While comparing the Tamil spoken by the Iyengars and Mudaliars settled in Bangalore , it is worthwhile exploring the location in which both the communities live and their broad socio-cultural background in a more systematic and detailed manner.  Moreover, a micro-level analysis covering every minute details can show useful results on the reasons why the two communities fall apart of certain respects though they are in similar language contact situation.  At the outset although the two communities live in the same linguistic and cultural environment for any centuries, it is quite interesting to observe certain radical differences as well as some commonness.

 

3.1. Background of the Informants

            The informants belonging to Iyengars and Mudaliars have been selected after careful scrutiny to fulfill certain conditions, such as:

1)         They should have settled for a minimum period of two generations in Bangalore

2)         The informants were selected mainly from two age groups, viz., (a) younger generation [age below 35] and (b) older generation [age above 40].

 

This selectional procedure was to have a time gap for a syncronic analysis of the speech variety of the two communities at a given period in order to find out the nature and extent of linguistic convergence or variation experienced in their respective speech varieties owing to the constant influence of the dominant contact language (Kannada).

 

If we see the migrating history of the two communities, one can find that both the communities have migrated to Bangalore almost at the same period.  Also, they had come from different parts of Tamilnadu mainly from Tirunelveli, Arcot, Madras and Tanjore districts.  It was found that Mudaliars are able to speak, read and write Tamil fluently.  Moreover, even from the beginning they are spread over the length and breadth of the city.  Though there are certain areas in the city where they are found in concentrated pockets, like Malleswaram, Ulsoor, etc.  Malleswaram has mainly Iyengars and in Ulsoor and generally mixed Tamil population live which includes Mudaliars also.  Most of the Iyengars cannot read and write Tamil though they have similar facilities as that of Mudaliars, for the retention of their ancestral language.  This can be attributed to the overall attitude towards their mother tongue.

 

It is interesting to note that the opportunities to use Tamil is not making any considerable impact on the Tamil used by both the communities.  For example, it is not correct to say that those who stay in concentrated Tamil localities having the possibilities of greater in group contact with the Tamil speaking population speak pure and less influenced language than their counterparts who stay in sporadic localities with less chance to mix with Tamil population for day-to-day interaction; rather the purity of the mother tongue is directly proportionate to the following sociolinguistic features, via.,

1)      Language loyalty towards the mother tongue.

2)      Language attitude towards the mother tongue.

3)      Language use particularly the opportunity to read the Tamil literature including magazines from Tamilnadu.

A brief discussion of these three points follows:

 

1)  Language Loyalty:

            Iyengars in general have given up theri mother tongue for Kannada.  This is all the more true of the Iyengars from the higher socio-economic strata who prefer to claim that they are Kannadigas rather than Tamilians.  But, some of the older generation still use Tamil in the family domain though the response of the younger generation to the Tamil of their parents is either in English or in Kannada.  Among the lower and middle socio-economic groups also, almost a similar situation prevails.  But, when compared to the former group (i.e., higher socio-economic class)  the latter two groups are trying to maintain Tamil more.  Still the use of Tamil is dwindling day-by-day.  This situation is mainly due to the fact that most of the Iyengars feel that they should send their children to the Kannada medium or English medium schools.  Further they do not encourage their children to study Tamil even at the home privately, as they have identified their economic interest with that of the Kannadigas for which they have to compete with the local Kannadigas.

 

2)  Language Attitude:

            The zero attitude towards the mother tongue led Iyengars to the total linguistic as well as cultural assimilation with the local Kannada language and culture.  Two socio-political reasons can be attributed for such kind of assimilation.

            (i)  Positive attitude towards Tamil and its development can lead the community, no where as long as they are in Bangalore .  Also, they have no intention to return to Tamilnadu, since most of the Iyengars are employed in various private or public organizations in and around Bangalore .  The language used for day-today interaction is either Kannada or English.  Therefore, the use of Tamil is highly restricted to limited settings only.

            (ii)  Recent socio-political development towards the state language policy further accelerated this process of the community for not identifying themselves with Tamil speaking population, even though the local Kannada population continue to identify the Iyengars as Tamilians.  Thus, it is evident that the total acceptance of the migrant community by the dominant community is not effected completely in spite of the efforts of the migrant community (Iyengars).

 

3)  Language Use:

            It is clear from the preceding sections (1) and (2) that the loss of language loyalty and zero attitude towards the mother tongue obviously lead the community towards the lesser language use.  As a result, they are not very particular about reading the newspaper and other magazines written in Tamil though they have ample opportunities in Bangalore to read the Tamil literature from Tamilnadu.  These are the main contributing factors for the extent of admixture and convergent features found in their Tamil speech.

