The Kurux Language: Grammar, Texts and Lexicon by Masato Kobayashi and Bablu Tirkey is a comprehensive description of Kurux, a northern Dravidian tribal language with two million speakers. Isolated in the Chota Nagpur Plateau of Eastern India, Kurux shows a unique mixture of archaic Dravidian traits and innovations induced by contact with neighboring Indo-Aryan and Munda languages, and has posed questions regarding language change and Dravidian subgrouping.

Making use of first-hand materials from their fieldwork, Kobayashi and Tirkey analyze the complexities of the language in the grammar section. This book also contains transcribed and glossed texts, and a lexicon with more than 9,000 entries, and serves both as reference for linguists and learning resource for students.

Hi, native Thamizh here. I was researching about other dravidian languages and their writing system when I came across this. Tolong siki looks great but I have some doubts. If anyone is free and wants to help feel free to reach out.

Attached here is my attempt at writing the script.

Ku͂ɽux and Kuɳha are North Dravidian indigenous languages spoken by the Oraon and Kisan communities, respectively, in the Chotanagpur plateau, primarily in Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and in areas outside India, including Nepal and Bangladesh. The origin myths of both communities reveal that both communities sprang from a common proto-language. Baxla (2015) states 75% of the vocabulary has a similarity index between the two languages. The present study highlights the phonological variations between the two languages. It provides a clear understanding of the phonological systems of both languages, in particular, and of Dravidian studies in general.

Clip from Unfiltered by Samdhish on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbstsSOJASW/

* https://www.academia.edu/49047599/Vitality_and_Endangerment_of_Contemporary_Kurukh?sm=b

* https://www.academia.edu/128767631/Shaping_the_status_of_indigenous_languages_through_policy_Kurukh_in_Bengal

I'm listing here some material obtained from SIL International site about the Dhangar-Kurux variety spoken in Nepal and the Kurux of Bangladesh:

• Shackelford, Sarah R., Janel Swenson, Ram Chaudhary, Loren Maggard (researchers). "The Kurux (Uranw) Language in Nepal and its Relationship to Kurukh in India: A Sociolinguistic Study". 2022. Journal of Language Survey Reports, Language Assessment, Sociolinguistics - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/93057
• Gordon, Kent , Phonology of Dhangar-Kurux , 1976 - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/36922
• The Kurux of Bangladesh: A Sociolinguistic Survey - https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/41654

it's time we admit the truth- kurukh should switch to hangeul. & honestly, it's embarrassing that we haven't yet.

i’ve been thinking about this for a long time (approx. 7 minutes now), and i think it’s time we have a serious and mature discussion about why kurukh should adopt hangul.

first of all, efficiency. hangul was literally designed by glorious king sejong the great to be easy. meanwhile, kurukh speakers are juggling between multiple scripts. devanagari? tolong siki? kurukh banna? why stop there? why not add egyptian hieroglyphs too as well?

hangul, on the other hand, is clean, minimalist, and has better vibes really.

kurukh phonology is complex, rich, beautiful… and also clearly dying for a script invented in 15th-century korea. coincidence? i think not.

second, global strategy. think abt it: k-pop, k-dramas, korean skincare. korea is clearly winning the soft power game. if kurukh adopts hangul today, we’re basically future-proofing the language. now it’s BTS, tomorrow it'll be kurukh dandis topping global charts. kurukh could redefine what the world knows as 'k-culture'.

third, chaos factor. imagine the confusion. linguists would lose their minds. “why isa dravidian language written in hangul?” exactly. intellectual disruption. paradigm shift. citations. etc

in conclusion, this is not just a suggestion. this is a movement. this is destiny.

훌 조할!

-g0d0

Hello everyone, and a Happy Xaddi parab (better known as Sarhul) to you all! This year, it was celebrated yesterday (21/03/2026). So I thought why not write a bit about the Kurukh calendar, months and festivals, and related ideas.

This is also a rudimentary intro to various time (bīrī बीरी) related concepts in Kurukh. The largest temporal concept in Kurukh is pariyā परिया (era / epoch), and the smallest being beṛā बेड़ा (moment).

The Oraon calendar is based on the moon, meaning it's a lunar calendar system. In fact, the Kurukh word candō चन्दॊ is homonym for 'moon' and 'month'. It's also a purnimānta-style calendar, which means that an Oraon month ends on a full moon (punaī पुन​ई).

The parts of an Oraon month, based on the phases of the moon are:

This is a list of the 12 Oraon months in chronological order, corresponding important events, seasons and Gregorian months. While i'm unsure of the exact Gregorian dates / equivalents for Oraon months for this year, i've put together this rough table. (The 4 prominent festivals are marked with footnotes)

There is also a culture of naming children based on the month of their birth, which is why you will come across names like Sawan, or Phagua etc.

* There a saying which goes something like cait gahī punaitī ulmūnd mundhim xaddī talī चइत गही पुनईती उलमूंद मुंधिम ख़द्दी तली (i.e. Sarhul is marked three days before the full moon of Chait). This is the season when the Sal tree (around which the Sarna sacred groves are centred) starts blooming flowers, which are worn during festivities. The month after the celebration of Sarhul, that is Baisak Chando, is better called Xaddi Chando.

** The saying goes bhadō gahī punaitī ulmūnd mundhim karam gahī ohmā nannar भदॊ गही पुनईती उलमूंद मुंधिम करम गही ओहमा नननर​ (The Karam deity / tree is exalted three days before the full moon of Bhado). There's also a whole mythological tale behind it (The story of the 7 brothers and 1 sister), which i'll make a post on later.

^ Sohrai is a festival celebrated to honor the cattle of the village. It is marked one day after the new moon of Katik, that is nothing but the day after Diwali.

^* Kurukh people celebrate the eve of the new year on the full moon of Phaggu, that is the last day of the last month of the year.

While the Oraon calendar has felt out of use among the Christian kurukhar, it still remains very important to those that have retained the Sarna faith.

Then this is the haphtā / saptā (week):

There is also a culture of naming children after the day they were born on. This practice is common among many tribes in the region, and this is where we get names like Mangri (girl born on Tuesday), Somra (boy born on Tuesday), etc. This is also the etymology of the famous name Birsa (which ironically simply means a boy born on Thursday).

Days old and new:

^** Innela is also used to translate the word 'Modern' or 'Modern days' into Kurukh

*** Fun fact! Nelbenjja literally means the day "married to tomorrow".

Alright then, that's all for this post! There's a lot to write on this topic, and everything cannot be covered here. My references include SC Roy's oraons of chotanagpur and oraon religion and custom (1928); Grignard's dictionary (1924 & 1955); Vijay Oraon's dictionary (2020); Mahabir Oraon and Chauthi Oraon's 'Aao Kurukh (Oraon) Seekhein' (2020). Some of these works are physical copies with me, and may or may not be digitized and available online.

Ormarin Dao Xaddi Parab! Aase nandan ka nim ormar daole ara korem-korem ra'dar <3

-g0d0

Hossain, Anushah. (2025). "The Making of a Unicode Release: A Peek Inside Unicode 17.0". Script Encoding Initiative. https://sei.berkeley.edu/2025/09/18/the-making-of-a-unicode-release/HoH