Korku language

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Munda language spoken in Central India

title: "Korku language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["munda-languages", "endangered-languages-of-india", "endangered-austroasiatic-languages", "vulnerable-languages", "languages-written-in-devanagari"] description: "Munda language spoken in Central India" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korku_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Munda language spoken in Central India ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Korku
nativename	कोरकू
region	Central India (Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra)
ethnicity	Korku
speakers
date	2011 census
ref	e25
familycolor	Austro-Asiatic
fam2	Munda
fam3	North
dia1	Melghat
dia2	Lahi
dia3	Muwasi
script	Devanagari script (Balbodh style)
iso3	kfq
glotto	kork1243
glottorefname	Korku
map2	Lang Status 80-VU.svg
mapcaption2
::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Munda-Sprachen.png" caption="Distribution of the [[Munda languages]] in [[India]], with Korku the leftmost in central India"] ::

Korku (also known as Kurku) is a Munda language spoken by the Korku people of central India, in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It is isolated in the midst of the Gondi people, who are Dravidian, while its closest relatives are in eastern India. It is the westernmost Austroasiatic language.

Korkus are also closely associated with the Nihali people, many of whom have traditionally lived in special quarters of Korku villages. Korku is spoken by around 700,000 people, mainly in four districts of southern Madhya Pradesh (Khandwa, Harda, Betul, Narmadapuram) and three districts of northern Maharashtra (Rajura and Korpana tahsils of Chandrapur district, Manikgarh pahad area near Gadchandur in Chandrapur district) (Amravati, Buldana, Akola).

The name Korku comes from Koro-ku (-ku is the animate plural), Koro 'person, member of the Korku community' (Zide 2008).

Sociolinguistics

The Indian national census of 2011 reported 727,133 people claiming to speak Korku, which contributes to Korku being an unscheduled language according to the Indian system. However, Korku is classified as "vulnerable" by UNESCO, the least concerning of the levels of language endangerment nonetheless. Most adult men are bilingual in Hindi, or multilingual in Hindi and the local Dravidian languages (Zide 2008: 156). Literacy in the language is low.

Throughout recent history, the use of the Korku language has been heavily influenced by larger hegemonic languages, especially Hindi. A few Korku-speaking groups have had relative success in increasing the viability of their dialect, specifically the Potharia Korku from the Vindhya Mountains.

Dialects

Zide (2008:256) lists two dialects for Korku, a Western and an Eastern one. The Western Dialect, which has a handful of subdialects is also called Korku. Among the Western varieties, the one spoken in Lahi is notable for its loss of the dual number.

Western (aka Korku) dialect: spoken in the districts of Melghat, Betul-Narmadapuram, and Narmadapuram.
Eastern (aka Muwasi/Mowasi/Mawasi, or Kurku): spoken in the Chhindwara district of southeastern Madhya Pradesh. Glottolog lists four dialects for Korku:
Ruma (Korku)
Bondoy
Bouriya
Mawasi (or Muwasi)

Geographical Distribution

Korku is spoken in the following regions (Zide 2008:256):

South-central Madhya Pradesh
- East Nimar district (Khandwa district)
- Betul district
- Narmadapuram district
- Chhindwara district (Mawasi speakers)
Northeastern Maharashtra
- Amravati district (majority of speakers in Maharashtra)
- Buldana district
- Akola district

Phonology

Vowels

Korku has 10 phonemic vowels, which can occur short or long (e.g. /aː/), plus one mid vowel that only occurs as a short segment /ə/. ::data[format=table]

Front	Central	Back	Close	Mid	Open



::

Consonants

Korku has a large consonant phoneme inventory, in which stops occur in several places of articulation. Like many languages of India, Korku stops distinguish between voiced, plain voiceless, and voiceless aspirated consonants.

::data[format=table]

Bilabial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal	Stop	voiceless	aspirated	voiced	breathy	Fricative	Nasal	Approximant	Flap








::

Word-finally, all stops are unreleased.

Tone

Korku has two contrastive level tones: low and high. The high tone is unmarked. In many reduplicated verbs, the prefixed element takes the low tone. Only non-initial syllables exhibit tone distinction. In allegro speech, low tone can inject the whole noun phrase, as if there is a low tone in the phrase, every syllable after it will express with low tones. Example iɲ-àʔ sanì kẽᶑe siɽi "my black small goat" → iɲàʔ sànì kẽᶑè sìɽì.

