Language and culture profile
Toda (தோதா)
Introduction
The Todas are an indigenous pastoral tribe of the Nīlgiri Hills of southern India, mainly concentrated in Tamil Nadu. According to the 2011 census they have a population of about 3011 and while their population is quite low, one of their leaders, Vasamalli says “Though our community is very small in number, we cannot say our dialect is endangered. It had been surviving throughout our ancestor’s time and it will till Nilgiri exists”. They speak Toda language which is a Dravidian language known for its many fricatives and trills. While their language has been promoted through the tribal research centre, there are very few recordings and external research done on this language is mostly concentrated in the 1980’s.
The Toda language originated from Toda-Kota subgroup of South Dravidian and is classified as small but stable in usage. It has a unique phonology that is not present in the neighbouring languages as well as are universally rare.
History and culture
The language has been hypothesised to be influenced by a pre-Dravidian substratum of languages due to its unique phonology not found in any of the neighbouring languages.
A new study by Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru researchers shows the community was already settled there 3,500-4,000 years ago when a climate change occurred in southern India.
Of all the tribes of South India, the Todas of the Nilgiris remain as the most widely studied ethnic group till date, owing to their unique physical characteristics (such as tall stature, fair complexion, pointed and long nose), culture traits (such as half-barrel shaped huts, buffalo-centred culture, lacto-vegetarianism, weaving of embroidered shawl, the putkuli) and linguistic features (such as the phonetic correspondences of proto-Dravidian […], presence of residual suffixes and rich vocabulary of buffalo terms). However, the people of the Toda community still feel and express that both their culture and language have not yet been understood correctly and completely.
Toda religion is marked by polytheism, as they believe in an indefinitely large number of spirits, gods and goddesses. Of these, two are most important – Teikirzi and On. The former one is the goddess who has over-all command on the people and land. The latter is a male deity, supposed to be the brother of the former, who rules the world of the dead. Transmigration of soul is typically present among the Toda. The soul is indestructible and often takes rebirth. Toda religion features the sacred buffalo; consequently, rituals are performed for all dairy activities as well as for the ordination of dairymen-priests. The religious and funerary rites provide the social context in which complex poetic songs about the cult of the buffalo are composed and chanted. Fraternal polyandry in traditional Toda society was fairly common; however, this practice has now largely been abandoned as was female infanticide.
Phonology
The language has a relatively high vowel and consonant count, with 16 vowels and 38 consonants. Omniglot states that Toda is written with a version of the Tamil alphabet (couldn’t find data on how the script is actually modified)
It has fricatives in seven places of articulation, including 4 sibilants. It has 4 laterals, two voiced and two voiceless, both voiceless laterals are fricatives. It has three rhotics, including a dental and post alveolar trill. The UCLA phonetics lab has recordings of these sounds. This is what the phonological chart looks like.
(I could only find large scale recordings of the language on the global recordings network and it’s translations of Christian teachings, so check it out if you want to hear how it sounds: link.)
Grammar
It is an inflectional language. There is no gender distinction in nouns. Nouns take two numbers: singular and plural. There are 10 cases. The Toda verbs contain both transitive and intransitive verbs and are classified on those basis into 4 classes. The conjugation system begins with two types of stems: S1 or the simple stem, and S2 or the secondary stem. S1 is the basis for all verb conjugation and S2 form the basis for the past and present-future tense. Further it contains a prohibitive, negative, desiderative, voluntative, hortative, permissive and imperative suffixes.
