Episode 15 Indian Languages that Aren’t Indo-European

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

The non-Indo-European languages spoken in southern India belong to the Dravidian family. There are three main Dravidian languages: Kannada (bamboo is a Kannada word), Tamil (catamaran and cheroot are Tamil words), Telegu (mongoose is Telugu) and Malayalam (mango is a Malayalam). Telugu is one of the twenty most used languages in the world, and Tamil, is one of the oldest written languages, with Tamil inscriptions appearing in caves and Buddhist writings dating from the first century AD.

Most linguists believe Dravidian languages were spoken throughout India before in-migrating Indo-European speakers caused the former to migrate further south. Kurukh, a fourth Dravidian language is still spoken in a small isolated area in northern India.

A fifth Dravidian language Brahui is spoken in Pakistan. Many linguists believe Brahui speakers migrated from northern India to Pakistan because it has a lot loan words from the Indo-Iranian languages Balochi and Avestin. The latter is an extinct Indo-Iranian language similar to Latin).

At the same time many of the Indo-Aryan languages have been Dravidianized by incorporating retfroflex consonants (see link).

Tamil has gender classes to designate “rational” nouns, such as men and gods and irrational nouns, such as children, women and everything else.

In Kurhukh, a Dravidian language spoken in eastern/northern India, word endings change depending on who you’re speaking to.

Many Dravidian languages have diglossia, which mean there are two separate languages, for example high (literary) and low (colloquial) Tamil and ancient and modern Kannada.

People on the island of Sri Lanka off the southeast coat of India speak Sinalese, an Indo-Aryan language, rather than a Dravidian language. In Nepal, directly northeast of India, most people speak Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language. However people in an isolated region in Nepal’s interior speak Kusanda. The latter has no living relatives other than Juhwi, one of the 14 languages spoken in the Andemon Islands, in the northeast Indian Ocean.

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