other hand, the data collected from seven Mala Veda settlements in Kollam district by Hyrunnisa Beegam 1991 shows that the speech of Mala Vedan people in this area has only marginal differences from
Malayalam. She suggested that the speech and culture of the people known under the name VedaMalaveda has to be intensely investigated due to their inter-group relation.
2.10 Mala Pandaram
The Mala Pandaram are also known as Hill Pandaram. The majority of them live in the forest tracts of Kollam and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala and the rest live in Tamil Nadu. According to the 1991
census, the population of Mala Pandaram is 2839 in Kerala and 1930 in Tamil Nadu. The 1999 ITDP report claims that there are only six Mala Pandaram families in Idukki district. In Idukki they live in
Pirmed and Peruvanthanam panchayats.
The people claim that they came to Kerala from Madurai and Thirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu. They live in groups of three or four families for a while, and then eventually move on to another site.
These sites are generally in the deep interior forests, away from other people. They have the institution of territorial chieftainship, and they remain some of the poorest people in Kerala. They are still semi-
nomadic and in the hunting stage of economic development Menon 1996:212.
They speak a dialect of Malayalam, locally termed Pandaram Bhasha. The Mala Pandaram converse with others in Malayalam and use Malayalam script Singh 1994:733. In Menon 1996:212, Luiz
reports that they “speak a poor dialect with many Tamil and Malayalam words and phrases.” Their religion is a mix of Hinduism and their traditional faith. According to the 1991 census, 37 of the Mala
Pandaram are literate 44 of males and 31 of the females.
3 Dialect areas
One of the primary goals of this survey was to find out the degree of relationship that exists between Malayalam, Tamil and the speech varieties of Idukki district. Various tools were utilised to accomplish
this objective, one of which was lexical comparison of wordlists. Another method of assessing relationships among various speech varieties was dialect comprehension testing using Recorded Text
Testing RTT. Finally, formal questionnaires helped to make conclusions about these relationships. These methods and their findings will be discussed in detail in this chapter.
3.1 Lexical similarity
One method of assessing the relationship among speech varieties is to compare the degree of similarity in their vocabularies. This is referred to as lexical similarity. Speakers of varieties that have more terms
in common thus a higher percentage of lexical similarity generally, though not always, understand one another better than do speakers of varieties that have fewer terms in common. Since only elicited words
and simple verb constructions are analysed by this method, lexical similarity comparisons alone cannot indicate how well certain speech communities understand one another. It can, however, assist in
obtaining a broad perspective of the relationships among speech varieties and give support for results using more sophisticated testing methods, such as comprehension studies.
3.1.1 Procedures
The tool used for determining lexical similarity in this survey was a 210-item wordlist, consisting of items of basic vocabulary, which has been standardised and contextualised for use in sociolinguistic
surveys of this type in South Asia. The elicited words were transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA shown in appendix A. To provide maximum reliability, some of the wordlists were
checked with a second mother tongue speaker at the same site.
Each wordlist was compared with every other wordlist, item by item, to determine to what degree they were phonetically similar. Those words that were judged similar were grouped together. Once the
entire wordlist was evaluated, the total number of word pair similarities was tallied. This amount was then divided by the total number of items compared and multiplied by 100, giving what is called the
lexical similarity percentage. This process of evaluation was carried out according to standards set forth in Blair 1990:30–33 and
facilitated using a computer program called WordSurv Wimbish 1989. This program is designed to quickly perform the counting of word pair similarities and to calculate the lexical similarity percentage
between each pair of wordlists. For a more complete description of counting procedures used in determining lexical similarity, refer to Appendix B.
3.1.2 Site selection
Twenty-one wordlists were compared in this lexical similarity study. Seventeen of the wordlists were collected during this survey in Muthuvan, Mannan, Paliyan and Mala Pulayan Karavazhi Pulayan
villages. More focus was given to Muthuvan and Mannan speech varieties. Fifteen wordlists were collected from them, representing eight and seven locations respectively. It was reported that Paliyan
and Mala Pulayan people speak a form of Tamil. One wordlist was collected from each of these varieties to verify the language situation. Two wordlists from Urali from a previous survey are also included in the
lexical similarity comparison. Finally, one standard wordlist in Malayalam, the official language of the state covered in this survey, and one wordlist in Tamil, the neighbouring state language, were included
in the lexical similarity comparison. Eight wordlists were collected from Muthuvan. Five of these were from the Tamil Muthuvan variety
and three were from the Malayalam Muthuvan variety. These sites were selected based on people group division as Tamil Muthuvan and Malayalam Muthuvan, geographical distribution interiorexterior and
reported variation in dialect areas. Travel facility and permission to visit the area also influenced the site selection.
