Talk:Byari dialect

Links to archaic Tamil dialects

The vocab. is so similar to old Tamil, the ancestral language of most people of neibhouring Kerala state. Many religious minorities tend to maintain the archaic versions of the languages that they encounter or speak when the general community moves away to sometimes to an entirely new language. Example the Jews in Azerbaijan still speak Iranic Tat language where as all Azeris have moved away to a Turkish language from their ancestral Indo-Iranian dialects to which Tat belongs. Syrian Christian hyms of Kerala are in Archaic Tamil when the mainstream community has moved on to Malayalam. Judeo-Malayalam has a Tamil substratum still. It would be indeed interestingting to find more studies on this uniqu language of Karnataka. How I first heard about this language is when an astonished friend of mine a Sri Lankan Tamil studying in REC Suratkal close to Mangalore recounted how he was able to communicate with so much ease with a bunch of local Muslims and he was sure that it was not Malayalam. RaveenS 13:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not a linguist so I can't comment on archaic Tamil dialects. My own community spread across Kasaragod and Mangalore. The Belchadas or Tiyyas of Kasaragod/Mangalore and my people, Byaris spoke a language that was almost indistinguishable but for few words which is anyway due to religious and caste differences. In fact, the identity of the language of the land was always with Byari bhashe and was derogatorily referred as kaka language. So, generally Hindu communities made a conscious effort to move away from that dialect in the 20th century. So probably few Hindus in Mangalore might be able to converse easily with Byaris. Well, the vocabulary is also close to old/present day Kannada too which of course is older than old Tamil as the region of Tamil Nadu was inhabited by Proto-Kannada people much later as they moved from the Godavari Basin :-).

Trivia : I believe other Malayalees would make fun of our "okku"(meaning yes).

Manjunatha (27 Jul 2006)

Beary bashe

General notion among the people including Bearys themselves think that Beary bashe is a offshoot of Malayalam which is incorrect. --Sartaj beary 23:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the article which talks about 60% common words between Beary bhashe and Kodava also says that this language is the mother-tongue of non-muslim Belchadas. These Belchadas or Tiyya-Billavas are always identified with Malayalees.

Link

Manjunatha (7 Oct 2006)

I think it is an "offshoot" of Malayalam with several loanwords from Kannada and Tulu. The base of this language is very much similar to the Malayalam spoken in the northenmost part of Kerala although it is quite different from "Standard" Malayalam. In fact Beary comes at one extreme of the spectrum of the dialect continuum of north Malabar. And a mutual intelligibility does exist with the dialects of the nearby regions - Kasaragod and Kannur. sooraj 09:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Beary basha is nothing but a northern dialect of Malayalam just like the dialect spoken by Mappila muslims of Kerala.

ARUNKUMAR P.R 07:11, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

New Resource

I have got some reliable work done on Beary Bashe.I am going to delete and clean up the present article , which is full of mistakes.

ARUNKUMAR P.R (talk · contribs) 09:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Changed.

ARUNKUMAR P.R (talk · contribs) 09:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Dialect

Why does the title of this article class it a dialect when everything in the article indicates it to be a separate language. What is it supposed to be a dialect of? and why does the article not say that? SpinningSpark 17:11, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

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Requested move 22 February 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. See little resistance to this nor reason not to grant this request. This does appear to be more a language than a dialect used by the Beary community. Have a Great Day and Happy Publishing! (closed by page mover)  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  20:04, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

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Beary dialect → Beary language – Beary is classified as a language, not a dialect.
Anish Viswa 09:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Andrewa (talk) 10:02, 1 March 2018 (UTC)--Relisting. —usernamekiran(talk) 11:47, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

• Karnataka Beary Sahithya Academy

Survey

Please indicate below whether you support or oppose the proposed move, with brief reasons

Discussion

I was about to close this as move on the grounds of the refs given above and in the article, but I note the following page history entries:

• 19:38, 21 January 2016‎ Anthony Appleyard (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (43 bytes) (+43)‎ . . (Anthony Appleyard moved page Beary language to Beary dialect: histmerge)
• 20:32, 20 June 2013‎ Kwamikagami (talk | contribs | block)‎ . . (32 bytes) (+32)‎ . . (Kwamikagami moved page Talk:Beary language to Talk:Beary dialect: no RS that it's a separate language)

Anthony Appleyard and Kwamikagami, I see you're both currently active, anything to add? Andrewa (talk) 10:10, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• @Andrewa: I will leave the point to those who know more than me about Dravidian languages. I merely obeyed a history-merge request. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks, pinged you for completeness but Kwamikagami is likely to know more about the issues. Andrewa (talk) 15:58, 1 March 2018 (UTC)
    • There are lots of academies promoting various "languages", especially in India, but that doesn't mean that they're languages in the linguistic sense. I'm sure there are institutions promoting the American "language", but that doesn't mean we want to move American English to "American language".

There is no mention of even a Beary dialect, let alone a distinct language, in Krishnamurti, The Dravidian languages (Cambridge). There is nothing about it in Glottolog, which has inherited thousands of dialect names from LingList. At Malayalam#Dialects we say, The Muslim dialect known as Mappila Malayalam is used in the Malabar region of Kerala. Another Muslim dialect called Beary bashe is used in the extreme northern part of Kerala and the southern part of Karnataka. But at our Mappila article, we say, Muslim communities of Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka called Bearys also speak Mappila Malayalam, citing Upadhyaya, U. Padmanabha. Coastal Karnataka: Studies in Folkloristic and Linguistic Traditions of Dakshina Kannada Region of the Western Coast of India. Udupi: Rashtrakavi Govind Pai Samshodhana Kendra, 1996:63–83. So IMO Beary bhasa should be merged into our Mappila article.

