Kodava

Kodava (also known as Kodava Takk) belongs to the Dravidian language family, specifically classified under the Southern Dravidian (South Dravidian I) subgroup. It is closely related to Tamil, Malayalam, and Kannada.

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 113,857 speakers of Kodagu/Coorgi in India.

Distribution in India

The language is primarily spoken in the Kodagu (Coorg) district in the southwestern region of the state of Karnataka, India. Due to migration, communities of speakers are also found in neighboring districts of Karnataka and Kerala, as well as in major Indian metropolitan areas.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Kodava is highly distinctive among Dravidian languages for its vowel system, which features a set of high central unrounded vowels (/ɯ/, /ɯː/) and mid-central vowels (/ë/, /ëː/), alongside the typical Dravidian five-vowel system. It maintains a contrast between short and long vowels.
• Morphology: It is an agglutinative language. Nouns are marked for cases (including nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, and sociative) and number. The gender system distinguishes masculine, feminine, and neuter, though plural forms often neutralize some gender distinctions. Verbs are inflected for tense (past, present, future), aspect, mood, and show agreement with the subject in person, number, and gender.
• Syntax: The basic word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Being a head-final language, it exclusively uses postpositions rather than prepositions, and modifiers (such as adjectives and relative clauses) precede the nouns they modify.

Further reading

• Learn more via the Wikipedia search for Kodava language or the direct Wikipedia article on Kodava.
• Detailed classification and bibliography are available on Glottolog 5.0: Kodava.