dravidian-languages

"Tamil is written in an alpha-syllabic system like that of other South Asian languages. It derives from the Ashokan Brahmi script. Vowels have two forms, once used at the beginning of a word, another used following consonant symbols. Each consonant graph symbolizes the consonant plus following vowel "a". When another vowel symbol is used the "a" vowel is suppressed. Consonant symbols with a diacritic are used to represent just the consonant itself."

"Tamil, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinating language in which morphemes are transparently separable and analyzable affixes which are attached to roots or stems; such affixes in Tamil are nearly always suffixal. Words are made up of lexical roots, or stems (roots that have been expanded by a derivational suffix), followed by inflectional suffix(es) which mark such categories as, for example, person, number, mood, tense, etc."

"Nouns, a broad classification in Tamil grammatical terminology, include common and proper nouns, numerals, pronouns and some so-called adjectives; they inflect for case, person, number (singular and plural), and gender. There are two genders which are based on the referent's natural gender and correspond roughly to the distinction human/nonhuman; they are called "rational" (e.g., nouns referring to men, deities, women in some dialects) and "irrational" (e.g., women in some dialects, children, animals) respectively. There are 8 cases (nominative, accusative, dative, sociative, genitive, instrumental, locative, and ablative)."

"Modern Tamil has no articles; definiteness and indefiniteness are signaled by other grammatical devices, such as the number "one," used as an indefinite article. Compound nouns are used as deictic pronouns (demonstratives), which are used to indicate objects close by, at a distance, and a kind of neutral; Sri Lankan Tamil has a fourth indicating medial distance."

"Verbs are formally inflected principally for mood and tense by a grammatical particle suffixed to the stem. Most verbs also mark affective and effective "voice" (not equivalent to the notions "transitivity" or "causation") where the former indicates that the subject undergoes the action named by the stem, and the latter signals that the subject directs the action of the stem. Mood is also marked implicitly by grammatical formatives which also mark tense categories. These signal that the verbal event is, for example, unreal, possible, potential, or a real, and actual. There are three simple tenses (past, present, and future), and a series of perfects."

"Word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) and even though case and post positions are used to mark grammatical relations, word order is not completely free as it might be in similarly structured languages. Even where variation is allowed the verb in simple sentences must always come to the far right of the sentence."

"Tamil has a verbal category called "attitude" which is used to indicate the speaker's state of mind and subjective attitude about the narrated event. Verb auxiliaries are used for this purpose; examples of affected states projected are: pejorative opinion, antipathy, relief that a unpleasant event has ended, undesirability about the result of an event, and so on."

"Besides loans from Sanskrit, and some borrowing from Persian and Arabic, English in modern times has supplied a lot of loan words, but because of the emphasis on linguistic purism in Tamil grammatical tradition loans are assimilated to the phonological system."

"All Tamil speakers, including the uneducated, use two varieties of the language which only roughly correspond to the difference between literary and spoken Tamil. A high status variety is used in most writing, the media--including radio and television broadcasts--political speeches and other similar occasions. In contrast, a low status variety is used in every day discourse and conversations. It is also used in film and some authors of fiction use the variety as do some politicians and lecturers to create solidarity, or enhance intimacy, with their audiences."

"In both India and Sri Lanka, Tamil has the status of an official language. In India it is one of fourteen official languages, and in Sri Lanka it shares that status with Sinhalese. It is the first official language of India's Tamil Nadu state."

"Among the four ancient literary languages of southern India (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu) Tamil has the longest tradition. The earliest records date from inscriptions from 200 BC. Other early works exist which were preserved on manuscripts made by palm-leaf and through oral transmission. Part of this rich and varied literary output includes a Tamil indigenous grammatical tradition independent of that of the ancient Sanskrit grammarians. The earliest text which describes the language of the classical period is the Tolkappiyam (dating from around 200 BC); another dates from the year 1000."

"Three stages appear in the written records: ancient (200 BC to 700), medieval (700 - 1500) and modern (1500 to the present). Sometime between 800 and the turn of the millennium, Malayalam, a very closely related Dravidian language, split off and became a distinct language."

"During the medieval period Tamil absorbed many loan words from Sanskrit in the verbal system, but in the 1900s attempts were made to purge Tamil of its Sanskrit loans with the result that modern scientific and bureaucratic terminology is Tamil-based and not Sanskrit-based as in other Indic languages."

"Tamilism is an Ancient and Ethnic Religion of Tamil people. It denotes the religious traditions and practices of Tamil people and also know as Tamil Religion."