 

            On the contrary, if we examine and compare the Mudaliars community with Iyengars, we can observe that Mudaliars are just the reverse in every respect.  Such radical change in their behaviour may be viewed in the perspective of their language attitude and occupation.  As against Iyengars, most of the Mudaliars are engaged in private business.  Those who are in the private business are not very much concerned about the socio-political pressures exerted on them for the use of the dominant language.  However, most of the Mudaliars are having good knowledge in Kannada and some persons even write poems and novels in Kannada.  In spite of that they are having total positive attitude towards Tamil.  In many houses, one can find that they are subscribing to at least a couple of Tamil magazines in addition to Kannada magazines.  Also, among the older generation most of them have studied through Tamil medium or English medium.  Even if they had their education through English or Kannada medium the interesting factor is that they have studied Tamil privately at home and could attain the minimum knowledge in Tamil.  This knowledge in Tamil is further developed through their constant contact with the other members of the community during the time of religious or cultural functions or through the Tamil association.  The utilization of Tamil magazines and their positive attitude towards their mother tongue has definitely reflected on their language.  This is evident from the type of Tamil they use.

 

            As far as the younger generation is concerned, they have certain disparity with the elders.  That is, owing to the recent socio-political developments in the state in favour of the dominant langauge, most of the chidlren are studying either through Kannada medium or through English medium.  As a result, the numbers in Tamil medium schools are becoming lesser.  However, these children are also taught Tamil privately at home.  In addition to that, the Tamil Sangam in Bangalore plays a remarkable role in the areas of maintaining Tamil by the Tamil native speakers settled in Bangalore .  Though Tamil Sangam has members from all the communities found in Bangalore , such as Iyengars, Mudaliars, Padayachi, Christians, etc., we can find Mudaliars in general are taking active step in its growth and possess some key posts in the Sangam.  As against the active membership by the Mudaliars in the Sangam Iyengars are not very much active in its activities.  However, they are only the passive members of the Sangam.  In addition, to this Sangam’s multifarious activities, such as teaching Kannada to non-Kannadigas, conducting dancing classes, lending Tamil and Kannada books, they are also conducting Tamil classes for those who do not know to read and write Tamil.  This facility is extended mainly to Tamils who have settled in Bangalore and have lost their mother tongue.  But, very less Iyengars are found taking this free course offered by the Sangam.  On the contrary Mudaliars and other Tamil communities settled in Bangalore are utilizing this opportunity very much in case they do not know to read and write Tamil.

 

3.2.  Contact With Tamilnadu

            Though Tamilnadu border is only a few kilometers away from Bangalore City (Hosur is only 40 Km . Away) and the capital of Tamilnadu is only a four to five hours journey from Bangalore, it is surprising to note that Iyengars in general are having less contact or even no contact at all with the motherland.  On the contrary Mudaliars keep a close contact with Tamilnadu.  Iyengars claim that though their relatives are living in Madras , they have a very little contact with them.  But, in certain cases marriages have been performed between Iyengars settled in Bangalore and Iyengars living in Madras .  After such marriages the Tamilnadu Iyengars always complain about the Bangalore Iyengar’s ignorance of Tamil.  But, it is observed that this problem is easily solved by the concerned person by studying Tamil.  As opposed to Iyengars, Mudaliars are having constant contact with the mainland.  Marriage relationship with the Mudaliars living in Madras is also maintained quite frequently.  Not only that, for the purpose of business, many Mudaliars often visit Madras .  As stated earlier, in section 2.1. of the chapter on Mudaliar’s Tamil, even now one can find the names of Mudaliar’s house as ‘Arcot house’, etc.  This clearly indicates the place from which they migrated long ago and also their attachment towards their ancestral place.  In spite of their positive attitude towards their own language, they are not against studying the dominant regional language; rather most of them are bilinguals in Kannada and Tamil.  Moreover, both the communities ae well aware that their knowledge of Kannada is essential for the betterment of the community as a whole, since they are in a dominant language situation where the use of Kannada in all the domains is essential and without it once own existence is questioned.

 

3.3.  Religious Reading

            We have seen earlier that Iyengars occasionally use Tamil in the family domain, but with greater influence of Kannada.  As far as the religious reading habits of Iyengars are concerned, they continue to read the traditional religious book na : la : yira divya prabandam, but in Kannada script whereas even today this religious text written in Tamil is being used by their counterparts living in Tamilnadu.  So, it is clear that the Iyengars read Tamil in Kannada script.  Further, it is learnt that most of them do not have word-to-word comprehension of Tamil scriptures written in Kannada script.