Mannan wordlists were collected from seven sites based on geographical distribution interiorexterior, reported dialect variation and cultural importance. In addition, importance also was
given to visit major settlements of the area for wordlist collection. Wordlists from Mala Vedan, Mala Arayan and Ulladan were not collected from the survey area since
it is believed that the language varieties are no longer in use and have been replaced by Malayalam. Surveyors could not visit Mala Pandaram villages, as there was no information about any settlement that
consists of more than three families in the district. Map 2 shows the locations of the wordlist sites. Table 5 gives the speech variety, location and origin
of the wordlists utilised in this project.
Map 2. Wordlist sites
© NLCI 2015 Source: New Life Computer Institute, India. Used with permission.
14 Table 5. Wordlist sites
Language Speech Variety
Village Settlement
Interior Exterior
Block Tahsil
District State
Origin
Tamil Muthuvan AnachalItticity
Exterior Adimali
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Tamil Muthuvan Chempakathozhu
Exterior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Tamil Muthuvan Kavakudi
Interior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Tamil Muthuvan Kozhiyala
Interior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Tamil Muthuvan Valsapetti
Interior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Malayalam Muthuvan Kunchipara
Interior Neriyamangalam
Kothamangalam Ernakulam
Kerala This Survey
Malayalam Muthuvan Thalayirappan
Exterior Adimali
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Malayalam Muthuvan Kurathikudi
Interior Adimali
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Vattamedu
Exterior Idukki
Udumpanchola Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Veliyampara
Interior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Kumily
Exterior Azhutha
Pirmed Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Kovilmala
Exterior Kattappana
Udumpanchola Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Kodakallu
Interior Adimali
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Chinnapara
Exterior Adimali
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Mannan Thinkalkadu
Interior Nedumkandam
Udumpanchola Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Urali Poovanthikudi
Interior Kattappana
Udumpanchola Idukki
Kerala Betta Kurumba
Urali Vanchivayal
Interior Pirmed
Pirmed Idukki
Kerala Betta Kurumba
Mala Pulayan Dendukombu
Exterior Devikulam
Devikulam Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Paliyan Lebbakandam
Exterior Azhutha
Pirmed Idukki
Kerala This Survey
Tamil Pudukottai and
Tuticorin Tamil
Nadu Betta Kurumba
Malayalam Ernakulam
Kerala Betta Kurumba
Table 6. Lexical similarity percentages
I Muthuvan, Itticity 94 B Muthuvan, Chempakathozhu
93 93 W Muthuvan, Kavakudi 93 92 91 O Muthuvan, Kozhiyala
Cluster-A 93 91 91 92 S Muthuvan, Valsapetti
88 84 83 85 85 J Muthuvan, Kunchipara 84 80 83 80 80 86 R Muthuvan, Thalayirappan
81 78 77 78 79 88 86 K Muthuvan, Kurathikudi 67 64 66 65 67 71 66 63 D Mannan, Vattamedu
68 65 66 66 68 71 67 67 96 N Mannan, Veliyampara 65 66 65 64 67 69 66 64 96 93 M Mannan, Kumily
65 65 65 64 67 67 66 64 94 95 96 Z Mannan, Kovilmala
Cluster-B 67 65 65 64 67 71 66 65 94 93 92 92 A Mannan, Kodakallu
63 62 63 63 64 68 66 63 91 94 90 92 90 C Mannan, Chinnapara 65 63 63 65 65 68 67 67 89 88 88 90 86 86 T Mannan, Thinkalkadu
55 54 52 54 55 58 61 64 51 53 52 53 51 50 52 P Urali, Poovanthikudi
Cluster-C 55 54 53 52 55 58 59 64 52 54 53 52 52 50 53 83 V Urali, Vanchivayal
70 67 67 66 71 66 65 64 67 67 64 66 66 63 66 53 54 U Mala Pulayan, Dendukombu Cluster-D
70 67 66 66 71 67 65 66 64 65 66 67 64 62 65 56 57 85 L Paliyan, Lebbakandam 67 64 62 64 65 65 62 64 57 60 58 61 58 57 60 54 54 79 75 Y Tamil
63 60 58 62 60 65 63 68 57 61 59 59 57 56 64 59 61 61 62 69 F Malayalam
16
3.1.3 Results and analysis
