Talk:Dravidian languages

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Contents

[edit] Elamite

On the contrary, they are perhaps related to the Elamite language spoken in Iran before the invasion of the Persians. I believe, though I can't claim any sources, that the current theory is that there was an Elamo-Dravidian continuum stretching from the borders of Sumer/Akkad all the way to the tip of the Indian subcontinent before the Persians invaded.

See: http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_dravidian.html
and HistoricalLinguisticsorPhilology

--Ben Brumfield

How many words of Elamite are known, aside from a couple of dozen personal names? Such sweeping linguistic theories really do need more solid backup than http://www.krysstal.com is offering. Wetman 20:32, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Have a look at David W. McAlpin's Toward Proto-Elamo-Dravidian in Language, Vol. 50, No. 1. (Mar., 1974), pp. 89-101. Elamite has a written corpus comprising of thousands of words. --Imran 21:43, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Isn't 'arasu' Tamil for 'king' or 'government'? (c.f. Singapore, which in Tamil is Singapura Kudiyarasu) --Xiaopo's Talk 20:30, Jan 2, 2004 (UTC)

It is. -- Sundar 10:35, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Past Dravidian Languages

Indeed, it has been suggested that the language of the Indus Valley Civilization was Dravidian, but I don't know that anyone denies the possibility of other languages in the area of modern India. The widespread view that the language of the Indus Valley civilization was not Dravidian also needs coverage. --Xiaopo's Talk 08:43, Jan 3, 2004 (UTC)

When the script of the Indus Valley is eventually deciphered, opinions pro or con will have the beginnings of some substance. No one has the least idea of what phonemes go with what symbol, at present (Scientific American July 2003) Wetman 20:32, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

I rewrote this page because it was amazingly un-NPOV. The claim that Dravidian was the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages is believed by a very small minority, and I know many linguists who would go farther and call it a "crackpot theory". It obviously deserves mention, but NPOV allows less popular views to get less space, and this one deserves a few sentences detailing its claims and the response of the mainstream community -- certainly not the large portion of this article as well as another. These views were also mentioned on Aryan invasion theory as fact, in an extremely NPOV paragraph I rewrote. I moved some of the examples from Indo-European Dravidian words since those were greatly representative of the bunch. Also (almost done, promise!) let me present a page[1] showing that chance resemblances amongst unrelated languages are indeed quite likely. Last, but not least, these repeated dismissals of mainstream linguists as having "only a passing familiarity with Dravidian languages" and citing an author's only qualification as being a native speaker of a Dravidian language don't mean much -- f'rinstance, I'm a native speaker of a Dravidian language and I believe these claims are rubbish. :-) Suggested reading for Codebytez: Comparative method and sound change. --Xiaopo's Talk 06:44, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Some comments

We should really be discussing this on Indo-European dravidian words, but since we have started here, lets rock :)

  • Applying the principle of regular sound change, the reconstructed proto-Dravidian word for "one" is *oru. English "one" on the other hand can be traced back to Old Germanic *ainaz and Proto-Indo-European *oynos.
    • Actually, dravidian has two words for "one". onnu which is used in the abstract numeric sense and *oru used for person. onnu corresponds to the IE root oi-no.
  • Interesting that in all my years of speaking Kannada and Tamil I've never heard of these two words for "one" then. Nor can I find them in any grammars of the language. Since you marked *oru with an asterisk and not onnu, I presume onnu is a form in one of the modern Dravidian languages, and not a reconstructed form? Which language, then?
    • oru is used as an adjective indicating a single item or person in Tamil. onnu seems to be a slang for the number one, the more classical for being onRu (in Tamil), (and ondhu? in Kannada). -- Sundar 10:32, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)
  • English "attic" comes from Greek Αττική (Attiki), the name of a region of Greece (see: Attica, Greece). It has changed meaning over the years, and it is thus pure coincidence that its present meaning and pronunciation bears resemblances to the Tamil form.
    • I've heard about the above etymology and also at least another for attic: ut- [IE root for up] with the -ic suffix, literally upper. This sounds more probable than attic being named after a region of Greece simply because places named after things are common, things named after places are rare. It only happens when a new item is introduced by traders from a foriegn land. E.g. Indigo from India, Hamburger from Hamburg. However, in such cases, there is always a native word for the item. I could not find any non-tangential synonyms for attic. [If someone knows, please let me know]
      • Attic is a shortened form for 'attic storey,' attested in 1724. Another form attested in 1696, 'attic order,' refers to "a low decorative facade above the main story of a building." 'Attic' before this date refers to a type of column often featured in Classical architecture inspired by the Greek region Attica, a word attested in 1599. Before this, there is no written record of 'attic' in the English language. Please do not make generalized statements about Indo-European linguistics before you do basic research, especially if you're going to make things up to support your flimsy argument. Your fanciful derivation is laughable. 'Ut-' is not even the IE root for 'up.' It isn't a reconstructed root at all.
  • The etymology I suggest is well-documented and appears to be accepted by virtually everyone, see [2] [3] and [4]. "Late 17th century. Via French attique “Atticâ€? from Latin Atticus (see Attic). The word originally described a decorative structure (in the Attic style) above the main façade of a building." In fact, I can't find any source (reputable or otherwise) that suggests your etymology. Maybe you could help me out here? :-)
    • I'm dropping vocare and yellow (also other weak cases) and list only ones that have a solid IE root. Please understand that the page is still being worked on and I will attempt to rewrite in accord with Comparative Method.
  • The thing is, the view of the vast majority of linguists is that there is no such thing as "Indo-European Dravidian words". Thus having a whole article for it wouldn't be NPOV. The NPOV policy states that we don't need to discuss minority views and beliefs in the field as much as majority opinions, and this theory is certainly believed by few enough people to not deserve an article of its own; in fact, it would mean the minority view gets more time and explanation than the majority. Not to mention that the very title, "Indo-European Dravidian words" is a viewpoint.
    • I understand you do not agree with the above theory, but Vfd'ing a new user's page that is in the process of heavy editing without comments on the page itself or at least some talk is just ... sad ;)

