Desia,Masica (1991:426) also known as Desiya, Kotia, Adivasi Odia, Desia Odia or Koraputia, is an Indo-Aryan language variety of Odia, spoken in Koraput, Nabarangpur, Rayagada, Malkangiri districts Odisha and in the hilly regions of Vishakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts of Andhra Pradesh."Desiya", in Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig, eds. (2020). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-third edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. The variant spoken in Koraput is called Koraputia.
Desia Odia serves as the lingua franca among the different ethnic groups in the areaGustafsson, Uwe (1978). "Procedural discourse in Kotia Oriya". In Joseph E. Grimes (ed.), Papers on discourse, 283-97. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics. and is the major regional tribal-non-tribal dialect continuum of the undivided Koraput district of the Southwestern Odisha region.
Phonology
Desia language has 19 consonant phonemes, 2 semivowel phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes.
+Desia vowel phonemes FrontCentralBackHigh Mid Low
There are no long vowels in Desia just like Standard Odia.
+Desia consonant phonemes Labial Alveolar/Dental Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Stop/Affricate Fricative Trill/Flap ~ Lateral approximant Approximant
Desia shows the loss of retroflex consonant like voiced retroflex lateral approximant () which are present in Standard Odia, and a limited usage of retroflex unaspirated nasal (voiced retroflex nasal) (). More strikingly though, it also shows the loss of aspirated and murmured consonants (strikingly similar to Proto-Dravidian and Proto-Munda).
References
Further reading