Footprint of Dravidian languages in Pak, Nepal

The Dravidian language family, which comprises 80 variations spoken by 220 million people across southern and central India and other parts of south Asia, is 4,500 years old, according to an international study that emphasises the influence it has had on other language groups through Eurasian prehistory.

South Asia is home to at least 600 languages that belong to four large language families: Dravidian, Indo-European, Austo-Asiatic, Sinoand Tibetan.

Sanskrit and Tamil are among the world’s classical languages, but unlike Sanskrit, the continuity between Tamil’s classical and modern forms is documented in inscriptions, poems, secular and religious texts, and songs, according to a team of international researchers that used data collected firsthand from native speakers representing all previously reported Dravidian subgroups.

“Dating Dravidian languages is relevant for a wider understanding of the peopling of South Asia, especially population movements of particular language groups. This study confirms, for instance, that Dravidian speakers were present in the subcontinent before the IndoAryan speakers arrived (around 3,500 years ago). We know about this from Dravidian (word) loans into Sanskrit but this is a confirmation,” said lead corresponding author Annemarie Verkerk of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.

“One thing we don’t know is which Dravidian language(s) were in contact with Sanskrit; if we have an idea of the timing, we can make inferences on which ancestral language this could have been,” Verkerk said in the study.

The same goes for contact with Munda speakers and relationships with the isolate languages of the subcontinent. A map of the Dravidian languages in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal. Languages present in the dataset used in this paper are shown by name; those with longstanding (950+ years) of literary tradition are in bold. Brahui Kannada

Tulu

Kodava

Yeruva

Betta Kurumba Badaga Malayalam Tamil The Dravidian language family is 4,500 years old. 80 variations of it are spoken today by 220 million people across southern and central India, and parts of south Asia.

Ollari Gadba Koya

Telugu

Toda Kota

NEW DELHI:

North Khirwar Central South II South I