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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.
Tamil is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and union territory of Puducherry, and the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken by significant minorities in the four other South Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Union Territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It is also spoken by the Tamil diaspora found in many countries, including Malaysia, Myanmar, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, and Mauritius. Tamil is also natively spoken by the Sri Lankan Moors. One of 22 scheduled languages in the Constitution of India, Tamil was the first to be classified as a classical language of India.
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 Tamil Sangams were three legendary gatherings of Tamil scholars and poets that, according to traditional Tamil accounts, occurred in the remote past. Scholars believe that these assemblies were originally known as kooṭam or "gathering," which was also a name for Madurai. Three assemblies are described. The legend has it that the first two were held in cities since "taken by the sea", the first being called Kapatapuram, and the third was held in the present-day city of Madurai.
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.
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.
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, also known as Iruliga, are a Dravidian ethnic group inhabiting the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. A scheduled tribe, their population in this region is estimated at around 200,000 people. People of Irula ethnicity are called Irular, and speak Irula, which belongs to the Dravidian languages family.
Since the Iron Age in India, the native languages of the Indian subcontinent are divided into various language families, of which the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian are the most widely spoken. There are also many languages belonging to unrelated language families such as Munda and Tibeto-Burman, spoken by smaller groups.
Tamilakam was the geographical region inhabited by the ancient Tamil people, covering the southernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. Tamilakam covered today's Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, Lakshadweep and southern parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Traditional accounts and the Tolkāppiyam referred to these territories as a single cultural area, where Tamil was the natural language and permeated the culture of all its inhabitants. The ancient Tamil country was divided into kingdoms. The best known among them were the Cheras, Cholas, Pandyans and Pallavas. During the Sangam period, Tamil culture began to spread outside Tamilakam. Ancient Tamil settlements were also established in Sri Lanka and the Maldives (Giravarus), prior to the migration of Prakrit speakers.
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”.
Tamil-Brahmi, also known as Tamili or Damili, was a variant of the Brahmi script in southern India. It was used to write inscriptions in the early form of Old Tamil. The Tamil-Brahmi script has been paleographically and stratigraphically dated between the third century BCE and the first century CE, and it constitutes the earliest known writing system evidenced in many parts of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Sri Lanka. Tamil Brahmi inscriptions have been found on cave entrances, stone beds, potsherds, jar burials, coins, seals, and rings.
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 doesn't have the centralized vowels characterized for Tamil-Toda.
Kamil Václav Zvelebil was a Czech scholar in Indian literature and linguistics, notably Tamil, Sanskrit, Dravidian linguistics and literature and philology.
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.
Old Tamil is the period of the Tamil language spanning from 300 BCE to 700 CE. Prior to Old Tamil, the period of Tamil linguistic development is termed as Proto-Tamil. After the Old Tamil period, Tamil becomes Middle Tamil. The earliest records in Old Tamil are inscriptions from between the 3rd and 1st century BCE in caves and on pottery. These inscriptions are written in a variant of the Brahmi script called Tamil Brahmi. The earliest long text in Old Tamil is the Tolkāppiyam, an early work on Tamil grammar and poetics, whose oldest layers could be as old as the mid 2nd century BCE. Old Tamil preserved many features of Proto-Dravidian, the earliest reconstructed form of the Dravidian including inventory of consonants, the syllable structure, and various grammatical features.
Jenu Kurumba, also known as Jen Kurumba or Jennu Kurumba, is a Southern Dravidian language of the Tamil–Kannada subgroup spoken by the Jennu Kurumba/Kattunayakan tribe. It is often considered to constitute a dialect of Kannada; however, Ethnologue classifies it as a separate language. Jenu Kurumba speakers are situated on the Nilgiri Hills cross-border area between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, Mysore and Kodagu districts of Karnataka, and Wayanad district of Kerala. The speakers of the language call it "nama basha".
References
- ↑ "Statement 1: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues - 2011". www.censusindia.gov.in. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 7 July 2018.
- ↑ Perialwar (1979), p. 1.
- ↑ "Irula communities: Spread over the three southern States with a language marked". indiantribalheritage.org.
- ↑ "Irula (Kerala Tribal Series - 4)". exoticindiaart.com.
- ↑ Perialwar (1979), p. 55.
- ↑ Perialwar (1979), p. 57.
- ↑ Zvelebil (2001), p. 157.
- ↑ Krishnamurti (2003), p. 65.
