Dravidian
Sign in to savelanguage family mostly of southern India
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Dravidian refers to a major family of languages spoken primarily in southern India, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. These languages are important to understanding the cultural and linguistic diversity of India, as they represent one of the world's oldest and most distinct language families, with millions of speakers and rich literary traditions.
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The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, parts of North India, Bangladesh and Nepal, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets in Afghanistan and Iran.
The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are (in descending order) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions. Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava. Together with several smaller languages such as Gondi, these languages cover the southern part of India and the northeast of Sri Lanka, and account for the overwhelming majority of speakers of Dravidian languages. Malto and Kurukh are spoken in isolated pockets in eastern India. Kurukh is also spoken in parts of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. Brahui is mostly spoken in the Balochistan region of Pakistan, Iranian Balochistan, Afghanistan and around the Marw oasis in Turkmenistan. During the British colonial period, Dravidian speakers were sent as indentured labourers to Southeast Asia, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, the Caribbean, and East Africa. There are more-recent Dravidian-speaking diaspora communities in the Middle East, Europe, North America and Oceania.