The Yerukala Language

The Linguistic study of Yerukala language proposed in this book deals with certain sociolinguistic aspects of Yerukala speech forms, Kinship terminology, Oral literary genTres like Probers, Riddles, Oral narratives and Vocabulary. The yerukalas are a wandering tribe settled in plains in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharastra, West Bengal (Calcutta) and Orissa. They are called yerukalas in Andhra Pradesh, Koravas or Koragas in Tamilnadu, Korchas in Karnataka and KaikaDis in Narmada regions of Maharastra. They are known as Korava from the extreme South to the North of the North Arcot district of Tamilnadu, where they are Koracha or Korcha, and in the ceded districts of Andhra Pradesh they become Yerukala or Yerakala. According to Balfour, “The koravas, or a certain section of them, i.e. the kunchi koravas, were known as yerkal koravar, and they called the language they spoke yerkal. The same authority, writing of the yerkalwadu, alludes to them as kurshiwanloo, and goes onto say that they style themselves yerka, and give the same appellation to the language in which they hold communication.