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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
Sivaramakrishnan? Good grief. Please don't tell me that of all the boards, in all the world, we three are Dravidians wound up here?
My parents' tongue is Malayalam. And I've seen a website that theorises that 'us Nairs' are not indigenous to Kerala, but some form of immigrant bunch from - you guessed it - North-West India, arrived a few hundred years ago and took possession of all the plush jobs/estates and have lorded it over the deserving locals ever since. Whilst adopting their language, of course.
As pure folk-lore, I was always told that Malayalam was the most sanskritised of the South Indian languages. The family seemed to take pride in that! What I think is reasonably well-established is that Malayalam is the youngest of the big four, being only about 1500 years old.
And yes, I reject entirely Mumbai - given that I lived in the city for 22 years, I believe I have the right to call it what I want. And I can just never remember Chennai for Madras.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475 |
Sivaramakrishnan? Good grief. Please don't tell me that of all the boards, in all the world, we three are Dravidians wound up here?No, I'm sorry to mislead you and Maahey, but as far as ethnicity goes, I'm a Liguro-Lombard mix. And as for nationality, I'm a Yank. It's just that after spending a fortnight in Madras and Trichy with a friend's family and for his wedding, his mom gave me the name Sivaramakrishnan. And who was I to turn down her kind gift? Also, their family astrologer informed me I was a Tamil in a previous life.  As for the age of languages, all four Dravidian contestants are the same age. Tamil just has an older literature than the other three. Also, the percentages for Sanskrit loanwords I've seen are different if you're counting in colloquial versus literary Tamil.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
Must do some more looking up on the origins of Malayalam et al.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 1,475
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Jan 2004
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It helps if you read Russian. I kept running across a couple of Soviet linguists who did a bunch of work on comparative Dravidian. At least some of their work is available in English and/or German. I'll try to put together a bibliography. Maybe we can form a Dravidian reading group ...
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