Brahui

I ran across David McAlpin's "Modern Colloquial Eastern Elamite" today. This keeps the flame alive from the 1990s on Elamo-Dravidian.

McAlpin's contribution to the debate is to carve Brahui away from North Dravidian, which gets to keep Kurux and Malto. Brahui is instead reclassified as a second member of that group which (presently) contains Hatamti as an isolate of classical Elymais. Brahui is, then, the survivor of an "Eastern Elamitic" and thereby the last survivor of any Elamitic language. The Dravidian languages, now lacking Brahui, meanwhile descend from a deeper split from Elamo-Dravidian, to align with the ReichLab.

McAlpin disassociates his hypothesis from the Indus Valley, thereby disassociating himself from 1990s-era speculation. That alone commends his thesis to be taken seriously.

As a bolster to McAlpin, I must ask after western Indian-Ocean trade languages. We know they were all speaking Persian under Islam, maybe under the Sasanians. But Persian is a newcomer. I don't hear of any Iranian languages in what we now call "south Iran" until the Achaemenids. When Iranians - Persians - did take Elam, they crowned themselves kings of Anshan and adopted Elamite for their administration. This implies that Iron-Age Elam owned the trade to the southeastern coast around that Mede-infested plateau.

One problem as might be had is that Brahui - I'd thought - had migrated up to the Baluchistan over our Middle Ages, not so different from the Roma Gypsies. Although, sure, pots aren't people and maybe these south-Indians had adopted Brahui upon arrival. Dravidians abroad might have chosen Brahui exactly because they found it an easier tongue than, say, Baluch.

Although I am not taking a side for mine own part. I admit these languages are obscure to me as to most my readers. Unless you are an actual Tamil studying Elamite, and... why would your average Tamil even bother with that, enjoying such a rich literature in his own idiom and even the occasional musical.