"Tamilism - popularly known as Tamil matham ('the Tamil religion')"

"By encouraging ethnic communities to re-enact and re-experience concentrated versions of a particular ethnic identity in a public (and even ritualistic) manner, tamil religious festivals such as mentioned above exemplify the form of "Tamilism""

"During 1800s The Nayak Hindu Brahmins dominated the villages and Tamil Religion was Forbidden"

"Kannada has been declared as Official Language of the State and is being used in all correspondences at all levels of Administration in the State in accordance with the provisions of Karnataka Official Language Act, 1963 (Karnataka Act 26 of 1963)."

"Kannada-Tamil literature, especially Kannada literature, is the key to the successive development of the literary and cultural, as well as the spiritual history of India. For we find, on the basis of Kannada literature mainly, that the course of India's religious, literary, cultural and national evolution can conveniently be divided into successive slabs of: (a) Pre-Buddhistic, (b) Buddhistic, (c) Jain, (d) Saivite, (e) Vaishnavite, (f) Late Hindu and lastly (g) the Modern periods. This succession is clearly shown in the history of Kannada literature, though the first two slabs, the Pre-Buddhistic and the Buddhistic are lost to us in Kannada and are available only in Tamil and in Sanskrit."

"The Greek dramatists of the 4th century B.C., particularly Euripides and Aristophanes, appear to have been familiar with the Kannada country and the Kannada language, and had actually used Kannada phrases and expressions in the dialogues of their characters. This shows a far more intimate contact of the Greeks with Kannada Indian culture than with Indian Culture elsewhere."

"Apart from written works, the inscriptions of the period illustrate many variations of meters and structural variety. The hero-stone of Manalera's dog Kali (943 A.D.), the details of the pologame of Rashtrakuta, on king Indra IV. The heroic fight of Nolambaraditya provide moving descriptions attesting the fact that well known poets were asked to compose epitaphs befitting the occasion. These inscriptions are a wealth of information for historical data, cultural life and study of Kannada language and literature of early times."

"The language is suited to narrate stories and presents a well developed word form, idiom, structure, and texture indicating that Kannada was a full-fledged language for prose and poetry by the 10th century."

"'Vaddaradhane' is the earliest prose work in Kannada. Some ascribe it to the 9th century. But from the linguistic form and the depiction of the existing society, most scholars agree to its belonging to the early 10th century."

"'Desi' and 'Marga' styles of native Kannada and then others influenced by Sanskrit had become demarcated clearly by then, and Pampa prided over assimilating both styles in his two great epics Adipurana and Vikramarjuna Vijaya or simply known as Pampa Bharata."

"The rock stone inscription of Badami in archaic Kannada letters is ascribed to the 7th century. The three liner Tripadi (which by itself is as old as the Gayatri Mantra) type of literature was later popularized by the poet Sarvajna in his 'Vachanas'."

"Most of the works in literature and secular sciences mentioned in reference books like Kavirajamarga are still not to be traced. But works of later centuries mention now extinct works on various topics. Thus, Chudamani (a 96,000 verse-measures), a commentary on logic (Tatwarthamahashastra) by Tambulacharya belonged to the 7th century."

"The pundits have divided the development of Kannada language into three phases; The Old Kannada Phase, The Middle Kannada Phase, and The Modern Kannada Phase."

"By the 10th century Kannada had its greatest ancient poets like Pampa (born 902 A.D.), Ranna (born 949 A.D.) and special prose work like Waddaradhane (c. 930 A.D.) indicating that classical Kannada literature had fully evolved at least one or two centuries earlier, back to 'Kavirajamarga'. But since none of the earlier works have survived, we have to stick to the established norm that written Kannada came into vogue by the 5th century A.D."

"Perhaps being the oldest language next to Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil, Kannada country and language have a rich heritage. 'Kavirajamarga' of king Nripatunga (9th century A.D.) is believed to be the earliest literary work in Kannada. It is a treatise on poetics or a guide to poets indicating that Kannada was a fully developed literary language....from epigraphical evidence it can be surmised that the spoken Kannada language evolved much earlier than the Halmidi inscription (c. 450 A.D. ). Belonging to the Prto-Dravidian group it has close affinity with the Tamil language, prevalent now in the neighboring Tamil Nadu. But the language of the Halmidi inscription is highly Sanskritized."

"The ancient Kannada grammarians held the study of grammar in high esteem, as may be learned from the following words of the author of the Sabdaamnidarpana: " Through grammar (correct) words originate, through the words of that grammar meaning the beholding of truth the desired final beatitude."

"The grammatical treatises on Kannada were constructed on the Samskrita plan. Their Jaina authors took Panini d others as their guides. The earliest grammarian, whose works have come down to us, is N'agavarma who appears to belong to the first half of the 12th century."

