The Gadaba Alphabet

Gadaba ^[1] (also called Gutob; ISO 639-3: gau) is a South-Central Dravidian language spoken by the Gadaba tribal people of Koraput district in Odisha and the Visakhapatnam Agency area of Andhra Pradesh, India.

The CIIL documents Gadaba within the Gondi-Kui subgroup of South-Central Dravidian, making it related to Gondi, Koya, Kuwi, and Konda.

The term "Gadaba" refers to multiple tribal communities in this region, but the Gutob Gadaba are specifically the Dravidian-speaking group; other Gadaba groups speak Austro-Asiatic (Munda) languages, reflecting the linguistic complexity of the Eastern Ghats tribal belt.

Gadaba ^[1] is spoken primarily in Koraput district of southern Odisha and the Visakhapatnam Agency of northern Andhra Pradesh — part of the Eastern Ghats highlands, a region of significant tribal diversity.

The Gadaba communities inhabit forest villages in a landscape of forested hills and valleys where multiple tribal communities coexist at the Odisha-Andhra Pradesh border.

The Endangered Languages Project ^[2] records Gadaba speaker communities as concentrated in this geographic zone.

Gadaba ^[1] is related to Gondi and belongs to the same Gondi-Kui subgroup of South-Central Dravidian. Both languages are members of the broader South-Central Dravidian branch, which also includes Koya, Kuwi, Konda, Pengo, and Manda.

The shared Gondi-Kui ancestry is reflected in common vocabulary and grammatical features. However, Gadaba and Gondi are not mutually intelligible — they are distinct languages that diverged from a common South-Central Dravidian ancestor.

The CIIL documents this relationship as part of its comparative work on the Dravidian language family across the Eastern Ghats tribal belt.

Gadaba ^[2] is classified as an endangered language. The Gadaba community faces significant language pressure from Odia (in Odisha) and Telugu (in Andhra Pradesh) — both larger regional languages with greater prestige in education and employment.

Most Gadaba speakers are bilingual or multilingual, with Odia or Telugu serving as the primary language for interactions with non-Gadaba people.

The CIIL ^[1] documents Gadaba as part of ongoing efforts to preserve the linguistic heritage of India's tribal communities before further language shift occurs.

The name "Gadaba" ^[1] is used for multiple distinct tribal communities in the Odisha-Andhra Pradesh region, not all of whom speak the same language.

The Gutob Gadaba speak the Dravidian language documented here (ISO 639-3: gau). In contrast, the Parenga Gadaba speak a language of the Munda (Austro-Asiatic) family — completely unrelated to Dravidian.

This situation — different communities sharing the same tribal name but speaking unrelated languages — is not uncommon in the linguistically diverse Eastern Ghats. The CIIL carefully distinguishes these groups in its documentation.

Gadaba ^[1] has no traditional indigenous writing system. Academic and CIIL documentation uses Latin-script transcription with IPA diacritics for retroflex consonants (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ḷ).

In Odisha, Odia script is sometimes used for Gadaba materials; in Andhra Pradesh, Telugu script is used. Government and NGO literacy programmes typically use the dominant regional script rather than developing a new one for Gadaba.

The CIIL uses standardised Latin transcription in its scientific documentation of Gadaba phonology, grammar, and vocabulary.

Gadaba ^[1] has a 10-vowel system with five short/long pairs (a/ā, i/ī, u/ū, e/ē, o/ō) and 20 consonants.

The consonant inventory includes the Dravidian retroflex series (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ḷ) — sounds produced with the tongue tip curled back against the palate, inherited from Proto-Dravidian.

These retroflex consonants are shared with other South-Central Dravidian languages and distinguish Gadaba from the surrounding Munda (Austro-Asiatic) languages of the region like Sora and Parenga, which have different consonant inventories.

The Gadaba ^[1] (or Gutob Gadaba) are a Scheduled Tribe community of Koraput district, Odisha, and the Visakhapatnam Agency of Andhra Pradesh. They are recognised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) by the Government of India.

The Gadaba traditionally practise settled agriculture and forest-based livelihoods in the Eastern Ghats highland region — a landscape they share with numerous other tribal communities.

The Endangered Languages Project ^[2] records the Gadaba (Gutob) as the speakers of the Dravidian Gadaba language, distinguishing them from other tribal groups who share the "Gadaba" name.