Social:Kota language (India)
| Kota | |
|---|---|
| Kō mānt | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Nilgiri Hills |
| Ethnicity | Kotas |
Native speakers | 930 (2001 census)[1] |
Dravidian
| |
| Tamil script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kfe |
| Glottolog | kota1263[2] |
Kota is a language of the Dravidian languages with about 900 native speakers in the Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu state, India . It is spoken mainly by the tribal Kota people (India). In the late 1800s, the native speaking population was about 1,100.[3] In 1990, the population was only 930, out of an ethnic population of perhaps 1,400, despite the great increase in the population of the area.[1] The language is 'critically endangered' due to the greater social status of neighbouring languages.[4] The Kota language may have originated from Tamil-Kannada and is closely related to Toda language. The Kota population is about 2500. The origin of the name Kota is derived from the Dravidian root word 'Ko' meaning Mountain.[5][6]
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long | |
| High | i | iː | u | uː | ||
| Mid | e | eː | o | oː | ||
| Low | a | aː | ||||
Kota notably doesn't have central vowels like the other Nilgiri languages, Toda, the closest language also has it.
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Post-alv./ Palatal |
Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɳ | ŋ | |||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t̪ | t | ʈ | t͡ʃ | k |
| voiced | b | d̪ | d | ɖ | d͡ʒ | ɡ | |
| Fricative | s | ||||||
| Tap | ɾ | ɽ | |||||
| Approx. | central | ʋ | j | ||||
| lateral | l | ɭ | |||||
[s] and [z] occur in free variation with /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/. [ʂ] occurs as an allophone of /s/ before retroflexes.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Kota at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Kota (India)". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/kota1263.
- ↑ Caldwell, Robert. 1875. A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Or South-Indian Family of Languages. London: Trübner & Company
- ↑ Prema, S. n.d. "Status of Dravidian Tribal Languages in Kerala" University of Kerala
- ↑ Raju, Jamuna (30 June 2012). "The Kota Tribes of Nilgiris". http://hellomyexpert.com/breekschatter/summer2012/2012/06/30/the-kotas-jamuna-raju-89/.
- ↑ Narasimhacharya, R. (1990). History of Kannada Language. New Delhi, Madras: Asian Educational Services. pp. 37. ISBN 9788120605596. https://books.google.com/books?id=yhXRDSgBuL0C&q=kota.
- ↑ Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003). The Dravidian languages (null ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 53. ISBN 978-0-511-06037-3.
Further reading
- Emeneau, M.B. 1944. Kota Texts[yes|permanent dead link|dead link}}] California: University of California Press.
- Emeneau, M. B. (April 2000). "Some Origins of Kota -j(-)". Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (2): 231–233. doi:10.2307/605026.
- Emeneau, M. B. (June 1969). "Onomatopoetics in the Indian Linguistic Area". Language 45 (2): 274–299. doi:10.2307/411660.
- Emeneau, M. B. (24 December 2009). "Proto-Dravidian *c-: Toda t-". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 15 (1): 98–112. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00087280.
External links
- Olympic Song Practice Session in Kota Language & Style
- The hare in the moon and eclipses of the moon
- Kota Swadesh List
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