Language and Dialect
The mother tongue of most Iyengars in Tamil Nadu is Tamil. However, they speak a unique Iyengar dialect often called Vaishnava Paribhaashai. This dialect is almost identical with the Iyer dialect known as Brahmin Tamil, the difference being only in the level of Sanskritization. Scholars have often refused to recognise it as a separate dialect regarding it only as a sub-dialect of Brahmin Tamil.
However, Iyengars in Karnataka speak a dialect that has a significant Kannada substrate, which has descended from medieval Tamil. Iyengars in southern Andhra Pradesh speak both Tamil and Telugu.
For a detailed mapping of words and spoken forms of the Iyengar dialects and standard Tamil, see Iyengar Tamil.
Read more about this topic: Iyengar
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