Linguistic History of India - Dravidian Languages

Dravidian Languages

Main article: Dravidian languages Further information: Proto-Dravidian

Proto-Dravidian

Proto-South-Dravidian

Proto-South-Central Dravidian

Proto-Tamil-Kannada

Proto-Telugu

Proto-Tamil-Toda

Proto-Kannada

Proto-Telugu

Proto-Tamil-Kodagu

Kannada

Telugu

Proto-Tamil-Malayalam

Proto-Tamil

Malayalam

Tamil

This tree diagram depicts the genealogy of the primary Dravidian languages spoken
in South India.

The Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages that are mainly spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka, as well as certain areas in Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and eastern and central India, as well as in parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and overseas in other countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Malaysia and Singapore.

The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation, are unclear, and the situation is not helped by the lack of comparative linguistic research into the Dravidian languages. Inconclusive attempts have also been made to link the family with the Japonic languages and with the extinct Elamite language (by Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis).

Many linguists, however, tend to favour the theory that speakers of Dravidian languages spread southwards and eastwards through the Indian subcontinent, based on the fact that the southern Dravidian languages show some signs of contact with linguistic groups which the northern Dravidian languages do not. Proto-Dravidian is thought to have differentiated into Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian and Proto-South Dravidian around 1500 BCE, although some linguists have argued that the degree of differentiation between the sub-families points to an earlier split.

It was not until 1856 that Robert Caldwell published his Comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages, which considerably expanded the Dravidian umbrella and established it as one of the major language groups of the world. Caldwell coined the term "Dravidian" from the Sanskrit drāvida, related to the word ‘Tamil’ or ‘Tamilan’, which is seen in such forms as into ‘Dramila’, ‘Drami˜a’, ‘Dramida’ and ‘Dravida’ which was used in a 7th century text to refer to the languages of the southern India. The publication of the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary by T. Burrow and M. B. Emeneau was a landmark event in Dravidian linguistics.