Dravidian languages

Dravidian
Geographic
distribution		South India, north-east Sri Lanka and south-west Pakistan
Native speakers
250 million (2020)[1]
Linguistic classificationOne of the world's primary language families
Proto-languageProto-Dravidian
Subdivisions
Language codes
ISO 639-2 / 5dra
Linguasphere49= (phylozone)
Glottologdrav1251
Distribution of the Dravidian languages
Part of a series on
Dravidian culture and history
Origin
Indus Valley Civilisation Keezhadi excavation site
History
Dravidian dynasties
Culture
Language
Religion
Regions
People
Politics

The Dravidian languages (sometimes called Dravidic[2]) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.[1][3]

Dravidian is first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi script on cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.[4][a]

The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are (in descending order of number of speakers) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions. Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava.[5] Together with several smaller languages such as Gondi, these languages cover the southern part of India and the northeast of Sri Lanka, and account for the overwhelming majority of speakers of Dravidian languages. Malto and Kurukh are spoken in isolated pockets in eastern India. Kurukh is also spoken in parts of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.[6] Brahui is mostly spoken in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Iranian Balochistan, Afghanistan and around the Marw oasis in Turkmenistan. During the colonial period in India, Dravidian speakers were exploited by the colonial empires and sent as indentured servants to Southeast Asia, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji and the Caribbean to work on plantations, and to East Africa to work on British railroads.[7] There are more-recent Dravidian-speaking diaspora communities in the Middle East, Europe, North America and Oceania.

The reconstructed proto-language of the family is known as proto-Dravidian. Dravidian place names along the Arabian Sea coast and clear signs of Dravidian phonological and grammatical influence (e.g. retroflex consonants and clusivity) in the Indo-Aryan languages suggest that Dravidian languages were spoken more widely across the Indian subcontinent before the spread of the Indo-Aryan languages.[8][9][10] Though some scholars have argued that the Dravidian languages may have been brought to India by migrations from the Iranian plateau in the fourth or third millennium BCE,[11][12] or even earlier,[13][14] the reconstructed vocabulary of proto-Dravidian suggests that the family is indigenous to India.[15][16][b] Despite many attempts, the family has not been shown to be related to any other.[18]

  1. ^ a b Steever (2020), p. 1.
  2. ^ "Definition of Dravidic". dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  3. ^ Kolichala (2016), p. 76.
  4. ^ Krishnamurti (2003), p. 22.
  5. ^ Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 20–21.
  6. ^ Phuntsho, Karma (23 April 2013). The History of Bhutan. Random House India. p. 72. ISBN 978-81-8400-411-3.
  7. ^ Steever (2020), pp. 1, 3.
  8. ^ Erdosy (1995), p. 271.
  9. ^ Edwin Bryant, Laurie L. Patton (2005), The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history, p. 254
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference steven was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Tamil Literature Society (1963), Tamil Culture, vol. 10, Academy of Tamil Culture, archived from the original on 9 April 2023, retrieved 25 November 2008, ... together with the evidence of archaeology would seem to suggest that the original Dravidian-speakers entered India from Iran in the fourth millennium BC ...
  12. ^ Andronov (2003), p. 299.
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference mukherjee2001 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference kumar2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Krishnamurti (2003), p. 15.
  16. ^ Amaresh Datta (1988). Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: Devraj to Jyoti, Volume 2. Sahitya Akademi. p. 1118. ISBN 9788126011940. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 10 November 2020.
  17. ^ Heggarty, Paul; Renfrew, Collin (2014), "South and Island Southeast Asia; Languages", in Renfrew, Colin; Bahn, Paul (eds.), The Cambridge World Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107647756, archived from the original on 9 April 2023, retrieved 1 July 2017
  18. ^ Krishnamurti (2003), pp. 43–47.


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