Kurukh language

Kurukh
Kurux, Oraon, Uraon
𑷊𑶲̃𑷗𑶲𑷖 कुँड़ुख़ (उराँव) • কুড়ুখ্ • କୁଡ଼ୁଖ୍
'Kuṛux' or 'Kuṁṛux' in Kurukh Banna alphabet (top) and Tolong Siki alphabet (bottom)
Pronunciation	[kũɽux]
Native to	India, Bangladesh, and Nepal
Region	Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Bihar, Tripura[1]
Ethnicity	Kurukh Kisan
Native speakers	2.28 million (2002–2011)[2][1][3]
Language family	Dravidian Northern Dravidian Kurukh–Malto Kurukh
Dialects	Oraon Kisan Dhangar
Writing system	Tolong Siki Kurukh Banna Devanagari Odia
Official status
Official language in	India Jharkhand (additional) West Bengal (additional)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: kru – Kurux kxl – Nepali Kurux (Dhangar) xis – Kisan
Glottolog	kuru1301
ELP	Nepali Kurux
Distribution of Kurukh speakers in Blue.
Kurux is classified as Vulnerable by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger

Kurukh (/ˈkʊrʊx/ or /ˈkʊrʊk/;^[4] Devanagari: कुँड़ुख़, IPA: [kũɽux]), also Kurux, Oraon or Uranw (Devanagari: उराँव, IPA: [uraːũ̯]),^[5] is a North Dravidian language spoken by the Kurukh (Oraon) and Kisan people of East India. It is spoken by about two million people in the Indian states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam and Tripura, as well as by 65,000 in northern Bangladesh, 28,600 of a dialect called Uranw in Nepal and about 5,000 in Bhutan. The most closely related language to Kurukh is Malto; together with Brahui, all three languages form the North Dravidian branch of the Dravidian language family. It is marked as being in a "vulnerable" state in UNESCO's list of endangered languages.^[6] The Kisan dialect has 206,100 speakers as of 2011.

According to Edward Tuite Dalton, "Oraon" is an exonym assigned by neighbouring Munda people, meaning "to roam". They call themselves Kurukh.^[7] According to Sten Konow, Uraon will mean man as in the Dravidian Kurukh language, the word Urapai, Urapo and Urang means Man. The word Kurukh may be derived from the word Kur or Kurcana means "shout" and "stammer". So Kurukh will mean 'a speaker'.^[8]

Kurukh belongs to the Northern Dravidian group of the Dravidian family languages,^[9] and is closely related to Sauria Paharia and Kumarbhag Paharia, which are often together referred to as Malto.^[10]

Kurukh is written in Devanagari, a script also used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and other Indo-Aryan languages.

In 1991, Basudev Ram Khalkho from Odisha released the Kurukh Banna script. In Sundargarh district of Odisha the Kurukh Banna alphabet is taught and promoted by Kurukh Parha. Fonts have been developed and people are using it widely in books, magazines and other material. The alphabet is also used by Oraon people in the states of Chhattisgarh, Bengal, Jharkhand and Assam.^[11]

In 1999, Narayan Oraon, a doctor, invented the alphabetic Tolong Siki script specifically for Kurukh. Many books and magazines have been published in Tolong Siki script, and it saw official recognition by the state of Jharkhand in 2007. The Kurukh Literary Society of India has been instrumental in spreading the Tolong Siki script for Kurukh literature.^[12][13]

In India, Kurukh is mostly spoken in Raigarh, Surguja, Jashpur of Chhattisgarh, Gumla, Ranchi, Lohardaga, Latehar, Simdega of Jharkhand; Jharsuguda, Sundargarh and Sambalpur district of Odisha.

It is also spoken in Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, Assam and Tripura states by Kurukh who are mostly Tea-garden workers.^[1]

It is spoken by 2,053,000 people from the Oraon and Kisan tribes, with 1,834,000 and 219,000 speakers respectively. The literacy rate is 23% in Oraon and 17% in Kisan. Despite the large number of speakers, the language is considered to be endangered.^[14] The governments of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have introduced the Kurukh language in schools with majority Kurukhar students. Jharkhand and West Bengal both list Kurukh as an official language of their respective states.^[15] Bangladesh also has some speakers.

