Kanikkaran language

Kanikkaran, also known as Kani, is a Dravidian language spoken by about 19,000 Kanikkar tribals in southern India.^[1] 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."^[2]

Kanikkaran
கணிக்காரன்/കണ്ണിക്കാരൻ
Native to	India
Region	Tamil Nadu, Kanyakumari
Ethnicity	Kanikkaran
Native speakers	19,000 (2007)[1]
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

Phonology

Vowels

Kanikkaran has 5 vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/. It demonstrates contrastive vowel length.^[2]

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.^[2]

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").^[2]