Koraga language

Koraga (also rendered Koragar, Koragara, Korangi) is a Dravidian language spoken by the Koraga people, a Scheduled tribe people of Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka, and Kerala in South West India. The dialect spoken by the Koraga tribe in Kerala, Mudu Koraga, is divergent enough to not be intelligible with Korra Koraga.^[2]

Koraga
ಕೊರಗ
Native to	India
Ethnicity	Koraga
Native speakers	45-50 (2018)[1]
Language family	Dravidian South Dravidian South Dravidian I Southwestern Dravidian Koraga
Writing system	Kannada script, Malayalam script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: kfd – Korra Koraga vmd – Mudu Koraga
Glottolog	kora1289

Classification

Koraga is a member of the Dravidian family of languages.^[3][4] It is further classified into the Southern Dravidian family. Koraga is a spoken language and generally not written, whenever it is written it makes use of Kannada script. Koraga people are generally conversant in Tulu^[5] and Kannada languages and hence use those languages as a medium for producing literature.

Dialects

According to Bhat, there are 4 dialects:^[2]

• Onti (spoken in Udupi)
• Tappu (in Hebri)
• Mudu (in Kundapura)
• Ande (midway between tappu and onti and in Mangalore)

All the speakers who speak Mudu dialect are bilingual with Kannada language and all speaking onti dialect are bilingual with Tulu language.^[2] This has resulted a strong influence of Kannada on Mudu koraga and also similar influence of Tulu is seen on onti koraga dialect.^[6] Majority of negative forms of onti koraga language are borrowed from Tulu language.^[7]

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels^[8]

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
High	i	iː	ɨ		u	uː
Mid	e	eː			o	oː
Low			a	aː

Consonants

Consonants^[8]

		Bilabial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n			ŋ
Stop	voiceless	p	t	ʈ	c	k
	voiced	b	d	ɖ	ɟ	g
Fricative			s
Approximant		ʋ	l		j
Rhotic			r