 

3.4. Phonological Level

3.4.1.  Devoicing

            At the phonological level both the communities are maintaining intervocalic voiceless sounds as against the Tamil phonological system.  Though both the communities tend to use intervocalically voiceless sounds, the frequency of such voiceless nature of the sound in Mudaliar’s speech is much less when compared to BIT.  Also, while speaking formally to a Tamilian or in semi-formal occasions, Mudaliars clearly use voiced sound intervocalically.  Only when they are speaking fast in a more informal situation, voiceless sound is uttered.  Moreover, the words in which such voiceless sounds occur are generally borrowed lexical items from Kannada or common vocabulary items to both Kannada and Tamil.  As explained above, though Mudaliar’s Tamil strictly fit into the frame of BIT in this respect, the distinction maintained by the Mudaliar’s in choosing the voiced variety in intervocalic position similar to Tamil while speaking to a Tamilian shows that they are quite aware of even such minute details.  This shows the impact of their exposure to Tamil writings as against the Iyengars who are generally not aware of the Tamil writing system.

 

            Other phonological feature common both to MT and BIT are the presence of word initial voicing.  In both the varieties of speech, in addition to the words common to both Tamil and Kannada, certain other words are also used with word initial voicing.

                                                                        BIT

            Tamil               Kannada                     BIT                              Gloss

            ka:ranam          ka:rana             ga:rana             ‘reason’

            pu:cci               bu:cci                           bu:cci                           ‘insect’

           

                                                            Mudaliar Tamil

            Tamil               Kannada                     MT                               Gloss

            ta:ndu               da:ttu                            da:ndu              ‘to cross over’

            pu:cci               bu:cci                           bu:cci                           ‘insect’

 

            In MT, word final a is lengthened in the interrogative pronoun enna.  This is not observed in BIT.  Tamilnadu Tamil does not show similar type of lengthening.  This particular phonological feature is peculiar to MT, because in Kannada too this is not observed.  Because of the lengthening of this vowel, the intonation of MT considerably changes especially while in a sentence where interrogative pronoun is used.  Owing to the presence of long vowel at the end of this interrogative pronoun,  more stress is placed at the vowel which results into the change in the overall intonation pattern of the sentence as against Tamilnadu Tamil.

            The impact of reading habits in Tamil and their non-exposure to the standard colloquial Tamil of Tamilnadu have led the Mudaliars to observe certain features which are used exclusively in writing and not available in the spoken Tamil.  In short, in certain places, the diglossic situation in Tamil is not properly adhered to by the Mudaliars.  For instance, the written form of words ending with the diphthong ai is by using an orthographic symbol equivalent to ai.  Whereas, while speakign only the front lower mid open vowel E is used.  It is observed that Mudaliars always use the written form.

 

            Another interesting area to distinguish both the speech varieties is the availability of the short mid central unrounded vowel «.  This vowel is not found in the Tamilnadu Tamil whereas the presence of this vowel is attested in the Kannada spoken in Bangalore .  In the speech variety of Iyengars this vowel is found in the word initial position and occurs frequently.  It displaces mainly the front unrounded vowels a and e of Tamil in the word initial position.

                        Tamil               BIT                  Gloss

                        an*ge               «n*ge                        ‘there’

                        epdi                  «pditta           ‘what kind’

                        enakku             «nakku           ‘for me’

            In MT this vowel is not observed.  The pronunciation of these words that too nouns from Kannada.  Whereas, in Iyenagar’s speech it is observed that in addition to many lexical borrowings Kannada verbs and nouns are also borrowed.  Also, in some cases Tamil verb roots take Kannada inflection and vice versa.

                                                            Mudaliar Tamil

1)      gili       ku:ndule  irukku

parrot cage(loc.) there

‘parrot is in the cage’

2)      anda bu:cciye       pudi

that   insect(acc.)  catch

‘catch that insect’

           

            In the above examples taken from the speech samples from Mudaliars, it is seen that the lexical items, viz., giļi and bu:cci are borrowed from Kannada and this type of lexical inclusion is not so frequent when compared to BIT.

                                                             BIT

1)      ava etru

she tall

‘she is tall’

 

2)      paţsi en tale me : le ha : riddu

bird  my head over  flew

‘bird flew over my head’

 

3)      duţţu va : pas kudu

money return give

‘return (my) money’

 

4)      marattunnu eleyella viļRina

tree(acc.)          leaves all  fail

‘leaves are falling from the tree’

 

5)      na:nu onye              adittini

I           you(acc.)  beat (P.T)

‘I will beat you'

 

            In the above mentioned sentences, the underlined forms are borrowed from Kannada.  In sentence (5) the verb adi, basically a Tamil verb has taken the termination –ini from Kannada.  Such kind of inflectional inclusion in BIT reveals the extent of change taken place in the Iyengar’s speech.

