The People’s Linguistic Survey of India is a rights-based movement that carries out a nation-wide survey of Indian languages, especially languages of fragile communities such as the nomadic, coastal, island, hill and forest communities
This book is Part I of Volume 23 (Puducherry-Hindi) of The People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), undertaken and executed by Bhasha Research and Publication Center, Baroda. It contains information on the languages and linguistic variety of the Puducherry Union Territory of India. The languages included in this book are: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and French, as well as the cultural and spiritual aspects of Puducherry.
Dr Ganesh Devy, Chief Editor, taught English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He is a renowned literary critic and activist; founder and director of the Tribal Academy at Tejgadh, Gujarat; and director of the Sahitya Akademi’s Project on Literature in Tribal Languages and Oral Folk Traditions. He is an active participant in the Bhasha Academy, and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2014.
Dr Devy is also Chair, People’s Linguistic Survey of India, Bhasha Research and Publication Center, Baroda.
L. Ramamoorthy heads the linguistic data consortium for Indian languages at the Central Institute of Indian languages, Mysore. He was earlier associated with the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture as Director-in-charge. His academic interests are sociolinguistics, language planning and language technology.
G. Ravisankar is Associate Professor in Linguistics at the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture. His areas of specialisation are phonetics, phonology intonation studies, translation and speech synthesis.
Translator: V. R. Jagannathan is a linguist interested in syntax, especially in the theory of grammar. He also specialises in areas of applied linguistics, such as language teaching and lexicography. Professor Jagannathan has vast experience in areas such as the development of language methodology, and research in teaching Hindi as a second and foreign language during his tenure of 24 years at the Central Institute of Hindi, Agra. He has wide experience in Distance Education as well, and has been instrumental in the development of various programmes at the School of Humanities, IGNOU. He has recently established the publishing venture Lingua Net Private Limited with a view to creating online and offline resources, initially in Indian languages with an eye on world languages.
The National Editorial Collective List of Volumes Acknowledgements Foreword A Nation Proud of Its Language Diversity: Chief Editor’s Introduction Introduction to the Volume Translator's Note An Appeal to Readers Pie-chart Contributors to the Volume List of Languages Covered in this Volume 1. Introduction 2. Tamil 3. Telugu 4. French 5. Malayalam 6. Cultural and Spiritual Aspects of Puducherry Appendix-1 - Maps Appendix-2 - Author's Introduction Index