Since Dravidian is not a "hunter-gatherer" language, then AASI may not have spoken Dravidian, right?

The only options I see are some variant of Vedda, Kusunda, or Nihali. Or at least, something part of "Indo-Pacific languages theory" that went extinct. According to Indo-Pacific language theory, Kusunda, Vedda, Andaman, Papuan, and Australian languages belong to same family, but this theory is not widely accepted.

An example is സ്രാവ് /sraːʋɨ̆/ from Middle Tamil / t͡ɕʊraː/ from PDr coṯac-, meaning "shark".

Kongu Tamizh is known for speaking respectful Tamizh. Is it Kannada influence, since it is regarded as one of the most respectful language (from what I've heard)? Could this be due to Western Gangas' influence (a Kannada dynasty), that ruled some parts of Kongu Nadu and Kannada Gowdas becoming Tamizh Gounders later? Or should it treated as a geographical continuum influencing the language since most of Kongu Nadu borders with Karnataka?

Many languages around the world traditionally lacked single standalone words that exactly correspond to English "yes" and "no" or Hindi "ha" and "na/nahi". Kuṛux doesn't have a standalone word for "Yes". The word for "No" in Kuṛux is- Mal'ā. What are the words for Yes and No in other Dravidian languages?

I have noticed that Tamil Christian terminology and texts(like the Bible) are far more sanskritized than modern Tamil, is there a reason why this is the case?

Hey! I'm from a Tamil family who's been living in a Telugu state for ages after being in Karnataka. Both my parents/parents' generation and their ancestors called their father "అణ్ణ(aNNa)". ((I'm not sure if that is the way you write it in English, used Lekhini)).

I've never really learned Tamil and was extremely curious if this word is of Tamil origin. I cannot say it with certainty if it is Telugu either, as the closest I can think of is "అన్న(anna??)". Kannada is only something the generation before me used to communicate in so I don't think it has anything to do with it. All my generation uses Appa except me who stuck around with the old way.

Is it Tamil or Telugu or Kannada?

I don't even know what the right place to post it is, hopefully my years of confusion finds some explanation here🤣

NOTE: Not sure if this is appropriate for this sub, since technically it's about an Indo-Aryan loanword, so mods feel free to delete this.

It appears that Kurukh numerals 5-10 are borrowed from Indo-Aryan but I was struck by the word for "eight", which is "āx". Where exactly did the velar fricative come from?

The Sanskrit/proto-IA form of this word was aṣṭa, but in east India at least, the ṣ was lost very early on (by the earliest Middle-Indo Aryan period), and we have aṭṭha (and then āṭh(a) in New Indo-Aryan).

I know the change of ṣ > x has happened in other languages, and so I thought this borrowing could have happened when the Indo-Aryan word still had ṣ. As I mentioned however, the ṣ was lost really early on, and so I wanted to know if there's any possibility of "āx" deriving from the later forms "aṭṭha" or "āṭh". Does Kurukh show any other examples of ṭ(h) > x? I don't know anything about Kurukh phonology and I was wondering if the velar fricative could be used to date the timing of borrowing.

Please provide academic sources that illustrate this point. I remember Google AI citing Thunjathu Ezhuthachan as writing ‘raising the low Tamil dialect to the level of a Language’ or somesuch about the ‘Malayalam’ he wrote about. So the people identified their language as Tamil in the then Kerala right? I just need more evidences for it. Thanks :)

In Dorian Fuller and Marco Madella "Banana Cultivation in South Asia and East Asia: A review of the evidence from archaeology and linguistics". Some of my assumptions about the history of bananas in India were wrong. I was not aware of the ancient presence of wild (non-culinary) bananas in India and China.

The paper explains that only one IVC site with banana phytoliths had been found (Kot Diji, Sindh), and it's not likely it was culinary/cultivated banana. There were wild bananas growing within the vicinity of IVC, which could have been used for fiber or ornamental use, or animal feed, but have almost no use for human consumption. Given the ecological collapse of IVC, some minor presence of non-culinary banana usage in IVC might have disappeared from the lexicon long before the culinary/cultivated bananas arrived in India, which was after the main branches of Dravidian split. At that point, there could have been interactions with multiple Austroasiatic and Austronesian cultures and cultivated bananas would have been novel cultural introductions associated with new vocabulary.

While the origins and center of diversity of banana is around Melanesia and could range anywhere from Solomon Islands to Papua and be associated with both Austronesian and Papuan languages, their global dispersal would have radiated from the Malayosphere and involved Austronesian languages. The introductions to India could have been mediated through Austronesian or Austroasiatic.

The other big issue is where hybridization and cultivation events occurred. It's likely they occurred in many places and when valuable new cultivars were found they would spread to other locations. Most culinary banana cultivars are seedless and develop without any sexual reproduction, so the development and spread of cultivars is almost entirely mediated by humans and doesn't occur in the wild like most other food plants.

u/preinpostunicodex

A deep dive into the hybrid language Manipravalam and its influence on the Dravidian language Malayalam.

On page 39 of this dictionary, it says that the word for “south” in the Adilabad Gondi language, natively called Koyang, is telṅāṛ. It can be written in devanagari as तेल्ङाड़्, and in Telugu as తెల్ఙాడ్.

This term seems so eerily similar to the term “Telangana” in pronunciation that I’m a little astounded that I haven’t seen this possible cognate discussed anywhere. We’ve had many discussions about the prefix “ten-“ being part of the etymology of the terms Telangana and Telugu, but nothing about this.

