North Dravidian

North Dravidian is the northernmost branch of the Dravidian family and consists of three languages: Brahui, Kurukh and Malto. Brahui is spoken in Balochistan, around Kalat and Quetta, more than fifteen hundred kilometres from the nearest other Dravidian speech, and is commonly regarded as a relic of a Dravidian presence across north-western South Asia before the spread of Indo-Aryan languages, its speakers perhaps holding the region since the second millennium BC.

Much of its vocabulary comes from Balochi, an Iranian language that reached the area only around the year 1000, and Brahui is written in the Arabic script.

Kurukh, the language of the Oraon, and its closest relative Malto are spoken far to the east, on the Chota Nagpur Plateau and adjoining areas. Kurukh is written in Devanagari. All three keep Dravidian grammar beneath large Indo-Aryan and Iranian vocabularies.