Indian and other Asian languages listed in ISO 639: feedbacksought

[Peter Claus]

VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
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          John Peterson, University of Munich, Germany
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Dear John,

For the state of Karnataka, India, there are at least three major
languages left off. All have literatures and scholars working in and on
them: Tulu, Badaga, and Kodagu.

Tulu, a Dravidian language, in particular, has a large number of
speakers and a large amount of scholarship devoted to it. It also has at
least two phonemes which are not shared with other Dravidian languages.
There is a great need for a standard transliteration scheme since much
of the scholarship includes a large amount of transcribed oral textual
material and many people (myself included) would like to put translated
text on the internet.

Kodagu, at present, has a smaller literature and a smaller number of
scholars working on it, but enough for consideration as a significant
Indian language.

Badaga may not have its own literature, but there are scholars working
on this language and there are oral texts which have been collected and
transliterated.

Toda, Kota, and Kuruba (maybe several separate languages), found along
the border of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, should also be included, since
their phonemic systems are distinctive and there is a fair amount of
scholarship on them, both past and present.

Please contact Ulrich Demmer (t45 at ix.urz.uni-heidelberg.de) or Gail
Coelho (gail at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu) for the internal differentiation
within the Kuruba group of languages.

Peter Claus