| Uralis who were much critical about getting the modern facilities and were not bothered about giving medical aid to a woman in labour pains have changed their attitude and are very much eager in seeking prompt medical help. There is also awareness about the positive side of the family planning. |
| Considerable change is noticed in noticed in their personal attire. The younger generation among Uralis is seen always without turban which was once a must. Among some, the desire to wear pants, shirt and watch is not uncommon. |
| The strict enforcement of the law by the government regarding land acquisition and destruction of the forest, have forced Uralis to give up their own territorial organization (see political organization) of the past and have forced them only to adopt the regional organizations. In short, the tribes who live inside the jungles have no practical accessibility to the forest. |
| 1.20. Comparison |
| In this section an attempt is made to compare certain features of Urali with those of Tamil, Irula and Kannada highlighting the special features with these three languages, in lexical, phonological and morphological levels. Urali speech, however, is neither a pidgin nor a creole but a distinct speech variety. |
| Diffloth (1968) noted that a new connection can be proposed between Irulas and Uralis. Further Diffloth stated that similarities are found among Uralis who live near Satyamangalam and the Irulas of Nilgiris. During the present study at Dimbam this phenomenon was checked and found to be partially correct, in the sense that though certain similiarities are noticed among them there are also remarkable social and linguistic differences between them. It is true that the Uralis living in Dimbam believe that their ancestors migrated to the present place from Nilgiri mountains centuries ago. Apart from this belief there is no evidence to show that the Uralis of Dimbam have contact at present with the Irulas of Nilgiris. Between these two ethnic communities, there is no social or linguistic contact. |
| The phenomenon of shared linguistic features of Urali with Tamil and Kannada may be due to the fact that the community under study is totally embedded in the border area where the two South Dravidian languages, viz., Tamil and Kannada are spoken. Also, as mentioned earlier, for the day to day tribal, nontribal interactional purposes, the Uralis have to use two language codes, namely, Tamil or Kannada, depending on the person with whom they interact. Mostly, inter-tribal, tribal-nontribal interaction is effected by using Tamil as a lingua franca. |
| The Uralis do not have any formal education in the two dominant languages in which they are embeded. In spite of that, an intensive tribal nontribal communication is materialised out of social necessity resulting in both convergent and divergent features in the speech variety of the ethnic community under study. Since the scope of this work is not focussed towards these directions, the above mentioned aspects are not presented here and have to be dealt with separetely in future. |
