Kuvi is a South-Central

Dravidian language The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant imm ...

spoken in the Indian state of

Odisha Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...

. The language is one of two spoken by the Kandhas, with the other being the closely related and more dominant Kui language. According to the 2011 Indian census, there are around 155,000 speakers. The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

is the

Odia script The Odia script ( or, ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର, Odiā akṣara, translit-std=ISO) is a Brahmic script used to write primarily Odia language and others including Sanskrit and other regional languages. The script has developed over mor ...

. The grammatical structure of this language is comparable to other similar languages such as Kui which all fall under the classification of a Dravidian language.

Background information

According to a study regarding population structure of tribal populations in central India, information was collected from the

Koraput district Koraput is a district of India in southern Odisha, with headquarters at Koraput. The district is located in the Eastern Ghats and is known for its hilly terrain, rich and diverse types of mineral deposits and its tribal culture and traditions. Th ...

about the Kuvi Kandhas. There were 325,144 people in the district according to the 1971 census. The Kuvi Kandhas are agriculturalists, and their physical appearance is similar to other Kandha groups.

Phonology

Within a study done by A.G. Fitzgerald and F. V. P. Schulze, they spent some time interrogating Kuvi speakers in Araku in Andhra Pradesh. Their information came from a village called Sunkarametta. They also went to Gudari to study the Kuttiya dialect of Kui, and found a Kuvi speaker. It was found that the speakers location influenced their speech. The Kuvi speaker described himself as a Parja Kandha, so some of his dialect is abbreviated by P, while the dialect studied at Araku was indicated by Su. The following vowels and consonants are necessary for the language. All vowels have short and long forms.

Grammar

All Central Dravidian languages are unified in gender and number distinctions. There is the distinction of masculine vs non-masculine (or feminine and non human) both in singular and plural. There is a simplex negative tense consisting of verb base + negative suffix + personal ending present in all Dravidian languages.Krishnamurti, B. (2005). M. B. Emeneau, 1904-2005.
Journal of the American Oriental Society
'' ''125''(4), 481-497. Kuvi language also contains a past negative tense with the structure- verb base + negative suffix + past suffix + personal ending.

Background information

Phonology

Grammar

Past tense

Present tense

See also

References

Further reading