Toda language
| Toda | |
|---|---|
| தோடா | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Western Tamil Nadu state, Nilgiri Hills, near Ootacamund |
| Ethnicity | Toda people |
Native speakers | 1,600 (2001 census) |
Dravidian
| |
| unwritten provisionally written in Tamil alphabet (Brahmic) and Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | tcx |
| Glottolog | toda1252 |
| ELP | Toda |
Toda is classified as Critically Endangered according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger | |
Toda is a indigenous Dravidian language noted for its many fricatives and trills. It is spoken by the Toda people, a population of about one thousand who live in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India. The Toda language is considered to have originated from the Toda-Kota subgroup of South Dravidian. Krishnamurti (2003) does not consider the existence of a single Toda-Kota branch and says Kota split first and later Toda did as Kota doesn't have the centralized vowels of other Tamil-Toda languages.