Vowel harmony

Verb suffixes and demonstrative derivatives, particularly stems with a final vowel will trigger vowel harmony in morphology: in-èn enèn ('here'). Initial vowel is harmonised to match with the stressed final syllable. Verb suffixes with -CV structure contract with and are reduced when preceding suffixes with initial vowels. Eg. kul-ki-èʔ-(n)ej (send-INTNS/TLOC-PST.TR-3.OBJ, 'sent him') becomes kulkhèʔnèj when is spelled.

Morphosyntax

Korku is a highly agglutinating, suffixing language. It has postpositions, a case system, a two-gender system, and three numbers. The verb phrase can be complex in Korku; functions that in English and other languages may be encoded in by the use of auxiliary verbs and of prepositions may be expressed in Korku through suffixation.

Word order

Korku, as all Munda languages, shows a strict Subject–Object–Verb (SOV) word order. ::data[format=table title=""]

Subject	Object	Verb
iɲɟ	dukanaʈen	saːkaɾ
I	store-from	sugar
"I will bring sugar from the store"
::

Adjectives are expressed verbally - as intransitive verbs - with the exception of a few cases in which a separate word occurs before the noun they are modifying. ::data[format=table]

Numeral	Adjective	Noun
ɖiɟaʔ	apʰai	kenɖe
her/his	three	black
"Her/His three black chickens"
::

Morphology

Nouns in Korku are assigned one of two grammatical genders: animate, and inanimate, and inflect for several different grammatical cases.

Grammatical number

Korku distinguishes three grammatical numbers: singular, dual (two of X), and plural (three or more of X) for nouns in the animate class. Nouns in the inanimate class are rarely marked for number. Final vowels are sometimes deleted before dual or plural endings (see the example at koɾo). ::data[format=table title=""]

Singular	Dual	Plural
konɟe-Ø	''konɟe'''-kiɲ'''''	''konɟe-'''ku'''''
koɾo	''koɾ'''kiɲ'''''	''koɾ'''ku'''''
siʈa	''siʈa'''kiɲ'''''	''siʈa'''ku'''''
::

Case system

In Korku, the function of participants in a sentence (e.g. agent, patient, etc.) is expressed through grammatical case markings on nouns. Additionally, ideas that are expressed via prepositions in English (e.g. towards, from, with, etc.) are also expressed via case markings in Korku. The table below illustrates the different cases and the suffixes used to express them. ::data[format=table] | Case | Marker | last=Anderson|first=Gregory D. S.|title=Munda Languages.|date=2015|publisher=Taylor and Francis|isbn=978-1-317-82886-0|oclc=907525916}} | Function | Nominative | Accusative-Dative | Genitive | Locative | Comitative | Instrumental | Allative | Ablative | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | -Ø | ɖiɟ | Subject | | | | | | | | | | | -kʰe(ʔ)/ | ''ɖiɟ'''kʰeʔ''''' | (In)Direct object | | | | | | | | | | | -à(ʔ) | ''ɖiɟ'''àʔ''''' | Possession | | | | | | | | | | | -èn | ''uɾag'''èn''''' | Spatio-temporal location | | | | | | | | | | | -gon/-gella | ''konɟe'''gon''''' | Company, togetherness | | | | | | | | | | | -ten | ''kolom'''ten''''' | Means | | | | | | | | | | | -ʈae | ''Acalpur'''ʈae''''' | Direction at/towards | | | | | | | | | | | -(à)ten | ''uɾag'''àten''''' | Source, spatial origin | | | | | | | | | | ::

Other directional and time markers include:

Adessive -àʔmera-èn
Superessive -àliɲ-èn
Postessive -àʔtau-èn
Subessive -àʔita-èn
Temporal (before) -à-sutuʔ
Temporal (after) -à-baadòn

Argument marking

Additionally, Korku regularly marks direct object on the verb, as in other Munda languages. In the sentence below, the suffix /eɟ/ on the verb compound /senɖawkʰen/ indicates that it was someone else who was given permission to go.