Codebytez | Talk 10:27, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)

  • Sorry if I made it seem personal or something, it's not. :-) This isn't meant to belittle your skills as a writer or Wikipedian, and you certainly can write well. I just don't think a page like "Indo-European Dravidian words" has any place in the NPOV policy. (Also, you're right, I should have left a note on Talk:Indo-European Dravidian words saying discussion was over here, sorry!) --Xiaopo's Talk 16:21, Jan 6, 2004 (UTC)


  • Xiaopo: How would you feel if we do this:

I summarize and move contents of Indo-European Dravidian words into this page as a paragraph (fewer examples, will use only word for word equivalents). Then we kill the other page. If you still believe that Indo-European Roots and matching dravidian words/roots constitutes flawed methodology, we can paraphrase your lengthy analysis with a sentence or two. I can understand your argument about yellow/haladi, but would you still hold the same belief for IE root to Dravidian word/root matching? Given that no consonants are changed and the vowels are practically the same, they are practically the same word with the same meaning. -- Codebytez | Talk 22:30, 6 Jan 2004 (UTC)


I took a look at the page [5] and trust me, its flawed. The math is OK, but the basic assumption of roots starting and ending in one consonant and having only one vowel in between is a major flaw. As you already know, roots can start and end with vowels and diphthongs. Consonants can flow to another consonant without a vowel in between. And roots that start in consonants can have diphthongs following them. The ending does not have to be a consonant. The model used by the paper would for example, leave out a vast number of the known IE roots and Dravidian roots/words. Developing independent models for different language groups and calculating the probability of the same word with the same meaning is a complex math problem.

The chances of two root words that sound exactly the same and mean exactly the same thing are RARE in languages that belong to different language groups. If you can find 25 root words that sound and mean the same among two unrelated language groups with no variations except the ending, I'd be mighty impressed. Indo-European and Dravidian pair is the only exception. Surely, they could be related? The requirement for 90% of roots to be the same is just a little too much. If they do, they are probably dialects :)

--Codebytez | Talk 05:31, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It might be that theer is authority for draavida meaning south in Sanskrit, but the standard word for south is dakshina. draavida has other derivations related to the name Tamil, and the meaning 'south' is probably derivative. Imc 22:25, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Agrees. Dravida is a word that means Southern, the context being anthropological (refers to the Southern culture and people) and not the direction.
It may be derivative, but I'm not sure. Do you know any place where we can look it up?
And Chancemill (who wrote the comment above mine), it's not always anthropological. c.f. Jana-Gana-Mana: "Punjaba, Sindhu, Gujarata, Maratha, / Dravida, Utkala, Banga" where it's obviously used in a geographical context. --Xiaopo's Talk 22:38, Jan 29, 2004 (UTC)
The online dictionary at http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/mwd_search.html provides no authority for draavida meaning south, either from English or from Sanskrit. So it would probably be safe to rewrite the article to say that the name Dravidian was derived from a word connected to 'Tamil', in this case meaning the south of the country. Imc 13:12, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
The original Prakrit term for Dravida is Damida, which has a dravidian etymology. Two possible derivations are Tamila -> Damida -> Dravida and Damida -> Tamila and also Damida->Dravida. Damida is a dravidian palindromic word, so its possibly an older form of both Tamila and Dravida. Codebytez | Talk
Is it related to theRku (meaning South in Tamil) ? -- Sundar 10:32, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Xiapo: I know you went to a lot of trouble to investigate my word list, but it so happens that every word you have chosen was given as an example only by me. I am not aware of any other occurance of these four examples. You really should find other words incorrectly believed by lay people to be cognate. Also what shall we do about the many roots that are identical in PIE and Dravidian? Also, what reference do you use for the proto-dravidian language? Codebytez | Talk

