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In Karnatik music, compositions are mainly in Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Musicians will find that the aesthetics of the melody seems different when the same musical phrase is sung in two different languages. This is primarily because of the sound of the syllables, which are the pillars on which the melodic phrase is structured. This could be partly psychological – the result of the mind interpreting the melodic flow differently when other syllables are placed in the same position. The syllables and the compound sounds unique to each language register differently in our mind, making the structure of the phrase seem different.
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T.M. Krishna (A Southern Music: Exploring the Karnatik Tradition)