Sooraj

Retroflex Approximant in Telugu

I have received your message. I can specify you that my mother tongue is telugu. Even I am a native speaker of Tamil. For ur kind information i can tell you one thing. Telugu is a dravidian language (ofcourse, not came from Tamil) which was having profound influence of sanskrit upon it. The Retroflex approximant is present in Telugu, It is called Bandi Ra. It is the Trilled Pronounciation of syllable Ra. Telugu is the language having all the sanskrit letters and tamil letters (except Zha which lost around 11th century) in it.

Regarding ur malayalam, I am from Pondicherry UT, so obviously we have in touch with Mahé guys, from whom i learnt how to read, write and speak(basic) malayalam. I learn reading and writng malayalam in 4 days. They call ordinary Ra as something like Rae (Something like Prononciation a in 'Bank') and Bandi Ra as Ra.

I am doing research in phonetics. I can say the pronunciation of Bandi Ra(trill) definitely places it as Retroflex approximant. You can refer a book called Telugulo Chandovisheshaalu (Prosody in Telugu) from which i got that information. Later as i got enough idea about phonetics, i confirmed it correct.

There is nothing wrong in getting amused, but i came through some people (a Kottayam guy, my colleague) who astonished and argued with me when i told zha is in Tamil language. Since iwas telugu guy i gave reply, if the same thing had he asked any tamilian surely they would have beaten him. It was from Tamil zha went to malayalam, but he dont know that. There is nothing wrong in making mistakes, because only then we learn with quality. Bye take care. For any doubts in Phonetics and phonology of Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and French, contact me brother. More over, you can visist my page and see my contributions and comment on them.
-User:Bsskchaitanya 9.28 29 November (UTC +5.30)

Kannada also had both retroflex approximant (zha,ೞ) and alveolar trill (ra,ಱ) till 11-12th century.

Manjunath 09:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Also as a amateur linguist I can say that Zha did not go from Tamil to any other Dravidian languages. Infact all of them had to the point that the substratum language of Marathi (probably a Kannada like language) even donated it to Marathi. All Dravidian languages had them and eventually lost them except Tamil and Malayalam right now. It is in the process of loosing it in number of dialects especially the Sri Lankan Tamil dialect. Malayalam as an early offshoot of archaic Tamil already had Zha in it so modern Tamil did not give it to Malayalam. Just my 2 cents in to this interesting conversationRaveenS 00:14, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

You just proved you are indeed an amateur. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 143.182.124.1 (talk) 06:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC).

Thanks Brother

I really thank you for you reply regarding retroflex approximant. Actually, I have a old traditional chart of Phonology of Sanskrit and Telugu with me. I am concentrating on that only. I feel you can help me in understanding it more better. Hope u accept my request. Can u explain me the linguistics reason for calling some syllables in malayalam as "Chillaksharangal". User:Bsskchaitanya 9.03 1 December (UTC +5.30)

Kasaragod Malayalam

The Malayalam spoken (at least by the old generation) in Kasaragod was least influenced by Sanskrit. Some people claim Malayalam moved away from Tamil because of rapid Sanskritization. If that is the case, Malayalam (relatively isolated and insulted from mainstream speakers because of Tulu/Kannada cultural influence) spoken in Kasaragod must be close to Tamil. Do you have any idea about this? Do you think it is possible to check this? I know many Malayalees can follow Tamil easily. Is it the case with Kasaragod Malayaless too?

Better, do you have any articles or books on Kasaragod Malayalam?

Thanks.

Manjunath 09:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Infact most of the Sri Lankan Tamil dialect are closer to some Malayalam dialects spoken in southern districts of Kerala without loosing their Tamilness. I.E SLT dialects are a throw back to the dialectical differences between Kerala and Tamil Nadu without the so called Sanskrtisation that made it even more divergent. It is an influence of migrations of people from Kerala who were least influenced by Sanskritisation such as Mukkuva fishers who were low on the totem pole of castes hence had least influence from elites who were aware and used Prakrit and Sanskrit for ritual and religus purposes . RaveenS 00:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Malayalam literature did not originate from the elite classes. Its origins can be traced back to "Northern Ballads" of common folks. From my readings, southern Kerala did not make any contribution to the initial development of Malayalam. Payyannur pattu and Vadakkan pattukkal(From present day Kannur in North Kerala) have been considered the first compositions in Malayalam(that have been preserved). Link

Of course, I believe northern Kerala was basically a Proto-Tulu speaking region but lost its language to Tamil, however the Tulu tongue of the people changed it into a totally different language :-). Northern Malayalis are culturally(non-Vedic) similar to Tuluvas and not to Tamils.

The SLT page talks about Malayalam influencing those dialects. Does that mean those Tamils were the later migrants to Kerala after Malayalam started taking shape in this region? Or they were the people who might have become Malayalis over time(if they had stayed in Kerala) and their language shows transition from Tamil to Malayalam. If it is the latter case then Malayalam influencing those dialects does not make much sense.

By the way, at other talk page you have mentioned that one of Malayali dialects Byari bhashe is close to archaic Tamil. If some of the northern Malayalam dialects are close to "archaic" Tamil then it is the present day Tamil in Tamil Nadu that has diverged from the proto-language. In that case, the language tree must show

Proto-Kannada-Malayalam->Proto-Malayalam-Tamil->Malayalam

| |

Kannada Tamil

At least this makes sense if you consider movement of Dravidian speakers from North-West of the Subcontinent to the South. I mean Tamil Nadu should have been the last region to get Dravidianized. I just hope Dravidian politics stops influencing the linguistics studies.

Manjunath 06:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Nice to see some comments here. I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any book/article on Kasaragod Malayalam (And BTW, my knowledge of linguistics is nonexistent). I'm not sure how important a role Sanskritization played in carving Malayalam out from old Tamil. I guess there was enough political and geographical separation for the languages to diverge, probably before Sanskrit influence became prominent. And the statement that 'Kasaragod Malayalam' is closer to Tamil than other dialects is something that I find difficult to digest. One can easily observe that the northern dialects of Malayalam are closer to Kannada, Tulu and Coorgi languages, but no special proximity with Tamil is apparent. The original comment made by RaveenS in the Beary bashe talk page was that his Tamil-speaking friend was able to communicate easily with Beary-speaking people. But it is not clear to me whether he found that Beary's closeness to Tamil was more than that of various dialects of Malayalam. Even if it is closer, couldn't it be because of some trade relationship of that particular community with some place in Tamilnadu in the recent centuries? I guess we need detailed studies to reach any serious conclusion. - sooraj 18:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Hai

Hai Sooraj,

Your knowledge on Dravidian languages is awesome. Pls read my new article Mappila Muslim and convey your opinion.

I think that Beary bashe is an offshoot of Mappila dialect of Malayalam.What is your opinion.

Pls reply...

ARUNKUMAR P.R 09:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)