Talk:South Dravidian languages

Untitled section
Why Should the river dispute be discussed on this page? Chirags 05:48, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

Ganapti: I do not understand why you have wholesale reverted my edits which were adding clarity to the article. The article was labeled as citing no authority and I have added a good deal of relevant citations from Dravidian linguistics. Please restritc your edits to specific statements. Thank you. Periannan Chandrasekaran 14:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The origin of Kannada and Telugu scripts are discussed in detail in Talk:Telugu script and currently under dispute. I request you to participate in that discussion and not to make any changes to any article discussing the issue till the dispute is resolved. Once the matter reaches a consensus, we'll change accordingly in all articles. Note that Bh.Krishnamurthi is not the only scholar and there are number of other scholars who express opposite opinions. We have to be careful not to give WP:UNDUE to one scholar's stance. Gnanapiti 17:18, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Gnapti: Thanks for trying to edit specific portions. No coming to the Scripts section, if you wish to give importance to other scholars it is gladly welcome and you please simply add their statements too here to give multiple learned opinions on the subject. But you please do not erase all scholarly citations so as to simply let only your unsupported opinion remain. So again if you have other     supporting *scholarly* claims please add them here. Moreover if you think there is another place which is serving as the main place for Telugu script origin, then please do not have anything on it here at all especially it is not a published scholarly claim. So either you remove yours completely or let other statements be here or let us simply make the section point to Telugu Script article. I will do that right now. As any way scripts are very irrelevant and then we will have to talk about the scripts of other members of the Tamil-Kannada branch also: Tamil, Malayalam and so on Periannan Chandrasekaran 18:57, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Requested move 27 December 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved by nominator as an uncontested move. Celia Homeford (talk) 10:04, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Tamil–Kannada languages → South Dravidian languages – Larger branches need priority over smaller inner branches, there is a page for Proto-South Dravidian language and Northern Dravidian, there should be a page for the southern branch too. We could move this page and make appropriate changes to accommodate Tuluic. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 10:40, 27 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 15:53, 3 January 2024 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tamil-Kannada
While I appreaciate the fact that you finally start to read one of our sources instead of removing their citations, you should nevertheless read them all and cite them faithfully.

Krishnamurti (2003) classifies South Dravidian (= South Dravidian I) as follows on page 21:


 * South Dravidian I
 * Tulu
 * Koraga
 * Kannada
 * Badaga
 * Kota
 * Toda
 * Kodagu
 * Kurumba
 * Irula
 * Tamil
 * Malayalam
 * Kodagu
 * Kurumba
 * Irula
 * Tamil
 * Malayalam
 * Irula
 * Tamil
 * Malayalam
 * Malayalam

Zvelebil (1990) classifies Tamil-Tulu (= South Dravidian I) as follows on page 56:


 * Tamil-Tulu
 * Tulu
 * Tamil-Kannada
 * Kannada
 * Badaga
 * Tamil-Kodagu
 * Kota
 * Toda
 * Kodagu
 * Irula
 * Tamil
 * Malayalam
 * Irula
 * Tamil
 * Malayalam
 * Malayalam

The only difference between their classification is Krishnamurti's inclusion of Koraga (not included by Zvelebil because of lack of data), and Zvelebil's trifurcation of the branch within the Tamil-Kannada languages that is coordinate to Kannada-Banaga, i.e. Tamil-Malayam, Irula, Kodagu, Kota and Toda (Krishnamurti has more complex nesting here).

But both scholars do not have Tamil-Kannada as a primary branch of the Dravidian languages. In both classifications, South Dravidian (in the narrow sense) bifurcates into Tulu and Tamil-Kannada.

Please comment here also (I think we are in agreement about what the sources say) when (or before) making further reverts. We're all getting into the terrain of a slow edit war. For terminological clarity, I will add a citation to Steever's handbook later. IMO, we should strictly follow Steever in using South Dravidian for SDr I and South-Central Dravidian for SDr II. Austronesier (talk) 07:39, 14 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Absolutely, @Austronesier. I've been reviewing the sources and agree with your analysis. Roshan Dickwella (talk) 11:21, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Well thank you for the information.
 * While i understand the both linguists do not Tamil-Kannada as primary branch, there have been clearly mentions of Tamil-Kannada as alt name for South Dravidian I and Tamil-Tulu as SDI by Krishnamurti and Zvelebil respectively.
 * So in the interest of keeping the information legit and unbiased it important that we mention all the information and not just highlight one of the interpretations and mislead the readers especially when it comes to alternate names. TrUtHJan (talk) 03:47, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * there have been clearly mentions of Tamil-Kannada as alt name for South Dravidian I... Where? Not on page 470 of Krishnamurti's book. –Austronesier (talk) 16:01, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I have reworked the subgrouping section, you might want to have a look. I've tried to make it less Glottolog-ish and only to rely published academic sources, including two recent reference works that support the common terminology used in our articles about Dravidian languages. The Tulu part still has a bit of Glottolog-based SYNTH, but I hope the external and internal classification of South Dravidian are more clearly outlined now for our readers. –Austronesier (talk) 19:01, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
 * >there have been clearly mentions of Tamil-Kannada as alt name for South Dravidian I
 * i think you misread, all authors agree that sd1 first split to tuluic and tam-knda then later tam-knda further split up, in the beginning tuluic was classified with CD as it is that different from tam-knda
 * > The use of -.lu as a plural marker in the last two examples is found only in Tu.lu in South Dravidian I. This was one of the reasons to class Tulu with Central Dravidian earlier. AleksiB 1945 (talk) 04:00, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
 * You persistently restore the inaccurate text "In his book 'The Dravidian languages' Krishnamurti clearly call out that Tamil-Kannada is South Dravidian I" and refer to p 470 of his 2003 monograph (btw you should avoid creating a mess with your raw citation format, see WP:CITESTYLE). However, Krishnamurti says nothing to that extent on p. 470. You appear to misinterpret his statement "Apparently some words from Sanskrit were borrowed at a common undivided stage of Tamil and Kannada, i.e. Proto-South Dravidian I". Krishnamurti discusses the split data between Kannada and Tamil, but nowhere equates Tamil-Kannada with South Dravidian I in its entirety. –Austronesier (talk) 18:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)
 * "TrUtHJan" is not interested in a genuine discussion based on evidence. Look at his edits, like switching Telugu-Kannada to Kannada-Telugu script for example, it shows his bias. Roshan Dickwella (talk) 21:26, 18 April 2024 (UTC)