Not much trouble, actually, some of the flaws in your examples were obvious at first glance. I don't see how we can give examples usually presented by lay people, since most lay people who comment on the subject (like you) create their own wordlists. Regardless of where you got yours, I think it's safe to say the examples I used are representative of the level of scholarship of such hypotheses.
If we really want to decide what goes in here, I would suggest that we have about a sentence or two pointing out that some people disagree with this classification. After all, we see far less discussion on Korean language as to whether Korean is an isolate, and yet that's far more controversial than whether Dravidian is related to IE! It is not our place to decide whether these theories are true or false, simply to represent the opinions of the people in the field -- and the consensus is overwhelming, this issue isn't even very controversial in linguistic circles.
If you're referring to *oru, I originally got it from here. IIRC, however, it was mentioned in one of your Levitt articles as well.
--Xiaopo's Talk 03:19, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)
I would prefer attic/atta, kill/kollu, chill/chali. Sound and mean almost the same but have different etymologies. Actually, it would help to know the etymologies of Dravidian words to make the point solid.
Unfortunately, I've been unable to find any reference on a reconstructed proto-dravidian reference/dictionary. I read somewhere on the internet that proto-dravidian has never been reconstructed. If anyone has an online or book reference to a complete proto-dravidian dictionary/reference, it would be of immense help.
Also I noticed you deleted the reference to Dravidian contribution of retroflex L to Sanskrit when you reverted. Was it accidental?
Codebytez | Talk
I actually think our purpose is not to go into length presenting arguments from either side, but just to include a sentence or two that this classification is disputed.
I don't know about any reference dictionaries; however, your Levitt article referenced several proto-Dravidian forms.
Whoops, yeah, that last bit was accidental. Erk, sorry. --Xiaopo's Talk 19:28, Mar 3, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Australian Aboriginal languages

I'm quite surprised to find that there is no mention at all to the old, now discredited theory that Australian languages were related to Dravidian. When you read about Australian languages this is one of the first things you learn. Apparently it is the phonology and probably also the agglutinative qualities of the languages which once gave this impression. Maybe it's missing from this page because the perspective is reversed. Australian language literature always mentions Dravidian but I guess Dravidian language literature doesn't mention Australian. — Hippietrail 09:49, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Indo-European link

I removed this pair of statements from the article:

The former claim that Dravidian and Indo-European share a common ancestor is generally based on more rigorous methods comparing Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Dravidian, and is generally held in higher regard by the mainstream linguistic community. This is statement is clearly false. I do not know of any mainstream linguist who has supported this. Refer to Bhadriraju Krishnamurti's recent book on Dravidian Languages.

I think dialogues like this belong on the Talk page, not in the article, until they are resolved. --Heron 14:23, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Theories on the derivation of Dravidian languages

The "mainstream" theories are better dealt with in the "History" section, as I have now done ("History" should really discuss the history of the family, not just the history of its discovery). I don't know what to say about this section. Perhaps we could substitute this section with a new section (or separate article) dealing with the relationship between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages? That section could deal with issues such as the mutual lexical and structural influences, as well as the theories about the common descent of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian and the objections to these theories. ---- Arvind 17:15, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have removed this section -- I read like an argument which shouldn't be presented to the reader. The relevant points in the arguments are already here on the talk page. Edinborgarstefan 21:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe removing the whole section was a bit drastic but this debunking of an arbitrary word list needs some context to make sense. Is there some external source for this list? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:11, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of Dravidian languages