 

3.5.  Cases

            The extent of language contact has been clearly visualized if we examine the different case markers used by the Iyengars which are in contrast with the pattern of use by Mudaliars.  MT strictly adheres the use of case markers as found in Tamilnadu.  In other words, MT uses the similar types of cases used in the Tamilnadu Tamil.  If we examine the BIT, it is possible to observe that in most of the sentences a sort of duality is noticed with regards to the selection of case markers.  That is, BIT uses the case suffixes used in Tamil and Kannada.  The interesting feature is that such selection of case markers are arbitrary and used by a single speaker at different times without any conditioning factor related to environment or to different sociolinguistic settings.  Following are some of the case suffixes used in BIT.

 

Sl.

No.      Cases                   Kannada          Tamilnadu Tamil            BIT      Mudaliar Tamil

 

1.         Accusative           -annu                     -ai                          -ye                  -ai

2.         Locative              -alli                        -il                           -le                    -il

3.         Dative                 -kke, -ige               -kk(u)                    -kku,  -ge         -kk(u)

4.         Ablative               -inda                     -lerundu                  -ina, -anu          -lirundu

5.         Genitive                -a                             -udaya              -de,  da            -udaya

 

            From the above Table it is evident that MT is closely following Tamilnadu Tamil in the usage of case suffixes, whereas a considerable similarities are attested between BIT and Kannada.  Also, the usage of dative case is in a more fluid state in BIT obviously owing to the contact and influence of the dominant language.

 

3.6.  Negation

            More complicated nature of negative formation which is observed in Bit as a result of Kannada influence is not fully attested in MT.  Generally MT observes the Tamilnadu Tamil negative formation.  However, MT also uses the similar structure of negative sentences closer to Kannada and totally unaware in Tamilnadu Tamil.  But, this type of usage in MT following Kannada pattern is context bound, that is, Mudaliars are aware of the negative sentence structure of both Tamilnadu Tamil and their own speech variety.  The selection of the particular sentence structure mainly depends on with whom they interact.  For instance, while the Mudaliars are interacting with Tamil native speakers from Tamilnadu, they are Tamil pattern and while they are taking to their own community people the sentence structure follows the negative sentence pattern closer to Kannada.  This type of conditional usage is not at all observed among Iyengars.  As explained earlier, this type of context bound usage explicitly states two things, namely, (a) exposure to Tamil writing system and (b) the community’s competence over the system.  As far as the Iyengars are concerned, though they are also having ample chances to learn Tamil writing system, they are totally neglecting to learn.  This type of total ignorance led to the extent of convergent features from the dominant contact language. 

 

            The type of negative construction observed both in BIT and in MT which is not available in Tamilnadu Tamil but present in Kannada can be attributed to the influence of Kannada.  For examples:

1)      na:n*ga innu pa:ttille

                     past participle + negative

                     ‘we have not seen yet’

 

            2)    ave ne:RRu vandille

                    past participle + negative

                   ‘he did not come yesterday’

 

            In the above constructions, Tamilnadu Tamil uses pa:kkale and varale which are formed by the addition of negative marker with infinitive form.  Among Mudaliars speech both these forms are present whereas BIT has only the negative construction formed by past participle + negative.

 

3.7.  Conclusion

            The remarkable deviation between the Tamil used by Mudaliars and Iyengars settled in Bangalore is clearly attributed to the respective communities’ attitude towards their mother tongue.  It is evident from the present study that Mudaliars are maintaining Tamil in all the domains and they have a strong positive attitude towards Tamil.  As opposed to Mudaliars, Iyengars are having neutral attitude towards their mother tongue and as a result their language has experienced more linguistic assimilation towards the dominant language.  Though Mudaliars have retained and maintained their mother tongue to a greater extent, the present socio-political pressures exerted on the linguistic minorities and the compulsory use of Kannada in different areas in the state have made a considerable impact on the community as a whole.  Thus they are in a dichotomy between the maintenance of their own language Tamil on the one hand and the threat to total assimilation towards the dominant language on the other.  This is evident from the fact that the numerical strength of the students offering to go to Tamil medium schools are decreasing year by year.  However, at this stage it is not possible to say on that direction the speech variety of Mudaliars move because of their positive attitude towards their mother tongue.