Tamil–Kannada is an inner branch (Zvelebil 1990:56) of the Southern Dravidian I (SDr I) subfamily of the

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...

that include Tamil,

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

and

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...

. (There have been slight differences in the way Dravidian languages are grouped by various Dravidian

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

s: See Subrahmanyam 1983, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurthi 2003). Tamil–Kannada itself is designated as a branch of the South Dravidian subfamily and in turn branches off into Tamil–Malayalam and Kannada–Badaga. The languages that constitute the Tamil–Kannada branch are Tamil,

, Irula, Toda, Kota, Kodava, and Badaga. (Zvelebil 1990:56) According to R. C. Hiremath, the separation of Tamil and Kannada into independent languages from the Tamil–Kannada inner branch started with the separation of Tulu in about 1500 BCE and completed in about 300 BCE. Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam are recognized among the

official languages of India There is no national language in India. However, article 343(1) of the Indian constitution specifically mentions that, "The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the official pur ...

and are spoken mainly in

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...

. All three are officially recognized as

classical languages A classical language is any language with an independent literary tradition and a large and ancient body of written literature. Classical languages are typically dead languages, or show a high degree of diglossia, as the spoken varieties of the ...

by the Government of India, along with

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...

, Telugu, and Odia.

Phonological features

Tamil and

have both retroflex lateral (/ɭ/) and

retroflex approximant The voiced retroflex approximant is a type of consonant used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase lett ...

(/ɻ/) sounds, whereas

has retained only the retroflex lateral. Evidence shows that both retroflex approximant and the retroflex laterals were once (before the 10th century) also present in Kannada. However, all the retroflex approximants changed into retroflex laterals in Kannada later. In Kannada, the

bilabial In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tli ...

voiceless plosive (/p/) at the beginning of many words has disappeared to produce a velar fricative (/h/) or has disappeared completely. This change is unique to

in the Dravidian family. Tamil does not show this change. Tamil and Telugu show the conversion of

Voiceless velar plosive The voiceless velar plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k. The sound is a ver ...

(/k/) into

Voiceless palatal plosive The voiceless palatal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in some vocal languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is c. If distinction is neces ...

(/c/) at the beginning of the words (refer to

comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards t ...

for details). Kannada, however, is totally inert to this change and hence the velar plosives are retained as such or with minimum changes in the corresponding words.

References

Citations

Sources

* Krishnamurti, B., ''The Dravidian Languages'', Cambridge University Press, 2003. . * Subrahmanyam, P.S., ''Dravidian Comparative Phonology'', Annamalai University, 1983. * Zvelebil, Kamil., ''Dravidian Linguistics: An Introduction", PILC (Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture), 1990. {{DEFAULTSORT:Tamil-Kannada Language Agglutinative languages Dravidian languages Languages of India