Grammar
Sankethi has a rich vocabulary. As the community is very close-knit, there is also kinship terms aplenty in the Sankethi language. There is much emphasis laid on differentiation of numbers(singular and plural) which is not seen either in spoken Kannada or Tamil. There is also a clear dfferentiation of the tenses and person(1st, 2nd or 3rd). There are 3 genders(masculine, feminine and neuter) and a clear differentiation between the inclusive and non-inclusive pronoun- nAnga,engaDE vs nAmba/nAma, nammaDE/nambaDE. The case markers are also significantly different from Tamil. One feature, not seen in either Kannada or Tamil is the usage of neuter gender, when the subject is someone young, a child or someone closely related (like a sibling). Nearly all words are vowel-ending and there is a musical quality to the speech. Also most words ending in "a" in Kannada including the proper names end in "u" in SankEti. As a rule, words that end in "e" in Kannada and "ai" in Tamil end in "a" in Sankethi. This is similar to Malayalam and Telugu.
Negation is indicated by suffixing the appropriate ending. They usually contain "al", "il" or "Ade" and rarely "Ame" and "A" nAñ paNNinEñ- I did, nAñ paNNitillEñ- I did not do paNNallEñ- I will not do paNNAde (rarely paNNAme)- without doing
- 1st person- Eñ, paNNinEñ- I did, paNNitillEñ- I didn't do
- 2nd person- a, A- paNNinA- you did, paNNitilla- You didn't do
- 3rd person- paNNinAñ-he did, paNNinA-she/they did, paNNitilAņ- he didn't do, paNNitillA- she/theydidn't do.
Read more about this topic: Sankethi Language
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