eskandar wrote:Thanks for your informative post! The impression I get from what you wrote is that while there may be lexical and grammatical differences, they are not so great as to render the two registers mutually unintelligible for the most part, even if one were only familiar with one register. Would you say that's accurate?
Yes.
Also, interesting that you should mention the Lakshadweep dialect. I was just reading about the islands!
Lakshadweep Malayalam is really interesting. Unfortunately, literally the only resource I know of in the whole world that describes it at all is one phrasebook, written in Malayalam, and (fortunately) available at the university library here. I've taken notes on it as much as I could from the few times I got to go through it. I've also noticed that if I try to say something to my dad in Tamil, he can tell I'm speaking Tamil (or at least trying to ), but if I say something in Lakshadweep Malayalam, he says, "What kind of language is this?!"