The Dravidian Family of Languages
North India is dominated by languages of the Indo-European Family.
The Dravidian Family of languages is the very difficult sounding languages of
South India. These include the major languages Tamil (spoken in the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu, northern Sri Lanka, Singapore and Malaysia), Malayalam (Kerala
state), Kannada (from Karnataka) and Telugu (Andhra Pradesh). Each has its own
script which has the curved appearance typical of South Indian writing.
Pockets of these languages are found in central India (Gondi, Kurukh, Kui),
western India (Tulu) and in the Indus Valley of southern Pakistan (Brahui).
Elamite, a language known from inscriptions in Western Iran is now thought
to have been Dravidian. These languages are distinguished by retroflex constants,
which have been borrowed by the Indic Branch of the Indo-European Languages.
These constants give Indian languages their distinctive sound and are formed with the
tongue rolled up to the top of the mouth. The languages are agglutinating with up to 8
noun cases.
The languages once covered all of the Indian sub-continent and originated in
the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan).
The Austro-Asiatic Family of Languages
The Austro-Asiatic Family is a scattered group of languages in Asia.
They are found from eastern India to Vietnam. The family once covered a larger area
until Tai language speakers migrated south from southern China.
The Viet-Muong Branch includes Vietnamese and Muong (both languages of
Vietnam). The former is written in a form of the Latin script.
The Mon-Khmer Branch includes Khmer (the language of Cambodia written
in a derivative of South Indian scripts), Mon (once a major language of a Thai
empire; now spoken in parts of Burma, Thailand, China and Vietnam), Palaung (a
tribal language in the hills of Burma and Thailand), So (Laos and Thailand),
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