Koya language

Koya
Native to	India
Region	Chinturu, Andhra Pradesh
Native speakers	360,000 (2001)[1]
Language family	Dravidian South-Central Gondi–Kui Kuvi–Kui Koya
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kff
Glottolog	koya1251[2]

Koya is a South-Central Dravidian language of the Gondi–Kui group. It is sometimes described as a dialect of Gondi (spoken in Adilabad district in Telangana and in Gondwana region of Central India), but it is possibly mutually unintelligible with Gondi dialects.^[3]

Koya is the language spoken by a tribal community in Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), Bhadrachalam in Khammam district; ITDA, Rampachodavaram, East Godavari district; ITDA, Kotaramachandrapuram, West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh. There are also Koyas in Chhattisgarh State.

Koya is variously written in the Oriya, Telugu, Devanagari or Latin script. With 270,994 registered native speakers, it figures at rank 37 in the 1991 Indian census. There are textbooks developed in Koya language under Mother Tongue based Multilingual Education Programme by Government of Andhra Pradesh and implemented in 50 primary schools in Koya habitations.

References

1. Koya at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Koya". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Bhadriraju Krishnamurti (2003). The Dravidian languages. Oxford University Press. p. 25.