::data[format=table]

Subject	Object	Verb
iɲɟ	ɖikʰeʔ	''senɖawkʰen'''-eɟ'''''
I	her/him	allowed.to.go-obj
"I allowed her/him to go"
::

Another example,

Korku has evidence of subject marking in the past, but in modern day subject indexation has been fossilized and restricted to third persons of locative copulas and nominal predicates in the locative case.

| indent = 3|di-kiñ Sikag-òn-kiñ|3DU Chicago-LOC-3DU.SUBJ|'They two are in Chicago'

Table below lists pronominal markers in Korku that encode person/number for the object arguments.

::data[format=table]

	Singular	Dual
-iɲ	-laɲ/-lom	-buɲ
-liɲ	-le
-mi	-piɲ	-pe
-èj	-kiɲ	-ku
-e
::

Tenses/Moods/Aspects/Directionality

Given that the general trend in Munda languages is the fusion of tenses with voices, Korku stems are subjected to complex stem alternations in tense/aspect marking in regards to transitivity, animacy, and augmentation. There are two tenses in Korku: Future/Present and Past. Depending on whether the verb is in active or middle voice, its structures may vary. In Future/Present forms, intransitive stems take intransitive marker -ùʔ except some few verbs such as sen ('go'), hej ('come'), and niɽ ('run, go away').

::data[format=table]

Intransitive	Transitive	Future/Present	Past
Σ-bà
Σ-e-bà
Σ-Mode-ùʔ-bà	Reduplicated-Σ-bà
Σ-Mode-Object-bà
Σ-Mode-en	Σ-Mode-Object-èʔ
::

Korku utilizes partial reduplications of certain monosyllabic stems to create imperfective, habitual, and infinitive forms. In some instances, the reduplicated variant can convey effects and anticipations of an immediate about-to-happen action.

Verb stems can take other markers to express modality/mood/aspects/orientations. Note that many of those suffixes have overlapping functions/fused with other TAM/person categories or assimilated/harmonized with final stressed suffixes. For example, the continuous progressive -lakken that often occurs with reduplicated allomorph to describe unfolding actions contains two elements, the auxiliary -lab and the perfective/unaccomplishment -ken, itself a contracted form of translocative, intensive mode, recent past -ki and intransitive past -en, but are functionally different.

::data[format=table title="TAM/Orientation in Korku (Zide 2008)"]

Affixes	Function
-ki	Intensive Mode, Translocative, Recent Past, Probabilitative
-lì	Cislocative
-ya	Translocative, Remote past
-ʈʰà	Attemptive, Tentative Mode
-jom	Delayed action
-wa	Benefactive
-ɲ	Past transitive
-ùʔ	Passive-potential
-kʰùʔ	Durative mood
-yùʔ	Potential, ability
-lab	Continuous aspect
-ken	Prefective, Unaccomplishness
-daːn	Past Habitual
-da	Unaccomplishness
-ka	Continuative aspect
-ye	Capabilitive mood
wa-	Permissive mood
::

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Sources:

Personal pronouns in Korku show different number and gender patterns depending on the person. The first person ("I, we") distinguishes not only the three numbers but also whether the hearer is included ("all of us") or excluded ("us, but not you") in the communicative context. The second person ("you, you all") only encodes number, whereas the third person ("s/he, they") distinguishes gender, and number for animate nouns. ::data[format=table]

	Singular	Dual
iɲɟ	alaŋɟ	abuɲ
aliɲɟ	ale
aːm	apinɟ	ape
ɖic ~ in	ɖikinɟ	ɖiku
ɖiː
::

Demonstratives

In Korku, demonstratives (e.g. "this, that, those") encode not only distance (e.g. "here and there") but also gender and number. Unlike English, which only distinguishes between a single proximal (this) and distal (that) spatial references, Korku demonstratives encode four levels of proximity to the speaker (i.e. ‘very close’ vs. ‘close’ vs. ‘far’ vs. ‘very far’), plus a fifth distinction, when one is pinpointing. The table below illustrates the forms used in Korku. ::data[format=table title=""]

Gender	Number	Distance	Proximal	Distal
ni	ini / noːɟe	ɖi	ha / hu / ho	huɟɟe
nic	inic	ɖic	huc / huɟ / huɟe	hoːɟe
niɲɟ	inkiɲɟ / noːkiɲɟ	ɖikiɲɟ	huɟkiɲɟ	hoːkiɲɟ
niku	inku / noːku	ɖiku	huɟku	hoːku
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Derivation

In Korku, the infix -nV- is sometimes injected into verbs to derive nouns. This method is no longer productive as compared to the Kherwarian languages and other Munda lects.

kaɽub ('to cover') → kanuɽub ('lid, cover')

jukh(V)rij ('to sweep') → junuʔ ('broom')

Lexicon

Numerals

The basic cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 (transcribed in IPA) are: ::data[format=table]

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
miɲaʔ
bari
apʰai
apʰun
monoe
tuɾui
ei
ilaɾ
aɾei
gel
::

Numbers after 11 are mainly of Indo-Aryan origin.

