Toda language
| Toda | |
|---|---|
| tōtā | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Nilgiri Hills |
|
Native speakers
|
1,600 (2001 census) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | toda1252 |
Toda is a Dravidian language noted for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. The Toda language may have originated from Old Kannada.
For a Dravidian language, Toda's sixteen vowels is an unusually large number. There are eight vowel qualities, each of which may occur long or short. There is little difference in quality between the long and short vowels, except for /e/, which occurs as [e] when short and as [æː] when long.
Toda has an unusually large number of fricatives and trills. Its seven places of articulation are the most for any Dravidian language. The voiceless laterals are true fricatives, not voiceless approximants; the retroflex lateral is highly unusual among the world's languages.
Voiceless fricatives are allophonically voiced intervocalically in Toda. There are also the invariably voiced fricatives /ʒ, ʐ, ɣ/, though the latter is marginal. The nasals and /r̠, ɽ͡r, j/ are allophonically devoiced or partially devoiced in final position or next to voiceless consonants.
All of these consonants may occur in word-medial and -final position. However, only a restricted set occur initially. These are /p, t̪, k, f, s̪, m, n̠, r̘, l̪, j, w/, in boldface above.
...
Wikipedia