Marathi Language

Marathi dialects, Marathi alphabet, Marathi orthography, Marathi language history and sources

Marathi language

Marathi: The official language spoken in the State of Maharashtra, also known as Maharathi, Malhatee, Marthi, and Muruthu.

Number of Marathi Speakers: 80 million (over 70 million native speakers).

Marathi Speakers: Also spoken in Israel and Mauritius.

Language Classification: Marathi belongs to the group of Indo-Aryan languages, a part of the larger of group of Indo-European languages, Maharashtri, one of the Middle Indic Prakrit languages.

Marathi Dialects: konkaNii, Varhadii, Vidarbha, and Dangi are the major dialects in total of 42 dialects.

Marathi Alphabet: Marathi script consists of 16 vowels and 36 consonants making a total of 52 alphabets. In terms of morphology, the nominal system still preserves the neuter gender and a set of old flective case forms.

Marathi Language History: The Marathi scripts go back to the 11th century A.D. and had the Yadava, Bahamani, Maratha, Peshwa British, and contemporary periods.

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Marathi Orthography: The script currently used in Marathi is called 'bALbodh' a modified version of Devnaagari script. The most common sentence structure is Subject Object Verb. In terms of phonetics, internal dialects of Marathi has a series of nasal vowels. 

Marathi Language Enriched by: Sanskrit, Kannada, Telugu, Persian, Arabic, and Turkish.

Marathi Standardization Efforts: Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi, have become relatively standardized after the late 18th century.

Unique Features of Marathi: North India maintains the village dialects. As a proverb has it, "Every two miles the water changes, every four miles the speech."

Visit Country Study for India to find out the social context of Indian languages and other related issues.

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