"The Kannada language in the old inscriptions of which specimens exist that belong to about 600 AD, is not the same as that of the present day; it is what is called Old Canarese. The Old Canarese is also the language of the early Kannada authors or the literary style. It may be said to have continued in use to the middle of the 13th century, when by degrees the language of the inscriptions and literary compositions begins to evince a tendency to become Modern Canarese or the popular and colloquial dialect of the present time."

"As regards the forms of the Old and Modern Kannada alphabets, they are varieties of the so-called Cave-character, an alphabet which was used for the inscriptions in the cave hermitages of Buddhists in India, and rests on the Southern Ashoka character. This character was about 250 BC employed in the edicts of Buddhist King Ashoka. Different forms of the letters used for the Kannada inscriptions appear at different periods, the earliest form differing in the greatest degree from those of the modern Kannada alphabet. At the time of the composition of the Basavapurana 1369 A. D. the old alphabet had become already out of use, as the author of that work mentions the letters of Old Kannada as belonging to the past."

"The earliest written documents of the Kannada language are inscriptions on walls and pillars of temples, on detached stone-tablets and monumental stones, and on copper-plates of the Canarese country. The inscriptions are often dated; if they have no date, the form of the letters used and historical references to dated inscriptions serve to ascertain their age."

"Kannada is spoken throughout Mysore, the Southern Mahratta country, in some of the western districts of the Nijam's territory and partly in north Canara on the western coast."

"The term Kannada, the Canarese of European writers, is formed from Karnadu, the black cultivated country, referring to the black soil, commonly called cotton soil, which characterizes the plateau of the Southern Dekkan. In the Sanskrit language the term appears as Karanata and KarnKannada is the appellation of the Canarese country and its language."

"The coastal belt of Karnataka has about half-a-dozen dialects of Kannada like Havyaka , Kota, Gauda, Halakki, etc."

"The dictionary compiled by Rev. F. Kittel contained 70,000 words. On the literary side, it is a treasure of knowledge. Thus, Rev. F. Kittel may be called the father of Kannada dictionary. If he had not taken up and accomplished such a stupendous task in the 19th century, the present Kannada-English dictionary compiled by Kannada Sahitya Parishat would have taken another century to come into existence."

"Rev. F. Kittel, a great scholar in many languages including Sanskrit, studied Kannada and took up the task of compiling a Kannada-English dictionary. He started the compilation in a thorough and systematic manner on the lines of the dictionaries of the Western countries, especially English dictionary."

"Kannada is rich in dialects, such as Havyaka and Sanketi, apart from many regional varieties."

"Kannada has a long history of dictionary-making, beginning from the dictionary written by Rannakanda of the 10th century till the dictionary produced by the Sahitya Parishat in the 20th century."

"The discovery of the 5th century copper coin proves beyond doubt that Banavasi had a mint, and the tradition of minting coins with names or titles in Kannada was in vogue as early as the 5th century."

"Though punch-marked and Satavahana coins had been discovered in Karnataka, this is the first coin with an inscription in archaic Kannada."

"Coin has inscription in archaic Kannada script found at Banavasi, capital of the Kadambas is said to be the first such coin found in the State. One side has a five-letter inscription and the other the symbol of Ujjain."

"As the inscription cannot be read easily, a replica [has been] readied in the Memorial Hall to give all information contained in it."

"Every word of the inscription has inspired linguists and set off debates on etymology. Although Halmidi has made a significant contribution to the history and culture of Kannada, the village has been neglected... the Hassan district unit of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat has taken steps to make it an important centre for students of literature and linguistics."

"The language is known as "Poorvada Halegannada" (primitive Kannada), with distinctive characteristics resembling those of Tamil. Halmidi is a small village in the north of Hassan district with a population of 1,200, and was known as `Palmidi' and `Hanumidi'. However, the people of the village recently decided to retain the name Halmidi The inscription has become a subject of study for those who conduct research on the Kannada script, etymology, and Dravidian linguistics."

"The "Halmidi inscription" has put an end to many controversies surrounding the evolution of Kannada. The 16-line inscription, which is on rectangular sandstone with a height of 2.5 ft. and a width of 1 ft., has a Vishnu Chakra on its top. The earliest Kannada inscription found at Halmidi in w:BelurBelur taluk of Hassan district is dated 450 A.D., and it is the earliest known record in Kannada characters."

"The names of a few places referred to by Ptolemy (A.D. 150) in his geographical treatise are undoubtedly the ancient forms of present day names of places in Karnataka."

"Kannada is considered the oldest language next to Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil. According to linguists, Tamil and Kannada branched off simultaneously from the Dravidian language of South India before the Christian Era."