Kanikkaran language

Kanikkaran
கணிக்காரன்/കണ്ണിക്കാരൻ
Native to	India
Region	Tamil Nadu, Kanyakumari
Ethnicity	Kanikkaran
Native speakers	19,000 (2007)
Language family	Dravidian Southern Southern I Tamil–Kannada Tamil–Kota Tamil–Toda Tamil–Irula Tamil–Kodava–Urali Tamil–Malayalam Malayalamoid Kanikkaran
Early forms	Old Tamil Middle Tamil
Writing system	Tamil script, Malayalam script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kev
Glottolog	kani1275

Kanikkaran, also known as Kani, is a Dravidian language spoken by about 19,000 Kanikkar tribals in southern India. 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."

Phonology

Vowels

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

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.

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 (go or going or let's go) and vārā (will come, or "see you").