Kurukh Language Letters

Kurukh (कुँड़ुख़, Kuṛux) is the language of the Oraon, who call themselves Kurukh; outsiders often call the language Oraon too, and its ISO code is kru. In India it is usually written in Devanagari, the script of Hindi, Sadri and Nepali, with the same letters and a handful of dotted ones. No special Kurukh font is needed: any font that covers Devanagari, including the ones built into Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, writes it correctly. The language's own name already shows the three marks that matter most: the candrabindu ँ of the nasal vowel, the flap ड़ and the ख़ at the end.

Kurukh also has a script of its own, Tolong Siki, invented by Narayan Oraon in 1988, formally published in 1999 and promoted by Kurukh organisations in Jharkhand, which is why "kurukh lipi" and "kurukh ki lipi kya hai" are such common searches. Tolong Siki was added to Unicode in version 17.0 in 2025; digital fonts have existed since 2007, and books and community publications are also produced in the script. This page collects the Devanagari letters; another script name that circulates in searches, Kurukh Banna, has no Unicode encoding.

Kurukh alphabet in Devanagari: vowels, matras and consonants

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant carries a built-in short a, so क is ka. Other vowels are added as signs called matras, written before, after, above or below the consonant: का कि की कु कू के कै को कौ. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ stand at the start of a word or after another vowel. Kurukh has nasal vowels, and the candrabindu ँ marks them, as in कुँड़ुख़; the anusvara ं writes a nasal before a consonant, and the virama ् removes the built-in vowel so that letters join into conjuncts.

The sound that most sets Kurukh apart from its Indo-Aryan neighbours is the x of Kuṛux, a rough sound at the back of the mouth like the ch of Scottish loch. Devanagari writes it ख़: the letter ख with the nukta dot ़ below. The same dot turns ड and ढ into the flapped ड़ and ढ़, the ṛ and ṛh sounds, the first as in Kuṛux. Leaving the dot off writes a different sound, so कुड़ुख with a plain ख is a misspelling in careful writing. ऋ, ष and the visarga ः appear only in words and names taken from Hindi and Sanskrit, and ऑ ॉ write the English o of loanwords such as डॉक्टर.

Sentences end with the danda ।, the verses of a song with the double danda ॥, and numbers can be written with Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ or with 0–9.

Kurukh words, dandi songs and festivals

Song lyrics are a common thing to post in Kurukh online. A song is a dandi (डंडी), and "kurukh dandi" covers Karam songs, benja (wedding) songs and newer releases. People greet each other with जोहार (Johar), the greeting shared by the peoples of Jharkhand, often with folded hands 🙏.

The year turns on two great festivals. In spring, when the sal trees 🌳 blossom 🌼, comes Khaddi, known across Jharkhand as Sarhul (सरहुल): the sacred grove, the sarna, is honoured and sal flowers are worn in the hair and given from house to house. In the rainy season comes Karam (करम): a branch of the Karam tree 🌿 is planted in the akhra, the village dance ground, and young men and women dance around it in long linked lines 💃🕺 to the beat of the mandar drum 🪘 through the night. Followers of the Sarna faith call the supreme being Dharmes (धर्मेस), and जय सरना is a slogan used by followers of the Sarna faith.

How to type Kurukh on a keyboard and phone

For Devanagari, a Hindi layout works; Gboard on Android also offers Kurukh layouts in Devanagari and transliteration. On Windows, add Hindi under Settings → Time & language → Language & region and choose a layout: Hindi Traditional is the InScript standard with one key per letter, and the phonetic layout lets you type ka to get क. Switch with Windows + Space. On a Mac, add Hindi under System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Edit and pick Devanagari, Devanagari – QWERTY or Hindi – Transliteration. To get ख़, type ख and then the nukta ़.

On a phone, add the Hindi keyboard in Gboard or in iPhone settings. Both offer transliteration: type johar in Latin letters and pick जोहार from the suggestions. Transliteration may not suggest the nukta letters for Kurukh words, so check ख़ and ड़ in names like कुँड़ुख़, or copy them from this page. In HTML, ख़ is ख़, ड़ is ड़, ँ is the candrabindu ँ and । is the danda ।. Do not use the vertical bar | for a danda: it looks close, but search and screen readers treat it as a different character.

Where the Kurukh language is spoken

Kurukh is spoken on the Chota Nagpur Plateau: in Jharkhand around Ranchi, Gumla, Lohardaga and Latehar, in the Jashpur and Surguja districts of Chhattisgarh, in Sundargarh in Odisha, and in Bihar. Oraon families who went to work in the tea gardens of North Bengal and Assam in the nineteenth century took it with them, and smaller Oraon communities live in Bangladesh and Nepal. CLDR estimates about 2.7 million speakers in India. Jharkhand and West Bengal list Kurukh among their additional official languages, but it is not in the Eighth Schedule of the constitution.

Kurukh is a Dravidian language, a distant relative of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, far to the south. Glottolog groups Kurukh with Malto of the Rajmahal hills in the Kurukh–Malto branch; Brahui, spoken more than 1,500 km away in Pakistan's Balochistan, is another North Dravidian language. Day to day it lives beside very different languages: Sadri, the Indo-Aryan link language of the region, Hindi, the Munda languages Santali, Mundari and Ho, Gondi in Chhattisgarh, and Bangla and Odia to the east; each has its own collection. For the flag 🇮🇳, the rupee and India's emoji, see the India page.