Sankethi Language - Phonology

Phonology

The language is highly developed and differentiated in terms of the number of sounds used. It uses all the sounds in Kannada or Sanskrit plus a few more. In particular, the inflection of the sound "a" can change the meaning significantly. "à" can be called the interrogative as it seems to be a development of "e" and gives the meaning of interrogation when placed initially while "a" gives an affirmative meaning.

e.g "àdu" will mean "which" while "adu" means "that" - note these are the Kaushika Sankethi ways of pronunciation which are significantly different to the Bettadpura Sankethi pronunciations of the same words - "àdi" for "which" and "adi" for "that". Likewise àttukku (Kaushika) or àttukki (Bettadapura)= why,to which? and attukku- because of that, to that; àvuñ= which man, avuñ= that man etc.

This sound can of course occur in other places and cause differences in meaning. Another peculiar sound used is the anunAsika/nasal intonation as in avuñ. This is like the sound in Spanish. The presence or absence of this sound at the end of some words can be crucial in differentiating whether it refers to the masculine gender or a feminine/plural.

e.g colnAñ= he said, colnA= she said, they said.

Another unigue feature is the occurrence of the full sound "u" and the half rounded "ù". In Tamil "ù" occurs as a rule at the end of words. There are only a few exceptions. But in Sankethi the 2 sounds are distinct and can cause a change in meaning.

e.g ALu= depth, ALù= to rule, man.

There is also the rare occurrence of a flattend "Ā" as in the English word "bank".

e.g pĀru-grandson.

There is also a clear distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants unlike in Tamil.

Basically Tamil is the source of all the Dravidian languages including Sankethi. If you closely observe you can find lots of similarly used Tamil words that you can find in Sankethi. Sankethi is a combination of Tamil, Kannada and Sanskrit barring a few of its own words. The very word Sanketham means some 'codified" in Tamil. And interestingly Sankathi means news in Tamil. Considering all the aspects, Sankethi is one hundred per cent dialect of Tamil. The majority of Sankethi Brahmins are belong to Sengottai (Tirunelveli District) of Tamil Nadu.