Malto

A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family

“…These languages range from being spoken by small language communities (Vishavan, 150 speakers), by far larger communities (Kodava, 200 000 speakers), to global languages with literary histories that go back hundreds of years: Malayalam, 33 million speakers; Kannada, 38 million speakers; Tamil, 61 million speakers; and Telugu, 74 million speakers. Dravidian languages have been written for over 2000 years [ 3 ], [ 4 , p. 4], [ 5 ] have influenced Vedic Sanskrit [ 6 ], may have been a part in the formation of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, including even larger languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi [ 7 , pp. 35–42], and are spoken by over 200 million people today [ 4 , p. 4 ].…”

“…Neither the geographical origin of the Dravidian language homeland nor its exact dispersal through time are known. Krishnamurti [ 7 , p. 5 ] suggests that the Dravidians were ‘natives of the Indian subcontinent who were scattered throughout the country by the time the Aryans entered India around 1500 BCE’. There is linguistic evidence for a much wider dispersal of the Dravidian languages than found today.…”

“…However, the multi-lingual situation is not simply one where a prestigious state language is learned in school by speakers of smaller languages—Kolami speakers, for instance, may speak Gondi, while most Yeruva speakers are trilingual in both Kodava and Kannada. Even the smaller languages are characterized by their own dialect variation (Gondi [ 3 ], Malto [ 5 ], Ollari Gadba [ 15 ], Koya [ 16 ], Tulu [ 17 ], Yeruva [ 18 ] and Badaga [ 19 ]).…”