The phonology of True Kurukh represents a systematic revival of the language in its ancestral Dravidian state. This restoration focuses on "Dravidianization"—the process of removing foreign sound influences to recover the language's original melodic and percussive character. According to modern research ^[16], this system is defined by three main pillars: the removal of non-native breathy consonants, the restoration of unique "liquid" sounds, and a shift to a strictly allophonic voicing system.

The consonantal framework (Hawōr̤ 21) is characterized by a strict adherence to native Dravidian phonotactics, prioritizing the phonemic distinction between the alveolar and retroflex series.

*Note: /ɽ/ is a diachronic development from Kurukh geminated retroflex voiced stop (*ɖɖ).

True Kurukh utilizes environmental voicing rather than phonemic voicing. The voiced stops [b], [d̪], [ɖ] and [ɡ] function strictly as allophones of the voiceless set ⟨p⟩, ⟨t̪⟩, ⟨ʈ⟩ and ⟨k⟩.

• Word-Initial: Stops are strictly voiceless at the beginning of a word (e.g., ⟨p⟩ is [p]).
• Intervocalic: When a stop is positioned between two vowels, it undergoes Lenition and is realized as voiced (e.g., ⟨p⟩ becomes [b]).
• Significance: This maintains a sharp, percussive initial sound followed by a fluid, melodic internal structure that simplifies the language's mental inventory.

Secondary aspiration—the breathy [h] sound following a stop—is identified as a non-native adstratum feature.

• The Indo-Aryan Import: Over centuries of linguistic contact, aspirated sounds such as /pʰ/, /d̪ʰ/, /ɖʰ/, and /kʰ/ were imported into Kurukh from neighboring languages like Nagpuri (Sadri) and Hindi.
• Impact on Phonology: This external "import" of aspirated stops significantly altered the native sound system, leading to the erosion of unique Dravidian contrasts, particularly within the retroflex and liquid phoneme sets.
• Restoration: In the revival of True Kurukh, these imported aspirated stops are systematically removed and restored to their ancestral tenuis (unaspirated) counterparts (e.g., /pʰ/ → /p/).
• Fricative Contrast: The native velar fricative ⟨kh⟩ /x/ is strictly maintained as it is a native phoneme, distinguishing it from the breathy, imported aspiration of Indo-Aryan stops.

The revival reverses the historical phonological leveling of liquid phonemes to restore the language's ancestral acoustic signature.

• Lateral Distinction: Re-establishes the contrast between the alveolar lateral ⟨l⟩ /l/ and the retroflex lateral ⟨ḷ⟩ /ɭ/.
• Approximant Revival: The restoration of the Retroflex approximant ⟨r̤⟩ /ɻ/ is a cornerstone of the revival. This "gliding" sound is produced by curling the tongue back without touching the roof of the mouth. In many dialects, this unique sound was historically lost or merged into Voiced palatal approximant ⟨y⟩ /j/ or sometimes Retroflex flap ⟨ṛ⟩ /ɽ/; its revival brings back a rare, liquid quality characteristic of the ancient linguistic stratum ^[17].

The vocalic system consists of five basic vowels. Following native Dravidian logic, each vowel is paired in a strict short-long distinction, creating a balanced 12-vowel inventory (Sayōr̤ 12).

• Nasalization: Each vowel has a corresponding nasalized state (marked with a circumflex or tilde), which remains a key phonemic feature of Kurukh speech.
• Vowel Harmony: The system prioritizes the restoration of harmony rules, where suffix vowels are conditioned by the height of the root vowel ^[16].

The pronominal system of True Kurukh is a highly structured agglutinative framework, characterized by long-vowel radical stems and systematic nasal augmentation. The system preserves ancestral Dravidian clusivity distinctions while introducing a formal bifurcation in the third-person gender matrix to resolve historical morphological syncretism.

Personal pronouns distinguish between singular (*-n) and plural (*-m) forms through a stable nasal suffix system. A defining feature of Kurukh morphosyntax is the distinction between **Exclusive** (excluding the addressee) and **Inclusive** (including the addressee) first-person plural forms.

Notably, the inclusive form (nām) represents a collective identity; consequently, it is semantically and morphologically restricted to the plural number, with no singular counterpart existing in the paradigm ^[18].

The third-person system is fundamentally deictic, mapping referents onto physical space through three degrees of distance: Proximal (Near), Medial (Mid), and Distal (Far). Historically, Kurukh utilized a **Binary Gender System**, though the True Kurukh restoration advocates for a **Ternary Gender Paradigm** to resolve historical syncretism.

