Koya (language)
| Koya | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
India (regions: Telangana , Odisha , Andhra Pradesh ) | |
| speaker | 360,000 | |
| Linguistic classification |
|
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | - | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
- |
|
| ISO 639-3 |
kff |
|
Koya is a Dravidian idiom that is widespread in east-central India . It is spoken by around 360,000 members of the Adivasi Koya tribe in the states of Telangana , Odisha and Andhra Pradesh .
The classification of the smaller Dravidian languages is problematic, on the one hand, because a distinction is not always made between ethnicity and language, and on the other hand, because the scriptless tribal languages do not have a standard variety and it is so often difficult to distinguish between independent language and dialect . From a linguistic point of view, there is a consensus that Koya is to be regarded as a dialect of the Gondi language . However, with most of the other Gondi dialects, Koya is not mutually understandable . In the Indian census statistics, Koya is counted as a separate language, as well as in Ethnologue .
The 2001 census recorded a total of 362,070 native Koya speakers in India. 203,088 of them live in today's state of Telangana (mainly Khammam district ), 113,668 in Odisha state ( Malkangiri district ) and 45,007 in Andhra Pradesh state ( West Godavari district ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sanford B. Steever: "Introduction to the Dravidian Languages," in: Sanford B. Steever (ed.): The Dravidian Languages, London: Routledge, 1998, pp 1-39, here p. 3
- ↑ Bhadriraju Krishnamurti: The Dravidian Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 25
- ↑ Census of India 2001: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues - 2001 .
- ↑ Census of India 2001: C-16: Population by Mother Tongue, accessed under Tabulations Plan of Census Year - 2001 .
literature
- Stephen A. Tyler: Koya: An Outline Grammar. Gommu Dialect, University of California Publications in Linguistics 54. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.