Korku
कोरकू
Region	CentralIndia (Madhya Pradesh,Maharashtra)
Ethnicity	Korku
Native speakers	730,000 (2011 census)[1]
Language family	Austroasiatic Munda North Korku
Dialects	Melghat Lahi Muwasi
Writing system	Devanagari script (Balbodh style)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kfq
Glottolog	kork1243
ELP	Korku
Korku is classified as Vulnerable by theUNESCOAtlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Korku (also known asKurku, orMuwasi^[3]) is anAustroasiatic language spoken by theKorku people of centralIndia, in the states ofMadhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. It is isolated in the midst of theGondi people, who areDravidian, while its closest relatives are in eastern India. It is the westernmost Austroasiatic language.

Korkus are also closely associated with theNihali people, many of whom have traditionally lived in special quarters of Korku villages.^[4] Korku is spoken by around 700,000 people, mainly in four districts of southernMadhya Pradesh (Khandwa,Harda,Betul,Narmadapuram) and three districts of northernMaharashtra (Rajura andKorpanatahsils ofChandrapur district, Manikgarh pahad area nearGadchandur inChandrapur district) (Amravati,Buldana,Akola).

The name Korku comes fromKoro-ku (-ku is the animate plural),Koro 'person, member of the Korku community' (Zide 2008).^[5]

TheIndian national census of 2011 reported 727,133 people claiming to speak Korku, which contributes to Korku being anunscheduled language according to the Indian system.^[6] However, Korku is classified as "vulnerable" byUNESCO, the least concerning of the levels oflanguage endangerment nonetheless.^[7] Most adult men are bilingual inHindi, or multilingual in Hindi and the local Dravidian languages (Zide 2008: 156).Literacy in the language islow.^[1]

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 theVindhya Mountains.^[8]

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

• Western (akaKorku)dialect: spoken in the districts ofMelghat,Betul-Narmadapuram, andNarmadapuram.
• Eastern (akaMuwasi/Mowasi/Mawasi, orKurku): spoken in theChhindwara district of southeasternMadhya Pradesh.

Glottolog lists four dialects for Korku:^[9]

• Ruma (Korku)
• Bondoy
• Bouriya
• Mawasi

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

• South-centralMadhya Pradesh
  • East Nimar district (Khandwa district)
  • Betul district
  • Narmadapuram district
  • Chhindwara district (Mawasi speakers)
• NortheasternMaharashtra
  • Amravati district (majority of speakers in Maharashtra)
  • Buldana district
  • Akola district

Korku has 10phonemicvowels, which can occur short or long (e.g. /aː/), plus one mid vowel that only occurs as a short segment /ə/.^[10]

Korku has a largeconsonant phoneme inventory,^[10] in which stops occur in several places of articulation. Like manylanguages of India, Korku stops distinguish betweenvoiced, plain voiceless, andvoiceless aspirated consonants.

Word-finally, all stops are unreleased.^[10]

Korku has two contrastive leveltones: 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. Exampleiɲ-àʔ sanì kẽᶑe siɽi "my black small goat" →iɲàʔ sànì kẽᶑè sìɽì.

Verb suffixes and demonstrative derivatives, particularly stems with a final vowel will triggervowel 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') becomeskulkhèʔnèj when is spelled.

Korku is a highlyagglutinating,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.

Korku, as allMunda languages, shows a strictSubject–Object–Verb (SOV)word order.^[11]

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.^[3]

Nouns in Korku are assigned one of twogrammatical genders:animate, and inanimate, and inflect for several differentgrammatical cases.

Korku distinguishes threegrammatical numbers: singular, dual (two of X), andplural (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 atkoɾo).^[10][2]

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 viaprepositions 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.^[10][3]

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

Additionally, Korku regularly marks direct object on the verb, as in other Munda languages.^[3] In the sentence below, the suffix /eɟ/ on the verb compound /senɖawkʰen/ indicates that it was someone else who was given permission 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.

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

Given that the general trend inMunda languages is the fusion of tenses withvoices, Korku stems are subjected to complex stem alternations in tense/aspect marking in regards totransitivity,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 assen ('go'),hej ('come'), andniɽ ('run, go away').

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.

Sources:^[12][10]

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.

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.^[10] The table below illustrates the forms used in Korku.

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

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

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

The basic cardinal numbers from 1 to 10 (transcribed in IPA) are:

Numbers after 11 are mainly of Indo-Aryan origin.^[13]

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".^[10]

Korku has words to refer to pairs or groups of people in the family.

The Korku language uses theBalbodh style of theDevanagari script, which is also used to write theMarathi language.^[2]

Korku folklore:Kolia -The Story of a Jackal

• Anderson, Gregory D. S. (ed.),The Munda languages. Routledge Language Family Series 3.New York: Routledge.ISBN 0-415-32890-X.
• Nagaraja, K. S. (1999).Korku language: grammar, texts, and vocabulary. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
• Zide, Norman H. (1963).Korku noun morphology. [Chicago: South Asian Languages Program, University of Chicago.
• Zide, Norman H. (1960). Korku verb morphology. [S.l: s.n.]
• Zide, Norman H. (2008). "Korku". In Gregory D. S. Anderson (ed.),The Munda languages, 256–298. Routledge Language Family Series 3. New York: Routledge.ISBN 0-415-32890-X.

• Ae... kalaavati... a korku song at YouTube.com

• Munda languages
• Endangered languages of India
• Endangered Austroasiatic languages
• Vulnerable languages
• Languages written in Devanagari

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 25
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Korku-language text
• Pages using infobox language with unknown parameters
• Articles with ambiguous glossing abbreviations