The Kurux Alphabet

Kurux ^[1] is the community's own name for the language that linguists call Kurukh (ISO 639-3: kru). It is a North Dravidian language spoken by approximately 2 million Oraon people in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, India.

The CIIL documents Kurukh/Kurux as one of only three North Dravidian languages — alongside Malto (Sauria Paharia) and Brahui.

The name "Kurux" is the phonological form used by speakers themselves, while "Kurukh" is the academic transliteration adopted in linguistic literature.

Kurux ^[1] and Kurukh are the same language — the North Dravidian language of the Oraon people (ISO 639-3: kru). "Kurux" is the community's own pronunciation and spelling, while "Kurukh" is the anglicised academic spelling that has become standard in linguistic literature.

The CIIL uses "Kurukh" as the standard academic term, but both spellings refer to the same Dravidian language.

Both spellings are in active use — "Kurux" in community contexts and "Kurukh" in academic and government documentation.

Kurux (Kurukh) ^[2] is spoken primarily in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, with smaller communities in West Bengal, Assam and Bihar.

The Endangered Languages Project records Kurux speaker communities concentrated on the Chotanagpur plateau and adjacent areas.

The Oraon/Kurux people have also migrated to tea plantation areas of Assam and West Bengal, creating diaspora Kurux-speaking communities across eastern India.

Kurux (Kurukh) ^[1] belongs to the North Dravidian branch of the Dravidian language family — one of only three North Dravidian languages alongside Malto (Sauria Paharia) of Jharkhand and Brahui of Pakistan.

The CIIL documents North Dravidian as a distinct subgroup within the broader Dravidian family, sharing common Dravidian features (retroflex consonants, verb-final order, agglutinative morphology) while diverging from the South and South-Central Dravidian branches at a very early stage.

This makes Kurux/Kurukh linguistically remarkable: a Dravidian language that has survived for millennia surrounded by Indo-Aryan languages in eastern India.

Kurux ^[1] has approximately 2 million speakers, making it significantly more vital than most North Dravidian languages.

However, widespread bilingualism in Hindi is common across the Oraon community, and in urban and semi-urban areas, younger Kurux speakers increasingly use Hindi as their primary language.

The CIIL documents the pressure on Kurux from Hindi and regional Indo-Aryan languages in the Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh context.

Kurux (Kurukh) ^[1] is written using the Tolong Siki script — an indigenous script created in the 1990s specifically for the Kurukh language and promoted by Oraon cultural organisations.

Kurux is also written in Devanagari (the script used for Hindi) and in Latin transliteration for academic purposes. The CIIL uses Latin-script transcription for linguistic documentation.

The Tolong Siki script represents a community-driven writing system development effort that gives the Oraon/Kurux people an indigenous script of their own.

Kurux (Kurukh) ^[1] has a 10-vowel system with five short/long pairs (a/aa, i/ii, u/uu, e/ee, o/oo) and 28 consonants. The consonant inventory preserves the Dravidian retroflex series (ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, ḷ) alongside aspirated stops (ph, bh, th, dh, ṭh, ḍh, kh, gh).

The aspirated stops reflect centuries of contact with Indo-Aryan languages — aspiration is not a native Dravidian feature but has entered Kurux through prolonged coexistence with Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages.

The CIIL documents Kurux/Kurukh phonology as a blend of ancient Dravidian features and Indo-Aryan contact phenomena.

Kurux (Kurukh) ^[1] being spoken in Jharkhand — far from the South Dravidian heartland — is one of the most remarkable facts about the Dravidian language family. The CIIL documents the Oraon/Kurux people as a community that migrated from central or South India to the Chotanagpur plateau in the distant past.

This geographic isolation from other Dravidian languages, surrounded by Indo-Aryan speaking populations, has preserved Kurux as a distinct North Dravidian language.

Over the centuries, Kurux has absorbed significant Indo-Aryan phonological influence, but its core Dravidian grammar and vocabulary remain intact — a testament to the community's linguistic resilience.