Kokborok is the native language of the Tripuri community in the northeast Indian state of Tripura. The word Kokborok is composed of two words, kok which means "language" and borok which literally means "man" but is used to denote the Tripuri people. Thus Kokborok means "the language of man" or "the language of the Borok people".

There is a community of Kokborok speakers in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Kokborok Sounds and phonetics

Kokborok is a Tibeto-Burmese language and is closely related to the Boro language.It is a typical Tibeto-Burmese language and consists of the following vowels sounds: 1. 'a' as in Father 2. 'e' as in end 3. 'i' as in in 4. 'o' as in hot 5. 'u' as in put 6. 'w' as in German u, this a special sound and is not present in English but is very common in the Tibeto-Burmese languages.

The consonants are b,d,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,r,s,t,y along with combined consonants ch,kh,ph,th,ng.

Script issues

The issue of which script to use for the Kokborok language continues to provoke political controversy. The line of the Ganamukti Parishad of Dasarath Deb was that Bengali script ought to be used for the language. That policy is the one implemented by the Left Front government in Tripura. The ethnonationalist opposition, such as INPT, advocates usage of Latin script.

There have also been attempts to create an entirely new script for the language. The most notable one was constructed by Alinda Tripura. It is however, not in use.