Kuvi is a South-Central

Dravidian language The Dravidian languages are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia. The most commonly spoken Dravidian languages are (i ...

spoken in the Indian state of

Odisha Odisha (), formerly Orissa (List of renamed places in India, the official name until 2011), is a States and union territories of India, state located in East India, Eastern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by ar ...

. The language is one of two spoken by the Kandhas, with the other being the closely related and more dominant

Kui language Kui language may refer to: * Kui language (India), a Dravidian language of eastern India (Odisha and Andhra Pradesh) spoken by the Khonds Khonds (also spelt Kondha and Kandha) are an indigenous Dravidian tribal community in India. Traditio ...

. According to the 2011 Indian census, there are around 155,000 speakers. The

orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

is the

Odia script The Odia script (, also ) is a Brahmic script used to write the Odia language. To a lesser extent, it is also used to write Sanskrit and other regional languages. It is one of the official scripts of the Indian Republic. The script has deve ...

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

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.

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