lingvo.wikisort.org - Language

Kanikkaran is a Dravidian language spoken by about 19,000 Kanikkar tribals in southern India.[1] They dwell in forests and hills of Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts of Kerala, and Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu. It is called malambhāsha, or "hill-language."[2]

Kanikkaran
கணிக்காரன்/കണ്ണിക്കാരൻ
Native to	India
Region	Tamil Nadu, Kanyakumari
Ethnicity	Kanikkaran
Native speakers	19,000 (2007)[1]
Language family	Dravidian Southern Tamil–Kannada Tamil–Kodagu Tamil–Malayalam Tamil languages Kanikkaran
Writing system	Tamil script, Malayalam script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kev
Glottolog	kani1275

Phonology

Vowels

Kanikkaran has 5 vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/. It demonstrates contrastive vowel length.[2]

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n̪	n	ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p	t̪		ʈ	c	k
	voiced	b	d̪
Approximant		ʋ		l	ɭ	j
Trill				r
Flap				ɾ

They use the phoneme /l̩/ occasionally.

Kanikkaran has transformed words in Malayalam starting with /a/ into /e/. añcu (5) becomes eñcu, ari (rice) becomes ei, arivāḷu (sickle) becomes erivāḷu, aluku (split reed) becomes elakku. It also adds a suffix -in or -n after all noun stems, except for nouns ending with -n in accusative.[2]

Grammar

	singular	plural
1st	ñān	ñāṇkaḷu
2nd	īl	nīṇkaḷu
3rd	avanu/avaḷu	avaru

The language cannot use personal terminations, similar to Old Malayalam. Example: pōvā (will not go) and vārā (will not come).[2]

References

На других языках

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- [en] Kanikkaran language

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[fr] Kanikkaran

Le kanikkaran (Mlym : കണ്ണിക്കാരൻ, Taml : கணிக்காரன்), aussi appelé kani ou malambhaasha (langue des montagnes)[2], est une langue dravidienne parlée par le peuple kanikkar au sud de l'Inde.

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