The conventional standard in Kurukh categorizes referents into two primary groups ^[19]:

• Masculine: Refers specifically to men and deities.
• Non-Masculine: A syncretic category encompassing women, animals, and inanimates. Both feminine and neuter referents traditionally share the dental suffix (typically -d).

This morphological innovation involves the bifurcation of the "Non-Masculine" category through the introduction of a dedicated **Feminine Definite Marker** (suffix *-ḷ). This marker is etymologically derived from the Kurukh terms peḷ or peḷḷō ("woman/hey'girl"), effectively distilling the semantic essence of female personhood into a distinct gender class separate from the Neuter category ^[20].

Pronominal declension is executed by appending case suffixes to the designated **Oblique Stem**. The genitive system is characterized by a functional split based on the person of the referent.

The Genitive-Attributive category exhibits a categorical split based on the person of the referent:

• Personal Category (-e): Specifically applied to 1st and 2nd person stems (e.g., eṅge, niṅge).
• Third Person Category (-in): Applied to 3rd person stems across the deictic matrix (e.g., āsin, āḷin, ādin).
• The Stable Suffix (-ay): Functioning as a standalone possessive pronoun, the Genitive-Pronominal suffix remains consistently -ay across all persons.

Kurukh, like other Dravidian languages, is an agglutinative language. The sentence structure is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). In its morphological construction, there is suffixation but there are no infixes or prefixes.^[21]

Kurukh nouns have three grammatical genders, namely masculine, feminine and neuter. To the Kurukh only men are masculine; women and goddesses (evil spirits) are feminine; all others are neutral. Masculine nouns of the third person singular have two forms, the indefinite and the definite. The indefinite is the simplest form of the noun, thus āl man. The definite form is made by adding -as for the singular, thus ālas, ("the man").^[22]

There are only two grammatical numbers, the singular and the plural.^[22]

The following is an example declension table for a masculine noun "āl", meaning "man" ^[23]

The feminine declension is almost identical to the masculine, but lacks a definite form. The following example is for "mukkā" ("woman").^[23]

The neuter declension for "allā" ("dog") shows almost identical singular forms, but a difference in pluralization.^[23]

The Kurukh language is taught as a subject in the schools of Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and Assam.^[24]

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

होर्मा आलारिन् हक् गहि बारे नू मल्लिन्ता अजादि अरा आण्टें मन्ना गहि हक़् ख़खर्कि रै। आरिन् लुर् अरा जिया गहि दव् बौसा ख़खकि रै अरा तम्है मझि नू मेल्-प्रें गहि बेव्हार् नन्ना चहि।

Hōrmā ālārin hak gahi bāre nū mallintā azādi arā aṅṭēm mannā gahi haq xakharki raī. Ārin lur arā jiyā gahi dav bausā xakhakī raī arā tamhai majhi nū mēl-prēm gahi bēvhār nannā nā cahi.

Kurukh has a number of alternative names such as Uraon, Kurux, Kunrukh, Kunna, Urang, Morva, and Birhor. Two dialects, Oraon and Kisan, have 73% intelligibility between them. Oraon but not Kisan is currently being standardised. Kisan is currently endangered, with a decline rate of 12.3% from 1991 to 2001.^[25]

• Pfeiffer, Martin (2018). Kurux Historical Phonology Reconsidered: With a Reconstruction of Pre-Kurux-Malto Phonology. PubliQation. ISBN 978-3745869873.
• Hahn, Ferdinand (1900). Kurukh Grammar. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
• Revive Kurukh Linguistic Committee. Proposed Ternary Gender Restorations for Morphological Restoration. 2026.

• Kobayashi, Masato; Tirkey, Bablu (2017). The Kurux Language. Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-34766-3.
• Kurukh Grammer by the Rev. Ferdiand Hahn
• The Dravadian Languages by Bhadriraju Krishnamurti Grignard's Kurukh Classification.

Kurukh language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator

• Ferdinand Hahn (1903). Kuruḵh̲ (Orā̃ō)-English dictionary. Bengal Secretariat Press. pp. 126–. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
• Ferdinand Hahn (1900). Kuruḵẖ grammar. Bengal Secretariat Press. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
• Kuruk̲h̲ folk-lore: in the original. The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot. 1905. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
• Kurukh basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• Proposal to encode Tolong Siki
• Omniglot's page on Tolong Siki
• Tolong Siki script site