidian language related to Kannada and Tamil, spoken by the Soliga people.

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”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North Dravidian languages</span> Branch of the Dravidian language family

The Northern Dravidian languages are a branch of the Dravidian languages that includes Brahui, Kurukh and Malto.. It is further divided into Kurukh–Malto and Brahui.

Vedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals, and morphologically, the formation of gerunds. Some philologists attribute such features, as well as the presence of non-Indo-European vocabulary, to a local substratum of languages encountered by Indo-Aryan peoples in Central Asia (Bactria-Marghiana) and within the Indian subcontinent during Indo-Aryan migrations, including the Dravidian languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamil Zvelebil</span> Czech philologist (1927–2009)

Kamil Václav Zvelebil was a Czech scholar in Indian literature and linguistics, notably Tamil, Sanskrit, Dravidian linguistics and literature and philology.

Manna-Dora is either a nearly extinct Dravidian language closely related to Telugu, or a dialect of Telugu. It is spoken by the eponymous Scheduled Tribe in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Waddar, or Vadari, is a Dravidian language which belongs to the Telugu branch of its South-Central family, spoken among social caste of Waddars scattered over South India, and Sri Lanka especially in Karnataka, where it has a status of Scheduled caste. 200,000 people reported their languages as 'Vadari' in the 2011 census. Ethnologue treats it as separate Dravidian language closely related to Telugu, but without clear grounds. Waddars show their close relevance to Kaikadis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dravidian peoples</span> South Asian ethnolinguistic group

The Dravidian peoples are an ethnolinguistic supraethnicity composed of many distinct ethnolinguistic groups native to South Asia. They speak the Dravidian languages, which have a combined total of about 250 million native speakers. Dravidians form the majority of the population of South India and Northern Sri Lanka.

Standardisation of Tamil script includes various attempts in the past as well as ongoing attempts to uniformalise the Tamil script.

Mukha-Dora (Nuka-Dora) is one of the Dravidian languages spoken in India. It is spoken by a scheduled tribe, who use Telugu as their primary language. It is spoken by the eponymous Scheduled Tribe in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Malaysian Tamil, also known as Malaya Tamil, is a local variant of the Tamil language spoken in Malaysia. It is one of the languages of education in Malaysia, along with English, Malay and Mandarin. There are many differences in vocabulary between Malaysian Tamil and Indian Tamil.

Sanford Barringer Steever is an American linguist specializing in Dravidian languages.

Telangana Telugu, often referred to as Hyderabadi Telugu is a dialect of the Telugu language. It has its own history, spoken mostly in the Indian state of Telangana. This dialect, which is spoken in the Hyderabad region, is highly influenced by Hyderabadi Urdu, also called Dakhani or Deccani Urdu, at least in the vocabulary.

References

  1. Chenchu at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  2. Zvelebil (1990), p. 57.

Sources