Kurukh language

Kurukh
Kurux, Oraon
कुड़ुख़
Native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan
Region Odisha
Ethnicity Kurukh people
Native speakers
 2.0 million  (2001 census)[1]
Dravidian

  • Northern Dravidian

    • Kurukh–Malto
      • Kurukh
Dialects
Oraon
Dhangar
Tolong Siki, Devanagari script
Language codes
ISO 639-2 kru
ISO 639-3 Variously:
kru – Kurukh
kxl – Nepali Kurux (Dhangar)
xis – Kisan
Glottolog kuru1301[2]

Kurukh /ˈkʊrʊx/[3] (also Kurux and Oraon or Uranw;[4] Devanagari: कुड़ुख़) is a Dravidian language spoken by nearly two million Oraon and Kisan tribal peoples of Odisha and surrounding areas of India (Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal), as well as by 50,000 in northern Bangladesh, 28,600 a dialect called Dhangar in Nepal, and about 5,000 in Bhutan. It is most closely related to Brahui and Malto (Paharia).

Classification

Kurukh belongs to the Northern Dravidian group of the Dravidian family of languages,[5] and is closely related to Sauria Paharia and Kumarbhag Paharia, which are often together referred to as Malto.[6]

Kurukh is written in the Devanagari script, a script used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and other Indo-Aryan languages. Dr. Narayan Oraon, a medical doctor, has invented the Tolong Siki script for Kurukh language. Many books and magazine have been published in Tolong Siki script. The Kurukh Literary Society of India have been instrumental to spread the Tolong Siki script for Kurukh literature.

Speakers

It is spoken by 2,053,000 people from the Oraon and Kisan tribes, having 1,834,000 and 219,000 speakers, respectively. The literacy rate is 23% Oraon and 17% Kisan. Despite the large number of speakers, the language is considered at risk of extinction.[7] The governments of Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh have introduced the Kurukh language in schools where Kurukhars or Oraon students are in a majority.

Alternative names and dialects

Kurukh has a number of alternative names, some are: Uraon, Kurux, Kunrukh, Kunna, Urang, Morva, and Birhor. There are also two dialects, Oraon and Kisan, that have 73% intelligibility between them. Oraon is currently being standardized, Kisan is not.

Phonology

Kurukh contrasts oral and nasal vowels.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Kurukh at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Nepali Kurux (Dhangar) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Kisan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Kurux". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ "Kurukh". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005.
  4. ↑ http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/nepa1253
  5. ↑ Stassen, Leon (1997). Intransitive Predication. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0199258932.
  6. ↑ PS Subrahmanyam, "Kurukh", in ELL2. Ethnologue assigns Nepali Kurux a separate iso code, kxl.
  7. ↑ Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Page 9.
  8. ↑ Masica, Colin P. (2003). "South Asian Languages". International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford Reference (Oxford University Press). Retrieved 17 May 2013.

External links