I'd like to redo this list, so as to add information about the sub-groups and sub-sub-groups within each broad group. This could be done as a nice png tree, or through a multi-level list. Any suggestions as to which will be better? My impression is also that the South-Central and Central groups are considered to be two-subgroups of a broader Central group (the differentiation being broadly comparable to that between Tamil and Tulu). The Britannica agrees, but are there linguistic sources which indicate otherwise? ---- Arvind 17:27, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] lack of language specifications

Dravidian_languages#Grammar lacks specifications of the languages of the examples!--Imz 20:45, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reversal Property

This sounds an awful lot like folk etymology, and no sources for either the supposed property in general or for the specific examples is given. I've found no reference to this in either overviews of the Dravidian family (such as in Steever) or of the grammars of specific Dravidian languages (such as Arden on Tamil).It was also originally added to the article with other assertions that were clearly incorrect. If someone has info showing that it is or was a productive derivational technique in Dravidian languages, insert it again with a reference. Ergative rlt 23:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Tamil=Proto-Dravidian coalesce

I have removed sentence that said Tamil is in fact closest to the Proto-Dravidian. From the article written by E. Annamalai is former Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore,

This conservative nature of high Tamil aids the political construction of the popular belief that Tamil is the mother of all Dravidian languages, making Tamil and Proto-Dravidian coalesce. Tamil in fact, as the book demonstrates, has lost some features of the parent language

and

To know about the origin, one would like to know the languages that are not Dravidian, but are related to Dravidian in a distant past. Among the living languages, genetic relationship has been suggested with far-flung languages like Basque in Europe, Japanese in Asia and Wolof in Africa. Their comparison with Tamil, not with Proto-Dravidian (indicating the mistaken coalescence mentioned above in the scholarly world also), is methodologically faulty given the time scale of any possible relationship. —Preceding unsigned comment added by User:M_arpalmane (talk • contribs)

[edit] Dravidian and Uralic

An editor made changes to this article on 13 July with the description: "Removing nonsense"(diff). The sentence removed was a statement that Dravidian displays "striking similarities" with Uralic and Altaic, which suggests the possibility of prolonged contact in the past, and it was replaced by a sentence that "the majority of specialists" reject areal or genetic connection. The original claim came from Kamal Zvelebil's article on Dravidian languages in the Britannica. It is, of course, possible that Kamal Zvelebil (or the Britannica) are wrong, but the EB is a reliable source and Zvelebil is a reputed authority on Dravidian, so it'll take more than a mere claim that they're "talking nonsense" to rebut what they've said. I've restored the original statement until someone cites a source demonstrating that the majority of Dravidian linguists are dismissive of Zvelebil's theory. -- Arvind 18:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

