Irula

Irula belongs to the Dravidian, Southern Dravidian, Tamil-Kannada sub-branch (ISO 639-3: iru, Glottocode: irul1243).

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, the Irula speech community is estimated at approximately 200,000 native speakers.

Distribution in India

Irula is primarily spoken in Southern India. Its primary geographic concentration includes the Western Ghats region of Tamil Nadu (specifically the Nilgiris, Coimbatore, and Erode districts, as well as northern districts like Tiruvallur and Kanchipuram) and adjacent areas in Kerala (primarily the Attappadi valley in Palakkad district), extending into border areas of Karnataka.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Contains a typical Southern Dravidian consonant system with a full series of retroflex stops, nasals, and liquids, as well as distinct centralized short and long vowels (such as /ɨ/ and /ɵ/).
• Morphology: Strictly agglutinative. Substantives inflect for case (including dative, locative, sociative, and ablative) using suffixes, while verbs take suffixal markers for tense, aspect, mood, and person-number-gender (PNG) agreement.
• Syntax: Characterized by a canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) default word order, head-final noun phrases, use of postpositions, and non-finite clause subordination (such as verbal participles).

Further reading

• Irula language on Wikipedia
• Glottolog Language Details: Irula of the Nilgiri
• ISO 639-3 Code Aspect: iru