Kanikkaran language
Kanikkaran, also known as Kani, is a Dravidian language spoken by about 19,000 Kanikkar tribals in southern India. They dwell in forests and hills of Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts of Kerala, and Kanyakumari and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu. It is called malambhāsha, or "hill-language."
Phonology
Vowels
Kanikkaran has 5 vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/. It demonstrates contrastive vowel length.Consonants
They use the phoneme /l̩/ occasionally.Kanikkaran has transformed words in Malayalam starting with /a/ into /e/. añcu becomes eñcu, ari becomes ei, arivāḷu becomes erivāḷu, aluku becomes elakku. It also adds a suffix -in or -n after all noun stems, except for nouns ending with -n in accusative.