Actually, I doubt that even Mappila is a distinct dialect, but rather simply a northern dialect (or dialects) as spoken by Muslims. Calling it a "dialect" would be like claiming that Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland speak different "dialects" because e.g. Catholics use more Latin religious terms (have a greater Latin influence, as Mappila has a greater Arabic influence). So, I'd like to move that article to "Mappila Malayalam" (the phrasing used in our Malayalam article) with the reason "not a separate dialect, but various dialects as spoken by Muslims".

(Actually, there's also Jewish Malayalam, ref. Ophira Gamliel. 2009. Jewish Malayalam. International Journal of Dravidian Linguistics XXXVIII:147-175. But we don't list that as a distinct dialect.) — kwami (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

• Well, there doesn't appear to be much linguistic literature on the topic, does there? But if, judging from the news reports cited in the article, there are literary activities and there are demands for official recognition, then calling it a dialect is at best problematic. After all, the choice of "language" or "dialect" is based on common usage, rather than purely linguistic criteria (WP:NCLANG#DIA). – Uanfala (talk) 18:27, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Please check the official academy link posted with the move request. The academy is set up by Karnataka government and the home page says, Beary got 'Academic status' from government. Publications section of the website has a good list of literary works in Beary.
    Anish Viswa 08:40, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

At the risk of OR

Years ago I trained in language survey. The key considerations that separate a language from a dialect are not (as many expect) mutual intelligibility and grammatical and lexical similarities, but rather how the speakers answer the questions "what language do you speak?" and "who speaks your language best?"

From the above I am personally persuaded that it's far more correct linguistically to call this a language. It's not even close to doubtful. But that doesn't make it correct Wikipedially. Or can we apply wp:IAR? wp:OR is sacred, but... Andrewa (talk) 13:17, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree! In the absence of relevant sources on the subject, we're doing OR either way. – Uanfala (talk) 13:41, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

OR either way... that's an excellent way of looking at it, and to me it strongly suggests a move. Andrewa (talk) 22:40, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Language or dialect?

According to the most cited reference: Coastal Karnataka: Studies in Folkloristic and Linguistic Traditions of Dakshina Kannada Region of the Western Coast of India by U. Padmanabha Upadhyaya (pg. 63 - 64),

"The discovery of a dialect related to Malayalam as well as Tulu, spoken by the Mapila Muslim (Beary) community of South Kanara district throws a flood of light on comparative Dravidian Linguistics, Dravidian dialectology and Bilingualism. Being a remote cousin of the other dialects of Malayalam, this dialect forms a sort of speech island surrounded by the other linguistic groups namely Tulu and Kannada. Hence one can see the survival of ancient features as well as innovations which were not found in other well-known dialects of Malayalam. It shows a number of deviations even from the other Muslim dialects of Malayalam spoken in the Kerala area offering thereby an interesting area for dialect study. Since the speakers of this dialect are surrounded by the Tulu speaking community, and since they are bilinguals in Tulu from the very time of their acquisition of their Mother-tongue, we can observe the impact of Tulu on the phonological, morphological and syntactic structure of this dialect. It can be designated as the Beary language". The Doom Patrol (talk) 13:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Ethnologue lists Mapilla as one of the dialects of Malayalam, but sits a bit on the fence in this question by stating "Mapilla is among the most divergent dialects, differing considerably from literary Malayalam." LandLing 15:19, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Pinging Kwamikagami, Uanfala, Andrewa.--The Doom Patrol (talk) 14:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

With linguistic sources that it's a dialect, and none that it's a different language, I think we need to follow RS's and count it as a dialect. We now say it's one of the Malayalam languages, but our sources for that article don't include it. — kwami (talk) 16:30, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

The source cited above says ...of this dialect. It can be designated as the Beary language. I think that supports our calling it a language. The mention of dialect here is I think to avoid prejudging whether or not it is a language, rather than asserting that it is a dialect but not a language. Andrewa (talk) 05:47, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

We could say the same about American English: the dialect of English spoken in the US can be designated the American language. And indeed a GBooks search of "American language" gets a lot of hits. But they also refer to it as a dialect of Malayalam, just as American is a dialect of English in my example. There's no reason to think that they were being inaccurate when they called it a "dialect", and lists of the Malayalam languages do not include Beary, just as lists of Germanic languages do not include American. AFAICT, we have several sources that it's a dialect, and none that it's a language. — kwami (talk) 05:52, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Personally I'm sympathetic that the distinction is overwhelmingly political ("A language is a dialect with an army" etc) excepting isolates and autonomous communities; that combined with a consensus of sources noted by User:kwami, (as well as how politically other languages get demarcated,) makes me support "dialect" for the lede, but there's no reason to be completely rigid throughout the article -- the term "language" has extremely widely scope (e.g. all dialects are languages and all languages are dialects, etc). [Edit: I give this opinion because it is independent of technical linguistic considerations, and note I have about zero knowledge of South Asian linguistics.] SamuelRiv (talk) 18:53, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, moved to 'dialect'. Yes, we can often just say 'Beary' in the article; no need to be repeat ourselves. — kwami (talk) 19:20, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

The previous move was done with a proper move request, opinions and final decision. You could've followed the standard process being a wiki Admin. Why the hurry?
Anish Viswa 04:25, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

We have no evidence that it's a language, and consensus among sources that it's a dialect. Therefore, for WP, it's a dialect.

If you can provide RS's that it's a distinct language, please provide them and we can reconsider.

> "Why the hurry?"

Because we're an encyclopedia and shouldn't spread false information. — kwami (talk) 04:33, 3 April 2024 (UTC)