Vowels[]
Proto-Dravidian contrasted between five short and long vowels: *a, *ā, *i, *ī, *u, *ū, *e, *ē, *o, *ō. The sequences *ai and *au are treated as *ay and *av (or *aw)
Consonants[]
Proto-Dravidian has been reconstructed as having the following consonant phonemes (Subrahmanyam 1983:p40, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurthi 2003):
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | *m | *n̪ | *n | *ɳ | *ɲ | (*ŋ) | |
| Plosive | *p | *t̪ | *t | *ʈ | *c | *k | |
| Fricative | *ɭ(*ṛ, *r̤) | (*h) | |||||
| Flap | *r | ||||||
| Approximant | *v | *l | *ɭ | *j |
The alveolar stop *ṯ developed into an alveolar trill /r/ in many daughter languages. The stop sound is retained in Kota and Toda (Subrahmanyam 1983). Malayalam still retains the original (alveolar) stop sound in gemination. (ibid). In Old Tamil it took the enunciative vowel like the other stops. In other words, *ṯ (or *ṟ) did not occur word-finally without the enunciative vowel (ibid).
Velar nasal *ṅ occurred only before *k in Proto-Dravidian (as in many of its daughter languages). Therefore, it is not considered a separate phoneme in Proto-Dravidian. However, it attained phonemic status in languages like Malayalam, Gondi, Konda and Pengo because the original sequence *ṅk was simplified to *ṅ. (Subrahmanyam 1983)
The glottal fricative *h has been proposed by Bh. Krishnamurthi to account for the Old Tamil Aytam (Āytam) and other Dravidian comparative phonological phenomena (Krishnamurthi 2003).
The Northern Dravidian languages Kurukh, Malto and Brahui cannot easily be derived from the traditional Proto-Dravidian phonological system. McAlpin (2003) proposes that they branched off from an earlier stage of Proto-Dravidian than the conventional reconstruction, which would apply only to the other languages. He suggests reconstructing a richer system of dorsal stop consonants:
| Early Proto-Dravidian | Late Proto-Dravidian (Proto-Non-North Dravidian) |
Proto-Kurukh-Malto | Brahui |
|---|---|---|---|
| *c | *c | *c | |
| *kʲ | *c | *k | k |
| *k | *k | *k | k |
| *q | *k | *q | x k / _i(ː) |