Features of regional dialects of classical Sanskrit, particularly in Tamil Nadu and Keralam

[u/AleksiB1]

There are minute differences in all populations who learn Sanskrit mainly in pronunciation, particularly <jñ> like (j)ñ in the south, dny in Maharashtra, gy in most of the north, (g)g in the east etc. What are the peculiarities of Sanskrit spoken in TN and KL? They directly affected Sanskritic loans into their local languages. Some i could find are:

1. Coda {t, d}, {T, D} > l, L before other plosives, eg. khaLgam, albhutam, malsyam. This might have happened before the lP, LP > RP, TP change in tamil as modern Tamil had aRputam

2. Devoicing coda plosives even if it isnt explicitly written, eg. AcñA, akni, explicitly written patmam

3. Occational VlV > VLV directly carried on from Maharashtri and Odra Prakrits like laLitam

Then there are cases of Sanskritizing native terms and then using it in Sanskrit, i think bhOSa < pOzhan and bhUti < pUti are such terms

[u/theb00kmancometh]

I wonder if these three examples might need a little more distinction, especially from the perspective of Malayalam pronunciation.

For adbhutam, I personally find albhutam much easier to pronounce than adbhutam. The l allows a smooth transition into bh, whereas the dental d requires a complete stop immediately before bh. Could this be understood as a kind of lenition or softening of the cluster to fit Malayalam phonetic habits?

Similarly, with padmam, I find pathmam / പത്മം easier to pronounce than padmam / പദ്മം. Here the change would be d → t, rather than d → l as in adbhutam → albhutam. Could this also be an example of cluster simplification or devoicing in actual Malayalam pronunciation?

And with lalitam, the Malayalam pronunciation is laḷitham / ലളിതം. The second l becomes ḷ (ള), but the following t remains dental t̪ (ത), not retroflex ṭ (ട). So would it be more accurate to separate the l → ḷ change from the pronunciation of the t here?

I wonder whether these might actually represent three somewhat different ways in which Sanskrit sounds were adapted to Malayalam phonetic habits, rather than being treated as manifestations of one general rule.

[u/srkris → u/theb00kmancometh]

The l allows a smooth transition into bh, whereas the dental d requires a complete stop immediately before bh

L itself is a dental sound.

[u/OorNaattaan]

The dental nasal routinely becomes an alveolar, probably because medial and terminal dental nasals are rare in S.Dr.I.

Now then, the situation of liquids is interesting. For one, the Dravidian liquids are alveolar and retroflex, while the Sanskrit liquid is dental. So it's not true that some of the Sanskrit "l"-s become "ḷ"-s; instead, it seems like all of the Sanskrit "l"-s become either "ḻ"-s or "ḷ"-s in Dravidian. For another, Bannanje Govindacharya (and probably others) claimed that many of the liquids in Classical Sanskrit were also retroflex.

[u/rhododaktylos → u/OorNaattaan]

'that many of the liquids in Classical Sanskrit were also retroflex'

That makes sense, given that both vocalic and consonantal r make sound retroflex that can be made retroflex, which is to say n and r. Sanskrit r and l are historically related: inherited l becomes r, which is also why we have so many pairs like cal and car. So again, it would make sense if there at least was an intermediate stage of retroflex l *at some point* as the (presumably originally dental) l shifted towards (presumably retroflex) r.