As a Uralic comparative linguist by profession, I can say that the suggestion of a Dravidian-Uralic connection is absolutely bizarre; no Uralic comparative linguist has ever advocated such an idea. In fact, I doubt that anyone of them has even heard of it, except as a joke on par with Uralic-Egyptian. As the whole idea involves Uralic as much as Dravidian, and Uralic comparative linguistics is just as established and advanced a field as Dravidian linguistics is, this should suffice as a criterion for classifying it as nonsense. Please see also my comment in Talk:South India. Of course, you are right that I should have explained the deletion on the talk page. I will delete the reference again. --AAikio 19:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
While it's a (very) minority opinion, there has been real work trying to link Uralic and Dravidian, mainly among Nostraticists. It's been published in journals, so it's just not a kook website thing. I'll try to dig up some citations. CRCulver 19:13, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Nostratic itself is a fringe theory rejected by the majority of comparative linguists, even though it should be acknowledged as fully legitimate science, of course. But what the article said was that there was a specific areal connection between Uralic and Dravidian, whereas it's a different matter whether Uralic and Dravidian are related via some hypothetical higher-level grouping. --AAikio 06:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
Hello Ante. Would you be happy with a formulation along the lines of: "Many Dravidian linguists have argued that Dravidian languages display linguistic affinities with the Uralic language group, suggesting a prolonged period of contact in the past, but these hypotheses have been rejected by the majority of specialists in Uralic languages." The article, as presently worded, gives the impression that the majority of scholars both in Dravidian and Uralic linguistics disagree with the hypothesis, which isn't exactly correct - it's a situation where the position taken by most scholars in Dravidian linguistics disagrees fundamentally with the position taken by most scholars in Uralic linguistics. -- Arvind 23:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
This looks like a good suggestion to me, if you remove "majority of". Now the wording suggests that there would be a minority of Uralic scholars after all who sympathize with the idea of a Dravidian connection - but there are none.
As a side note, it is really interesting to hear that this idea has been widely accepted by Dravidian specialists, whereas Uralic specialists have hardly even heard of it. I'd really like to know what peer reviewed publications this is based on (if any?). I have a strong suspicion that there is some kind of misinterpretation of Uralic data behind this, so I'd really like to check it sometime. If anyone can help me with finding the relevant publications, I'd be really glad if they gave me a hint on my talk page.
--AAikio 06:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Arvind added the above-agreed version and someone else reverted that. Perhaps we should address the allegedly weasel "many" by adding references. I could find this one. I'm sure there would be others. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 11:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the word "many" is it tends to suggest near-universal agreement in the mind of the reader, even if it doesn't say so outright. Were references added, I've have no problem with the theory mentioned, provided that it were emphasized that not all, or even most, Dravidian linguists believe in close genetic relationship. CRCulver 11:33, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
The sentence I added said "contact", which clearly suggests an areal rather than a genetic relationship. As for it being a fringe theory, here are the references I provided AAikio:
  • Tyler, Stephen (1968), "Dravidian and Uralian: the lexical evidence". Language 44:4. 798-812.
  • Burrow, T. (1944) "Dravidian Studies IV: The Body in Dravidian and Uralian". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 11:2. 328-356.
  • Mikhail Andronov has also written widely on this topic, but I don't have any of his papers with me at the moment. Zvelebil gives a more complete bibliography in Comparative Dravidian Phonology (Mouton, The Hauge: 1970) at p. 22 which, I think, also includes papers skeptical of any connection. (I'm told he has updated this somewhat in Dravidian linguistics: an introduction (Pondicherry, Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture: 1990), but that's not a book I've read).
I'm planning to buy the latter and would add citations then. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 14:13, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
AAikio has in response said that Tyler's work is methodologically flawed. That may well be the case, but for crying out loud work done by linguists like Thomas Burrow (who Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford for over 30 years) and Kamil Zvelebil is not a fringe theory, and the Uralic affinity hypothesis is considered a mainstream theory in Dravidian linguistics even if not everyone agrees with it (Krishnamurthy in his Dravidian Languages at p. 43, for example, points out that there is a methodological problem with comparing reconstructed proto-languages rather than showing parallels between features in existing languages). But if it is so patently wrong, then perhaps some Uralist needs to write a work blowing the theory out of the water and publish it in JOAS or some such journal dealing with South Asian languages and finally put it to bed, but until that happens it's wrong to call it a fringe theory. -- Arvind 12:31, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

We already have a sentence stating that links between Dravidian and several other language families have been suggested, but that these arguments are inconclusive. The connection between Dravidian and Uralic also seems to be inconclusive. Is there any reason to single out this theory and thereby suggesting that it is more probable than the theory connecting Dravidian and Korean, say? If not, we should just add Uralic to the list of inconclusive connections. Stefán Ingi 11:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Brittannica, see [6] written by Kamil V. Zvelebil, says that Dravidian is an isolated language family, but that the most pormising hypothesis of a linguistic relationship is with the Uralic and Altaic families. This seems in line with our current text so I have answered my own question. Stefán Ingi 14:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
The Britannica was expressly cited as a reference in a previous version, which was reverted. In my opinion, the present wording of the article is misleading because it suggests that the majority of Dravidian linguists also reject the theory (which is not true) and that both areal and genetic relationships are suggested (the mainstream theory today only focuses on a possible areal relationship). I suppose Wikipedia can live with a slight inaccuracy, though, it's not a very major one. -- Arvind 14:12, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language order

I've sorted the lists alphabetically, with the one exception that national languages of India come first. Hopefully, this will stop people changing the order to place their favoured language on top. -- Arvind 14:59, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The languages are not in alphabetical order. I am making a change that would atleast account for a population (that speaks the language ; a rational metric) based ranking.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.189.126.234 (talk)
Yes, they are - the scheduled languages are in alphabetical order, followed by the other languages in alphabetical order -- Arvind 10:21, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sanskrit Text

