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Dravidian Much of English is made up of words from other languages, and Dravidian, a group of languages spoken in southern India and northeastern Sri Lanka, including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, is a small but significant contributor in this respect. From southern South Asia English has received especially names for foods, plants and materials from plants, and terms of music and dance.
From the cuisine of the region have come curry (late 16th century, from Tamil kaṟi "sauce"), dosa (a pancake, from Tamil), mango (late 16th, via Portuguese and Malay from Tamil), mulligatawny (late 18th, from Tamil miḷaku-taṇṇi "pepper-water"), poppadom (early 19th, from Tamil), and sambhar (a spiced vegetarian stew, mid-20th, via Tamil from Sanskrit sambhāra "collection"). Malayalam has given people the cachou to sweeten the breath (late 16th century, via French) and the jak fruit (late 16th, via Portuguese).
Names of plants and their products include areca (late 16th century, via Portuguese from Malayalam), betel (mid-16th, via Portuguese from Malayalam veṟṟila, itself from Tamil), coir (coconut fiber, late 16th, from Malayalam), copra (dried coconut, late 16th, from Malayalam via Portuguese), patchouli, source of an aromatic oil (mid-19th, from Tamil), poon (late 17th, via Sinhalese from Malayalam or Tamil), teak (late 17th, via Portuguese from Tamil or Malayalam tēkku), and vetiver (mid-19th, via French from Tamil veṭṭivēr, from vēr "root"). Migrating animals include the bandicoot (late 18th, from Telugu pandikokku, literally "pig-rat") and the dhole (a wild dog, early 19th, probably from Kannada tōḷa "wolf").
In the arts have come Kathakali, a form of drama combining dance and mime (from a Malayalam compound formed from Sanskrit kathā "story" + Malayalam kaḷi "play"), mridanga, a kind of drum (from Tamil), and perhaps the tom-tom (from an imitative form in either Telugu or Hindi). A migrant with an unexpected musical connection is pariah: hereditary drummers in southern India belonged to a low caste, and the word comes from Tamil paṟaiyan "drummer."
Some of the less obvious Dravidian migrants fall into no particular category: catamaran (early 17th century, from Tamil kaṭṭumaram "tied wood"), cheroot (late 17th, via French from Tamil), cot (mid-17th, from Hindi khāṭ "framework strung with rope and used as a bed," via Sanskrit from Tamil kaṭṭu "tie"), and godown ("warehouse," late 16th), which looks like a word formed from English elements but in fact came via Portuguese gudao from Tamil kitanku, Kannada gadangu "store."
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