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Introduction

The family of Dravidian languages includes not only the state languages of Southern India, but a number of minority languages of hill and junlge peoples scattered over much of the subcontinent. Gondi is the most important of the Central Dravidian group, which must have separated from southern languages such as Kannada and Tamil well over two thousand years ago.

There is no written literature in Gondi. The language is spoken in several large enclaves of jungle country, separated from one another by settled lands where Marathi, Chhattisgarhi and Telugu are spoken. Gondi clearly forms the linguistic features of the Bhatri dialect of Oriya,and Halbi dialect of Marathi.

The islands of Gondi speech, with about 1,900,00 speakers are in the Indian states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and AndhraPradesh. About 5,000,000 people class themselves as Koitor or Gonds, but many speak Hindi or Telugu and not Gondi.

Family: Dravidian