On Sat, Sep 7, 2013 at 9:38 AM, SS <cybers...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 2013-09-06 at 10:43 -0700, Thaths wrote: >> What is to explain? For populations to exist side by side exchanging >> cuisines, culture, genes and words is self explanatory and not >> profound. >> One sees Tamil and Malayalam blending in Palghat. Telugu and Tamil >> blending >> in Tirupathi. There are many more such examples. >> > Tsk tsk Thaths. I believe you are on the right track here. Would you be > able to hazard a guess (or state from any extensive reading you may have > done) as to how long the populations have existed side by side and > influenced each other?
Tamil & Telugu are epigraphically attested (in Asokan edicts) neighbours since at least about 200BC, but likely at least 500 years before that, so you're looking at a contnuum of about 2500 years. Tamil and Malayalam were basically dialects of the same language till about 1000 AD. But Palakad is a special case - apart from being a fusion point, like Kanyakumari, the Palakad dialect was heavily influenced by the migration of Brahmins from the Chola country between the 14th & 18th centuries. It preserves some very interesting snippets of the Vaisnava Paribhasha from that time that have been lost among Tamil Brahmins. > >> That said, linguists use tools more powerful than anecdotal books >> published >> in 1910 to support their case. > I think we could have an interesting discussion here. The subject is a > minefield and worthy of some debate, if it opens more eyes about what > linguists have actually been doing rather than the run of the mill > indignant responses that appear with boring regularity. Linguistics is > full of angry people ready to fight. I would be happy to tell you what I > think about any powerful linguistic tools that you may care to list. If > you consult Uncle Google for that, I would be equally happy to see if > you can come up with references that I have not looked at yet and judge > them for myself. This page contains a good list of approaches linguists use to understand words: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_linguistics . But if you really want to get deep into their application in practice, read some of Michael Witzel's published work (mainly because his work is on Sanskrit, which should be more accessible).
