[edit] Language The Toda language is a member of the Dravidian family. Like their ethnology, the language is aberrant and difficult phonologically. It is now recognized that Toda (along with its neighbor Kota) is a member of the southern subgroup of the historical family proto-South-Dravidian; it split off from South Dravidian, after Kannada and Telegu, but before Malayam. In modern linguistic terms, the aberrancy of Toda results from disproportionately numerous rules, both early and recent in their ordering, which are not shared by the other South Dravidian languages (and shared only to a small extent by Kota)[1] They used to be strict vegetarians but some can be now be seen eating non-vegetarian food. Although many Toda have abandoned their traditional distinctive huts for concrete houses,[5] a movement is now afoot to build tradition barrel-vaulted huts and during the last decade forty new huts have been built and many Toda sacred dairies renovated
