Indo-Aryan Invasion (focussed discussion)

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Vidyasankar Sundaresan <vsundaresan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>[...] The distinction, at least
> between k and g exists in Tamil speech,

Not really. It just looks that way because so many urban middle class
children are exposed to English and Hindi quite early. Those who aren't
regularly follow Tamil rules on voicing. As my wife once complained,
they will pronounce her name as `ladaa'. If you want to know original
Tamil phonology, you should visit the villages in the heartland of TN,
not talk to middleclass people in Madras, or totally wrongly, consult
those who grew up outside TN.

This phenomenon can also be observed aomng women of the previous
generations. In the singing of bhajans in the group I have gone to
the rarer names and Sanskrit words will get the same treatment.

Regards
-Nath