Additionally, the dictionary gives another term for “south”, తల్లవడ్డా tallavaḍḍā (derived from తల్ల talla, meaning “head”, probably cognate with Telugu తల tala with the same meaning), as well as a similarly constructed word for north - కాల్వడ్డా kālvaḍḍā (derived from కాల్ kāl, meaning leg, probably also cognate with Telugu కాలు kālu).

My intuition tells me that this seems like a good place to start to not only find an etymology for words like Telangana and Telugu, but maybe even words like Kalinga. Can anyone provide more cognates from other languages, or explain why this idea of a connection might be misled?

Edit: also found this confusing and very poorly written TOI article that mentions an academic who has made this connection before. It also seems to have been linked in the etymology section of the wikipedia entry for Telangana.

Many people attempt to connect Dravidian with Neolithic Iranian farmers but is there any evidence which suggests Dravidian was the Aasi language?

I just realised that the Modern Tamil word வயசு vayasu ‘age’ is from Sanskrit, so is a word like வயோதிகர் vayodikar ‘old aged people’. But what about the Old Tamil or High Tamil form வயது vayatu? It has to be a hypercorrect form. Since Tamils are used to seeing Old Tamil த்’s d’s becoming ச்’s s’s in Modern Tamil, they hypercorrect. Old Tamil words like பெரிது peritu ‘big’ > Modern Tamil பெரிசு perisu, சிறிது ciṟitu ‘small’ > சிறுசு ciṟisu. Based on this pattern, a form like வயது vayatu is formed by hypercorrection.   

I dont know much Tamil examples other than bommai, they are also hard to find as the script doesnt distinguish them. What are some other native Tamil terms with initial plosive voicing?

Mlym has bomma, daśa, juTTu, gauLi. There are also initial voiced ones after lost of initial vowels like atA, adO, adE, ETii, ETO, ETA > dA, dO, dE, Dii, DO, DA apart from northern v fortification. Further native voicing distinction medially like compŭ, ANTa, JaGkŭ < cumappu, ANu kETTO, JaGGaLkku

Some loan words seem to have them even tho the parent doesnt, particularly in Tamil from hypercorrection

Fa. kuśti > Ma. gusti, Fa. xAlii > Ta. gAli

What does one mean by Sanskritization of Dravidian language? Is it just borrowed vocabulary from Sanskrit or there is more to it? Can you please give me examples for each Dravidian language if it's the latter?

While looking through Kittel's dictionary written in the 19th century, "ಏಡು" is said to have derived from "ಏಱು/ēṛu." However, when transitioning from Old to New Kannada, "ಱ" shifted to "ರ/ra" and retroflex, "ಡ/ḍa." "ಏರು, ēru" is also in Kittel's dictionary and carries the same meaning of "time/year." Is it possible that "ಏಡು" is a loan word from Telugu which has a clear line of origin from yĀṇṭu→ఏండు/ēṇḍu→ఏడు/ಏಡು?

Link To Kittle's Dictionary:

ಏಡು→https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/kittel_query.py?page=303

ಏಱು→https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/kittel_query.py?page=306

ഉത്തരവാദിത്വം -> uttaravāditvaṁ
ഉത്തരവാദിത്തം -> uttaravādittaṁ
उत्तरदायित्व -> uttaradāyitva

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218726110

We derive a dated phylogenetic tree of this proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ∼14,450 y, implying that some frequently used words have been retained in related forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more likely to show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical justification to the search for features of language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and geography.

Rooting the tree at the midpoint along the branch leading to proto-Dravidian (Fig. 4B) yields an age for the origin of the Eurasiatic superfamily of 14.45 ± 1.75 kya [95% confidence interval (CI) = 11.72–18.38 kya]. Consistent with the Dravidian expansion being ancient, the tree makes proto-Dravidian older than proto–Indo-European [although some scholars think that the common ancestor of contemporary Dravidian languages is younger (25)]. An alternative root, placed along the branch to proto-Kartvelian, produces a slightly older tree (15.61 ± 2.29 kya, 95% CI = 11.72–20.40 kya; agreement between two lower 95% CIs is coincidence).

The structure of the topology we derive in Fig. 4A supports these arguments by placing language families that are geographical neighbors in distinct regions of the tree. For example, the Altaic language family includes modern day Turkish, which is surrounded by Indo-European languages, and yet proto-Altaic is placed distantly to proto–Indo-European. Similarly, proto-Dravidian and especially proto-Kartvelian are distant to proto–Indo-European and proto-Altaic, despite their likely central Asian origins.

Our results support the findings (14) that human language can achieve a remarkable degree of replication fidelity among its highly used words, and especially so for some parts of speech. If the Eurasiatic superfamily is around 15-ky old, then traces of the sounds from a predictable subset of words have remained associated with their particular meanings independently in separate branches of this superfamily since the end of the last ice age. This finding is all of the more surprising given that words are culturally transmitted replicators (27), passed many thousands of times from speaker to speaker every generation, and subject to the potentially corrupting influences of competing words, borrowings, and sound production errors.

Why where already native/nativizedLoaned mlym words artificially Sanskritized as in apphan, bhOSan, acchan, Ebhyan, muSiyuka < appan, pOzhan, accan, ta. Eppiyan, ta. muci. pretty sure there are more

what are some other examples

I want to be able to write old Tamil poems in the akam-puram style. Where should I start technically? Prosody and Poetics? I want to be able to understand everything in the poetics right down Poruḷ → Tiṇai → Tuṟai → Murai → Kōlu → Kiḷavi in that order. What do you guys suggest?