Badaga language
| Badaga | |
|---|---|
| படகா/ಬಡಗ | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Tamil Nadu, The Nilgiris |
| Ethnicity | Badaga |
Native speakers | 133,500 (2011 census)[1] |
| Tamil script[citation needed] | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
bfq |
| Glottolog |
bada1257[2] |
Badaga is a southern Dravidian language spoken by approximately 135,000 people in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu.[3] It is known for its retroflex vowels. It has similarities with neighbouring Kannada language as Hale Kannada, and has now been identified as an independent language by a French linguistic scholar, Christiane Pilot-Raichoor.[4] The word Badaga, meaning "northerner", refers to the Badaga language as well as the Badaga indigenous people who speak it.[5]
Phonology[edit]
Badaga has five vowels qualities, /i e a o u/, each of which may be long or short and until the 1930s were contrastively half and fully retroflexed, for a total of 30 vowel phonemes.[6] Current speakers only distinguish retroflection for a few vowels.[7]
| IPA | Gloss |
|---|---|
| /noː/ | disease |
| /po˞˞ː/ | scar |
| /mo˞e˞/ | sprout |
| /a˞e˞/ | tiger's den |
| /ha˞ːsu/ | to spread out |
| /ka˞˞ːʃu/ | to remove |
| /i˞ːu˞˞/ | seven |
| /hu˞˞ːj/ | tamarind |
| /be˞ː/ | bangle |
| /be˞˞ː/ | banana |
| /huj/ | to strike |
| /hu˞j/ | tamarind |
| /u˞˞j/ | chisel |
Note on transcription: rhoticity ⟨◌˞⟩ indicates half-retroflexion; doubled ⟨◌˞˞⟩ it indicates full retroflexion.
| Bilabial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | ʈ | c | k |
| voiced | b | d | ɖ | ɟ | g | |
| Fricative | v | s | ||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | |||
| Approximant | l | ɻ | j | |||
| Trill | r | |||||
Badaga script[edit]
Several attempts were made at constructing an orthography based on English and Kannada. The earliest printed book using Kannada script was a Christian work, "Anga Kartagibba Yesu Kristana Olleya Suddiya Pustaka" by Basel Mission Press of Mangaluru in 1890.[9]
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List of Books in Kannada Script:[10]
- Anga Kartagibba Yesu Kristana Olleya Suddiya Pustaka
- Jonah
- Mana Kannadi
- Marka Bareda Loka ratchagana kade
- Zion
The Badaga language is also written in the Tamil script.
Dictionary[edit]
The Badaga language is well studied and several Badaga-English Dictionaries have been produced since the latter part of the nineteenth century.[11]
References[edit]
- ^ "Statement 1: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues - 2011". www.censusindia.gov.in. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 2018-07-07.
- ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Badaga". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- ^ Steever, Sanford B. (1998). The Dravidian languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-415-10023-6.
- ^ Thiagarajan, Shantha (4 December 2012). "Badaga language not a dialect of Kannada, claims French linguistic scholar". The Times of India. Retrieved 4 February 2013.
- ^ Hockings, Paul; Pilot-Raichoor, Christiane (1992). A Badada-English Dictionary. Mouton de Gruyter. p. 391. ISBN 978-3110126778.
- ^ Emenau (1931) reports no tokens of /i˞˞/, but suggests this is an accidental gap.
- ^ "Badaga". UCLA Phonetics Lab. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
- ^ "Word List for Badaga". UCLA Phonetics Lab. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
- ^ http://gospelgo.com/q/Badaga%20Bible%20-%20Gospel%20of%20Luke.pdf
- ^ https://archive.org/details/kannadabadagakur00brit
- ^ Paul Hockings, Christiane Pilot-Raichoor (1992). A Badaga-English Dictionary (Reprint ed.). Mouton de Gruyter. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
External links[edit]
 |
Badaga language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator |
- Badaga Social Web Site
- Online community of Badagas worldwide
- Badaga Literature
- Audio recordings in Badaga, with annotations in trilingual format (Badaga, English, French) – transcribed and translated by C. Pilot-Raichoor – site of the Pangloss Collection, CNRS-LACITO
