Linguistics

Questions tagged [dravidian]

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For questions about the Dravidian language family and their members.

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4
votes
4answers
285 views

Halegannada/Proto-South Dravidian Phonological Changes

What is the explanation behind the /p/ to /h/ phonological change from Halegannada to Kannada?
4
votes
4answers
1k views

Does the Telugu script have near perfect phonemic orthography?

I was trying to find the proper term for when a language's alphabet has one to one correspondence between the letters written and the pronunciation for those letters. Turns out its called phonemic ...
4
votes
0answers
167 views

Why does the Malayalam script have seemingly redundant ways to kill implicit vowels?

In the Malayalam script there are two ways to kill implicit vowels. The most widely applicable is the chandrakkala diacritic, similar to the virama that appears in other Brahmic scripts. There are ...
7
votes
2answers
689 views

Has a Dravido-Australic superfamily been proposed?

There seem to be striking typological similarities between Dravidian and Australian languages (see, e.g., the answers to this question Are there languages with the three-fold articulation place ...
3
votes
2answers
408 views

What decides the language family of a language the most structure/grammar or the vocabulary?

My assumed premise: Indo-European language classification is broad. We can always find two languages of this family which are grammatically so different, and also the languages grammatically similar. ...
12
votes
4answers
16k views

Are Tamil and Malayalam mutually intelligible?

I have read that Malayalam originates from Middle Tamil. This leads me to ask whether Tamil and Malayalam are mutually intelligible. Or perhaps just partly, or asymmetrically? I prefer either answers ...
4
votes
0answers
248 views

Statistic data on average morpheme-to-word ratios

I wonder whether there is any statistic data on morpheme-to-word ratio of certain languages. Is this something that can be and has been measured? The languages I am most interested in are the ...
3
votes
4answers
1k views

Are Indian languages distinct or are they just different dialects?

I speak Malayalam, one of the Indian languages and also Hindi but there are always common words which I assume are original Sanskrit words? So are the languages truly distinct or can I say they are ...
4
votes
2answers
250 views

Do some words have secondary or unintended click consonants?

I am currently trying to learn Tamil. My friend who is teaching me seems to be making a clicking sound with one word in particular, and she can't seem to tell she's making it. The word is ą®•ąÆą®³ą®®ąÆ ...
3
votes
1answer
306 views

Wanderwort origins and the Indus Valley Civilization?

I have noticed that there seem to be many words that have travelled the globe due to trade, such as the word orange or rice, which have plausible origins in proto-Dravidian. Meanwhile, it is ...
4
votes
2answers
718 views

Is syllable-timing in Indo-Aryan languages due to contact with Dravidian languages?

Most Indian languages are classified as syllable-timed. Some Dravidian languages, such as Tamil and Telugu, are mora-timed, which in recent research on speech rhythm has been called super-syllable-...