Kinship terms

As with many Austroasiatic languages, Korku has several words to refer to members of one's family, including the extended family and in-laws. There are often separate terms for people depending on their gender and seniority, for instance /bawan/ "wife's older brother" and /kosɾeʈ/ "elder brother's son". In the tables below, words that include the suffix -/ʈe/ refer to someone else's family member, so that /kon/ means "my son", whereas /konʈe/ is used when talking about someone else's son, for instance /ɖukriaʔ konʈe/ "the old woman's son". ::data[format=table title="Immediate family"]

mother	father	daughter	son	younger sister	older brother	younger brother
anʈe / maːj
baːʈe / aba
konɟaj / konɟeʈe
kon / konʈe
bokoɟe / bokoɟeʈe
ɖaj / ɖajʈe
boko
::

Korku has words to refer to pairs or groups of people in the family. ::data[format=table title="Pairs or groups of family members"]

parents	children	children and wife	mother and son	father and son	siblings
anʈebaːʈe
baːlbacca
konkuɟapaj
ajomkokoɲa
baːkokoɲa
bombuku
::

::data[format=table title="In-laws (Wife's side)"]

wife	wife's elder sister	wife's younger sister	wife's sister's husband	wife's elder brother	wife's younger brother
ɟapaj
ɟiɟikaɲkaɾ(ʈe)
bewanɟe(ʈe)
saɽgi(ʈe)
baːw(ʈe)
bawan(ʈe)
::

Writing system

The Korku language uses the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script, which is also used to write the Marathi language.

Sample text

Korku folklore: Kolia - The Story of a Jackal

| indent = 3 | abbreviations = RDPL:reduplication; TLOC:translocative; VBLZR:verbalizer | top = Dij ije ije gaɖa paɽikʰèʔ.|ɖi-ej ij-e ij-e gaɖa paɽi-ki-èʔ|DEM-3SG.ANIM shit-INAN ~RDPL river block.up-INT-PST.TR|'He, defecating (continually, repeatedly), blocked up the river.'

| indent = 3 | abbreviations = VBLZR:verbalizer | top = Dij gaɖakʰèʔ mhenan: gaɖa gaɖa, iñaʔ ij ʈũganèʔ?|ɖi-ej gaɖa-kʰèʔ mhen-an gaɖa gaɖa, iñ-aʔ ij ʈon-ga-èn-eʔ|that-3SG.ANIM river-ACC say-PST.INTR river river me-GEN shit which-direction-LOC-VBLZR|'He (the jackal) said to the river: where is my shit?'

References

(1971). "Current Trends in Linguistics". [[Walter de Gruyter]].
{{e25. nll. Nihali
Cust, R. N. "Grammatical Note and Vocabulary of the Language of the Kor-ku, a Kolarian Tribe in Central India." The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. no. 2 (1884): 164 - 179. {{JSTOR. 25196986
Sengupta, Papia. "Endangered Languages: Some Concerns." Economic And Political Weekly. no. 32 (2009): 17-19. {{JSTOR. 25663414
"Korku". [[UNESCO]].
[[Stephen Fuchs. Fuchs, Stephen]]. "Thirty Korku Dancing Songs." Asian Folklore Studies. no. 1 (2000): 109-140. {{JSTOR. 1179030
"Glottolog".
Nagaraja, K.S.. (1999). "Korku language : grammar, texts, and vocabulary". Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Anderson, Gregory D. S.. (2007). "The Munda verb : typological perspectives". Mouton de Gruyter.
Anderson, Gregory D. S.. (2015). "Munda Languages.". Taylor and Francis.
Anderson, Gregory D. S.. (2017-03-29). "Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics: Munda Languages". Oxford University Press.
Paul., Sidwell. (8 December 2014). "The handbook of Austroasiatic languages".

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