The Toda language has “more sounds than any other Dravidian dialect” (Sakthivel 1976: 29). According to Sakthivel, Toda has 53 segmental phonemes, which consists of 16 vowels (Sakthivel 1976: 29-33). The Toda language contains “8 short and 8 long [vowels], which are on the basis of articulatory production and allophony classifiable in pairs” for a total of 16 vowels (Emeneau 1984: 6). The vowels in the language are considered to be contrastive in vowel length. The 16 vowels proposed in this language are: /i, iː, ü, üː, ï, ïː, u, uː, e, eː, ö, öː, o, oː, a, aː/ (Sakthivel 1976: 29-31, Emeneau 1984: 6-7).
Toda Vowel Chart (16 Vowels)
While the number of vowels are consistent among sources, the number of consonants are not. Nara and Bhaskararao provide evidence for 33 consonants and Emeneau proposes 35 (Nara and Bhaskararao 2001: 4, Emeneau 1984: 7 & 11). Sakthivel proposes 37 consonants in the Toda language (Sakthivel 1976: 239-33). However, all authors referenced above proposed in 7 places of articulation for consonants (Nara and Bhaskararao 2001: 4, Emeneau 1984: 11, Sakthivel 1976: 29).
Nara and Bhaskararao’s Consonant Chart (33 Total Consonants)
Emeneau’s Consonant Chart (35 Total Consonants)
Sakthivel’s Consonant Chart (37 Total Consonants)
Wikipedia also provides the following consonant chart for the Toda language, which is quite different from the consonant charts above.
Wikipedia’s Consonant Chart (39 Total Consonants)
What is the IPA?
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system that is used by linguists to represent sounds of all world languages in order to compare languages more easily. To learn more about the IPA visit the Course in Phonetics website, where you can see the IPA chart, hear sounds represented on the chart, and read about details of the origin of the IPA.
REFERENCES:
Emeneau, Murray B. 1984. Toda grammar and texts. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. xiii+426pp.
Nara, Tsuyoshi and Peri Bhasukararao. 2001. Toda Vocabulary: a preliminary list. Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim: A3-002. Osaka: Kan Taiheiyo no gengo (ELPR).
Sakthivel, S. 1976. Phonology of Toda with vocabulary. Annamalainagar: Annamalai University. 382pp.
Toda Language. 2017, October 23. In: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 6:02, November 15, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toda_language
Toda Language 