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So weird. Malabaric is Tamil in this book, which makes no sense. Malayalam with Tamil tinge was more common in southern Kerala but even there the Malayalam woul
by chupchap 3y ago
So weird. Malabaric is Tamil in this book, which makes no sense. Malayalam with Tamil tinge was more common in southern Kerala but even there the Malayalam would be distinct from Tamil.
- huytersd 3y agoWell it’s the 1800s. He dismisses Africa languages as “savage jargon” and then moves on.
- aatharuv 3y agoMalabaric seems to be both Malayalam and Tamil here. Malabaric 2 is from Tranquebar -- the Danish factory in modern Tamil Nadu. Malabaric 3 could read as Tamil, and I believe could read as Malayalam too, but I'll ask the Malayalam speakers here to comment. Malabaric 4 looks like a strange form of either the Malayalam script or the Grantha script. (Modern Malayalam has a very curved ka -- this one looks more like the Tamil ka, but Tamil does not have the same repretoire of characters that Malayalam does. Grantha (traditionally used in Tamil Nadu to represent Sanskrit, and with a greater visual similarity to Tamil) does. They also list Tamoulic (Tamil in French is "Tamoul") on page 293, which is somewhat like modern script but not really. Talenga is listed right above Tamoulic (presumably a corruption of Telugu), but it also states that this language is also called Badega. Badaga is a minority Dravidian language in the area, but closer to Tamil and Kannada. They made lots of mistakes.