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Language Lineage

South Dravidian

Krishnamurti's grouping of South-Central Dravidian (Telugu, Gondi) with South Dravidian I (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu), on shared changes in the vowels and in verb and pronoun morphology.

c. 2nd millennium BCE – presentSouthern and south-central India
On this page
  1. Origins
  2. Four Written Traditions
  3. Where its languages are spoken
  4. Turning points
  5. Contested classifications

01

Origins

South Dravidian takes in all four of the great literary Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam) and more than 90 per cent of Dravidian speakers. Krishnamurti argued that South-Central Dravidian, the branch of Telugu and Gondi, shares an ancestor with South Dravidian I, the branch of Tamil and Kannada. Others see South-Central as closer to the Central languages, or as a bridge between them. That alternative appears on the tree as a dotted arc between Central and South-Central.

By the last centuries BCE, South Dravidian speakers were living in the kingdoms of the far south, and their languages begin to appear in inscriptions and poetry.

02

Four Written Traditions

All four of India's large Dravidian literary languages belong to this branch, and each built its own grammatical tradition. Tamil is the exception in having an early grammar, the Tolkāppiyam, that owes little to Sanskrit models. The others were described later, by scholars trained in Sanskrit grammar: Keśirāja's Śabdamaṇidarpaṇa (13th century) for Kannada, and the Līlātilakam (14th century), written in Sanskrit, for the mixed Malayalam–Sanskrit literary style of Kerala. Telugu grammarians likewise wrote their early grammars in Sanskrit.

All four scripts come from southern forms of Brahmi, but they developed separately. Kannada and Telugu scripts stayed close to each other, while Tamil script adapted Brahmi with a reduced set of letters suited to Tamil sounds, and Malayalam script developed out of the Grantha script used for Sanskrit in the Tamil country.

One legacy of these traditions is diglossia, a wide gap between the written standard and everyday speech. In Telugu, reformers led by Gidugu Venkata Ramamurthy campaigned from the early 20th century for writing in the modern spoken language. Tamil still keeps a formal written register that differs markedly in pronunciation and grammar from ordinary speech.

The smaller South Dravidian languages, Gondi and Kui among them, have no comparable tradition. Most are written, if at all, in the script of the regional language.

On the map

Where its languages are spoken

Singapore
Spoken todayShading marks whole countries, not the regions within them.
  1. IndiaSouth-Central Dravidian c. 87 million · Tulu c. 1.8 million · Kannada c. 44 million · Tamil-Malayalam c. 104 million
  2. Sri LankaTamil-Malayalam c. 5 million
  3. MalaysiaTamil-Malayalam c. 2 million
  4. SingaporeTamil-Malayalam

Figures are rough first-language estimates, rounded, from censuses and Ethnologue. Counts for small or scattered communities are especially uncertain.

Rings along the limb

Turning points

Oldest first.

  1. Splitc. 1100 BCEContested

    South-Central and South Dravidian I part

    South Dravidian divides into South-Central Dravidian (Telugu, Gondi, Kui) and South Dravidian I (Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu). Krishnamurti's date is approximate, and the grouping itself is disputed.

    Sources (1)
    • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Outside the tree

Contested classifications

These disagreements may never be settled. Each position is given with its grounds, and no side is declared correct.

  • Minority position

    South-Central with Central

    Telugu, Gondi and Kui belong with the Central Dravidian languages, not with Tamil and Kannada

    Would join · Central Dravidian + South-Central Dravidian

    Evidence for

    South-Central and Central languages are neighbours across central India and share a number of features. Some earlier classifications, and some lexicostatistical studies, put them together.

    Evidence against

    Krishnamurti identified innovations, such as changes in the vowel system and in the forms of pronouns and verbs, that South-Central shares only with South Dravidian I. Features shared with Central Dravidian can be explained as contact between neighbours. Most recent classifications follow Krishnamurti.

    Sources (2)
    • Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju. 2003. The Dravidian Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Kolipakam, Vishnupriya, et al. 2018. A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family. Royal Society Open Science 5.