Desia language

Desia,^[1] also Desiya or Desia Odia or Koraputi Odia or Southwestern Odia, is an Indo-Aryan language variety (sociolinguistically considered as a dialect of Odia) spoken in Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada, Malkangiri districts Odisha and in the hilly regions of Vishakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts of Andhra Pradesh.^[2] The variant spoken in Koraput is called Koraputia.

Desia
Desiya, Desia Odia
ଦେଶିଆ
Native to	India
Region	Odisha (Koraput, Malkangiri, Rayagada, Nabarangpur) & Andhra Pradesh ( Vizianagaram District, Alluri Sitharama Raju district , Visakhapatnam District, Anakapalli district)
Ethnicity	Odias
Native speakers	230,000 (2011 census)
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Eastern Odia Desia
Writing system	Odia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: dso – Desiya ort – Adivasi Oriya
Glottolog	adiv1239

Desia serves as the lingua franca among the different ethnic groups in the area^[3] and is the major regional tribal-non-tribal dialect continuum of the undivided Koraput district of the Southwestern Odisha region.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

Phonology

Desia variety has 21 consonant phonemes, 2 semivowel phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes.^[9]

Desia vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a	ɔ

There are no long vowels in Desia just like Standard Odia.

Desia consonant phonemes

		Labial	Alveolar /Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɳ		ŋ
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	ʈ	tʃ	k
	voiceless aspirated
	voiced	b	d	ɖ	dʒ	ɡ
	voiced aspirated
Fricative			s				ɦ
Trill/Flap			ɾ	ɽ~ɽʰ
Lateral approximant			l
Approximant		w			j

Desia shows the loss of retroflex consonant like voiced retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ] (ଳ) which are present in Standard Odia, and a limited usage of retroflex unaspirated nasal (voiced retroflex nasal) ɳ (ଣ).^[10]

References

1. Masica (1991:426)
2. "Desiya", in Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. (2020). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-third edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International.
3. Gustafsson, Uwe (1978). "Procedural discourse in Kotia Oriya". In Joseph E. Grimes (ed.), Papers on discourse, 283-97. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
4. Mohan, Shriya (January 10, 2018). "Speak up, India". The Hindu.
5. Vishnu, Uma (May 15, 2016). "This way to school: How dismal indicators for education in Odisha's Nabarangpur are slowly changing". The Indian Express.
6. "Census of India : Linguistic survey of India Orissa".
7. Mahapatra, B.P. (2002). Linguistic Survey of India: Orissa (PDF). Kolkata, India: Language Division, Office of the Registrar General. p. 2. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
8. Mahapatra, B.P. (2002). Linguistic Survey of India: Orissa (PDF). Kolkata, India: Language Division, Office of the Registrar General. p. 20. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
9. Mahapatra, B.P. (2002). Linguistic Survey of India: Orissa (PDF). Kolkata, India: Language Division, Office of the Registrar General. p. 94,95. Retrieved 5 August 2020.
10. Tripathī, Kunjabihari (1962). The Evolution of Oriya Language and Script. Utkal University. Retrieved 21 March 2021.

Further reading

• Masica, Colin (1991). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2.