Kurukh language
| Kurukh | |
|---|---|
| कुड़ुख़ | |
| Spoken in | India, Bangladesh |
| Ethnicity | Kurukh people |
| Native speakers | 2,053,000 (SIL 1997) (date missing) |
| Language family |
Dravidian
|
| Writing system | Devanagari script |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | kru |
| ISO 639-3 | kru |
Kurukh (Devanagari: कुड़ुख़), also called Kurux, Kuṛux or Kuruḵẖ, is a Dravidian language spoken by the Oraon and Kisan tribal peoples of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and West Bengal, India, as well as in northern Bangladesh. It is most closely related to Brahui and Malto (Paharia). It is also known as Oraon.
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[edit] Classification
Kurukh is one of the Dravidian family of languages,[1] closely related to the Sauria Paharia and Kumarbhag Paharia languages, which are together referred to as Malto.[2]
Kurukh is written in the Devanagari script, a script used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, 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.
[edit] 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 for extinction.[3] The governments of Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh have introduced the Kurukh language in schools where Kurukhars or Oraon students are in a majority.
[edit] 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Stassen, Leon (1997). Intransitive Predication. Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0199258932.
- ^ PS Subrahmanyam, "Kurukh", in ELL2. Ethnologue assigns Nepali Kurux a separate iso code, kxl.
- ^ Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Page 9.
[edit] External links
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