Since the term "Dravidian languages" was derived by Caldwell from the Sanskrit term "drāviḍa bhāṣāḥ" used by Kumarilabhatta in his Tantravartikka, it seems to me that the Sanskrit text ought to be allowed to stand in the first sentence. I don't propose to be dragged into an edit war over this, but I would like to know why its insertion was reverted. -- Arvind 01:55, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

there are any number of words in indian languages and also in english that find their roots in sanskrit. that is no reason to insert devanagari in all those articles where we come across these words. or else ta.wiki, kn.wiki, te.wiki and even en.wiki for that matter would be teeming with devanagari transliterations. curiously enough, why doesnt ta.wiki page for "dravidian" have the sanskrit transliterations in that case? give me an answer other than saying that you didnt edit those ta.wiki pages. Sarvagnya
I'm not wedded to Devanagari - I also had a transliteration of the word using ISO 15919, and having that alone would be perfectly fine. The reason I placed the Sanskrit term here was this Wikipedia guideline:
"English title terms with foreign origin can encode the native spelling and put it in parentheses. See, for example, I Ching (易經 pinyin yì jīng) or Sophocles (Σοφοκλης)."
Since it's a policy here it seems to me that we should follow it, regardless of what the policies on Indian language wikipedias are (I'm not active on any of them, so I really don't know what the policies are). And yes, I think that all articles where the title itself is a Sanskrit word (or Kannada, or Tamil, or Urdu) should have the name in the original language immediately thereafter. Obviously, this only applies to the title and not other words. -- Arvind 22:52, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, and again, just because the title word is rooted in Sanskrit does not mean we need Sanskrit transliterations. So many names of people for example, are rooted in Sanskrit. By your logic, we should have Sanskrit transliterations for them too. Srinivasa Ramanujan for example, is a name with Sanskrit roots. Should we have Sanskrit transliterations there also? Param Vir Chakra is rooted in Sanskrit, if not Sanskrit itself. Should we have Sanskrit transliterations?Sarvagnya
Wikipedia follows a different policy for personal names, which should be in the person's mother tongue, and names of things and concepts, which should be in the language they are derived from. In the case of Param Vir Chakra, the name is actually Hindi (which is why it isn't Parama Vira Chakra), so it should have a transliteration of the Hindi name, in my opinion. -- Arvind 23:41, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
If 'Param' derived from 'Parama' is not Sanskrit, 'Dravidian' derived from draaviDa/draviDa is not Sanskrit either. Also btw, SRamanujan and PVC were just examples plucked out of nowhere. Am sure we can find better examples.Sarvagnya
I should have been clearer. What I was trying to say that the English name "Param Vir Chakra" comes from the Hindi name "Param Vir Chakra", just like the English name "Dravidian" comes from the Sanskrit "Dravida". Does that answer your point? -- Arvind 00:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
  • And why does it have to be devanagari? Sarvagnya
It doesn't. If you look at the start of my previous comment, I said that an ISO 15919 (IAST) transliteration was equally fine. -- Arvind 23:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The languages are not in alphabetical order. I am making a change that would atleast account for a population based ranking.

[edit] Proposed merge with Proto-Dravidian

See Talk:Proto-Dravidian#Proposed merge with Dravidian languages.--Imz 15:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed mention of Telugu as the most widely spoken language..

Allthough a geuine fact, a typically good wiki article only mentions top rankers in terms of language, race, ethinicity in a region if there is a clear step function. Telugu with 80 million is marginally above tamil at 74 million (at which point your pretty much dealing with noise). An equally appropriate (and factually true) statement could include the top 2,3,4... languages. I felt it was unnescessary and completly misleading in terms of the diversity in dravidian languages

[edit] OR tag on List of Dravidian languages

I found an article in Encyclopedia Britannica website discussing 'Dravidian langiages' extensively (9 pages). The list of dravidian languages given there are same as the list given here. I am removing the OR tag on this section after giving the citation. Note: I am not removing the OR tag on lemuria section. Praveen 17:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dravidian languages spoken in UK, US and Canada?

This seems a bit odd, which Dravidian languages are spoken in the Uk, the US and Canada, or is this perhaps some mistake? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 87.51.125.126 (talk) 19:48, 6 May 2007 (UTC).

They're obviously not native languages, but many immigrants from Southern Asia live in the UK, US, and Canada.

that's stupid, that would mean pretty much every language is spoken on every continent, we are pretty globalized these days. I think it should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.121.103 (talk) 02:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Classification section is missing

Every other Language page I have seen on wiki hasd a classification section with theories on relationships between the language (family) being discussed and another language (family). Can someone fix this here please? Thank you. 82.6.114.172 17:01, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiProject Dravidian civilizations

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Wiki Raja 08:16, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ten vowels?

"Proto-Dravidian had ten vowels: a, ā, i, ī, u, ū, e, ē." What are the other two vowels? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.180.160.128 (talk) 19:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Probably o and ō, which also exist in modern Dravidian languages.--Kannan91 (talk) 08:26, 2 March 2008 (UTC)