Turi is an endangered Austroasiatic language of India that belongs to the Kherwarian Munda group. Grierson (1906) described that Turi is similar to both Mundari and Santali. It is spoken by only half a percent of ethnic Turi, the rest having shifted to Sadri in Jharkhand, Mundari in West Bengal, and Odia in Odisha. The Turi are classified as a Scheduled Caste in Jharkhand.
Osada (1991) lists the following locations where Turi is spoken.
Turi has been traditionally grouped with the Mundaric dialect continuum. A recent phylogenetic analysis on Turi conducted by Peterson, et al. (2024) using the software COG from the Summer Institute of Linguistics found that Turi forms a closer cline with the Santali dialect continuum rather than with the Mundari-Ho dialects. This result is more aligned with the classification of Turi proposed by Ethnologue (Eberhard et al. (2023)). The analysis concludes that Turi may have separated from the Kherwarian languages groups from an early date so that it may constitute a third subgroup of Kherwarian.
Similar to Santali and Mundari, but /w/ is replaced by /ÃÂ/ in Turi. Most Munda languages have voiced stops accompanied with pre-glottalization and nasal release, so does Turi, but the language tends to drop the stops entirely while retains the nasal and the glottal stop. Eg. Turi [uÃÂm] "hair", Mundari [uÃÂbÃ¥áµÂ] "hair"; Turi [mÃÂÃÂnê] "eye", Mundari [meÃÂdúâ¿] "eye".
Emphasis on dual and plural reference in Turi pronouns can be reinforced by attaching number markers =kin and =ku directly to the pronoun. Eg. ÃÂlià  bÃÂþÃÂà Â=kin "we both (EXCL)", ÃÂlÃÂ=ku "we (PL.EXCL)".
Turi has five cases. The case markers follow the number markers. For example, tÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂ=kun=rÃÂn (child=PL=GEN) "of the children".
Like all Kherwarian languages, Turi verbs index both the S/A and P arguments.
Odisha Turi has two copulas: the temporary/locative hÃÂn= (suppletive form kÃÂnÃÂÃÂÃÂ) and identity =nÃÂÃ Â. The origin of =nÃÂÃ Â is obscure.
Temporary locative copula sentence:
Identity copula sentence: