Recently I lamented that ‘original and old’ Badaga language is undergoing drastic changes [for the worse?] due to the influences of other languages as well as our own negligence and ignorance.
In that respect, the following correspondence with Alexi Kochetov has me wondering – are some of these unique words like ‘bae’ and the way we pronounce them, remain the same atleast in the hattis [villages] and more importantly, how can we preserve the originality and uniqueness of our mother tongue?
Dr. Alexei Kochetov who is an ‘Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, specializing in phonetics and phonology (studies of physical and cognitive aspects of speech)‘, wrote to me recently ”
I came across your blog on the Badaga language – a great resource! I have a question: have you heard any Badagas pronounce the words ‘mouth’, ‘bangle’, and ‘crop’ differently, as Peter Ladefoged’s transcription suggests? (that is, be, bE half-retroflexed, bE fully-retroflexed). As I understand this may be an old-fashioned pronunciation no longer used. I am interested in this as a linguist, and would be curious to hear your opinion. Thanks. ”
“Thanks for your email. The word ‘be, bay’ etc to mean mouth, bangle,lentil, crop and plaintain[banana]’ is very much in use. I am not clear whether it is as per Peter Ladefoged’s transcription as I am not a linguist. What I will do is, send you an audio/video recording soon”
“Hello JP,
Mookuthi 
Chinna 
==
Badagas of the Blue Mountains 
Woooowww..!!
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Wow, that sounds very interesting especially from the perspective of a linguist . Hope there is more research and some meaningful findings on our language .
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