Indo-Aryan languages

The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages, are a major language family of South Asia (or the Indian subcontinent). They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family. In the early 21st century, Indo-Aryan languages were spoken by more than 800 million people, primarily in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Moreover, there are large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan speaking communities in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America and Australia. There are about 219 known Indo-Aryan languages.

Modern Indo-Aryan languages are descended from Sanskrit through Prakrit. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 329 million), Bengali (242 million), Punjabi (about 100 million) , Sindhi (25 million) and other languages, with a 2005 estimate placing the total number of native speakers at nearly 900 million.

History

• Likewise, Sarat Chandra Roy, in the census report of 1911, tried to identify some names in the Rigveda with Mundari (Austric) names, but even so staunch a supporter of the Aryan invasion theory as S.K. Chatterji admits: “Mr. Roy’s attempts to identify non-Aryan chiefs in the Rigveda with Munda names… are rather fanciful.”48

Camel, Elephant

• T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov,140 two linguists who are supporters of the Anatolian homeland theory, have recently examined words in the Indo-European languages which were largely ignored or missed by the linguists in general, and they have arrived at the conclusion that Proto-Indo-European names definitely existed for some more animals such as the leopard (Sanskrit pRdAku, Greek pardos, Hittite parsana) and the monkey (Sanskrit kapi, Greek kepos, which they also link, with k/mute alteration, with Germanic and Celtic words like Old Norse api, Old English apa, Old High German affo, Welsh epa and Irish apa, “ape”), and even more significantly, the camel and the elephant. (Talageri 2000)

• 1. The camel is native to West Asia and to Central Asia. There are cognate words for the camel in Tokharian *alpi, Old Church Slavonic velibadu, Baltic (Lithuanian) verbliudas, and Germanic words like Old Norse ulfaldi, Old English olfend, Old High German olbanta and Gothic ulbandus. A related word in Hittite, according to C.D. Buck, is ulupantas or ulpantas which appears to be used for “ox”.141

The word is similar to the Greek word elephas for elephant, which is the source for all the European names for the elephant. Buck suggests that this word is “based upon… Egyptian words… to be analysed as el-ephas, the second part, like Lat. ebur, ‘ivory’, from Egypt. Ab, ‘elephant, ivory’, but first part disputed”.142 He adds: “Hence also (though disputed by some) with shift to ‘camel’, Goth. ulbandus, ON ulfaldi, OE olfend, OHG olbanta……”143

The evidence of the Tokharian word, however, conclusively proves that this word cannot be a borrowing by Greek from Egyptian. A word so borrowed could never have been transmitted to Tokharian in Central Asia by any manipulation of any known theory of Indo-European origins and migrations; and the Tocharian word is clearly a related one since it contains both the elements, the “second part” of the word as well as the “disputed” first part.

Therefore, while it is very likely that there was a “shift” from an original meaning “elephant” to a new meaning “camel”, this shift took place in Central Asia and not in Greece. The cognate words for camel in Tocharian, Germanic, Slavonic and Baltic (and also Hittite, where there has been a second shift in meaning to “ox”) clearly prove that all these branches shared a sojourn in the camel lands of Central Asia.

2. The Greek word el-ephas is exactly cognate (again, only the second part of the word) with the Rigvedic ibhas. As we have already seen in our chapter on the Geography of the Rigveda, ibhas is just one of the four purely “Aryan” names (ibhas, sRNI, hastin and vAraNa) for the elephant in the Rigveda. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov point out that the Latin word ebur, “ivory”, is also cognate to the Sanskrit ibhas. We thus have the evidence of three different branches of Indo-European languages for the elephant as an animal known to the Proto-Indo-Europeans. As the Proto-Indo-Europeans were not native to Africa, African elephants (not being domesticated) could not have been directly known to them (even as an imported animal) in any other proposed homeland, and the Asiatic elephant is not native to any area north or west of India, the implications of this evidence are loud and clear.

Incidentally, it is possible that the Egyptian word Ab for “elephant” or “ivory” is itself derived from Sanskrit ibhas. We have it on the testimony of the Old Testament of the Bible (I Kings 22.10; II Chronicles 9.21) that apes, ivory and peacocks were imported from India (the peacocks confirm that the land referred to is India, or a transit port on the way from India) into Palestine, and doubtless the same was the case in Egypt as well. The Hebrew word for “ape” in the above references is qoph which is derived by linguists from the Sanskrit kapi; and, likewise, Buck accepts kapi as the “probable source of Egyptian qephi”.144 Significantly, the words for elephant in Arabic and Hebrew, fil and pil respectively, are clearly derived from the Sanskrit word pIlu for a male elephant, thereby indicating that it was the Indian elephant rather than the African one which was known in this region. (Talageri 2000)

What is even more ironical is that the IE languages have indeed preserved words for the elephant and the ape, two animals typical not of the area from ―from East Central Europe to Eastern Russia‖, but of either Africa or India (and areas further east), although Gamkrelidze somehow argues them into his Anatolian homeland. The Vedic ibha (elephant) is clearly cognate to the Greek el-ephas (elephant) and Latin ebur (ivory or elephant-tusks), and kapi (ape/monkey) is cognate to English ape and Irish apa (ape); and perhaps p ṛ dāku (spotted animal/leopard) to Greek pardos and Hittite parsana (leopard) (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:420-426, 442-444, TALAGERI 2000:311-313). But Witzel simply dismisses them, with specious objections, as ―rather dubious cases‖ (WITZEL 2005:365, 391).(Talageri 2008)

Cow

3. An animal whose name is common to almost all the Indo-European branches is the cow (Sanskrit go, Avestan gao, German kuh, Latin bOs, Irish bo, Lettish guovs, Greek boûs, Old Church Slavonic krava, etc), for whom the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word is *gwou. It is clear that the cow was a very intrinsic part of the life of the Indo-Europeans, as is proved also by its dominant status in the culture, idiom and imagery of the oldest Indo-European texts, the Rigveda and the Avesta. (Talageri 2000)

Bangani

• a. The BangANI language, spoken in the Garhwal region in the western Himalayas (in Uttar Pradesh) was brought into dramatic highlight by Clans Peter Zoller, a German linguist, in 1987 (as reported in our earlier book) when he announced the discovery of the remnants of an ancient Kentum language in the older layers of this language.

The long and short of it is that BangANI is now accepted by linguists all over the world as a language whose oldest layers contain remnants of an archaic Kentum language, a circumstance which is totally incongruous with any theory of Indoaryan immigrations into India. (Talageri 2000)

The Bangāṇi language has features which, in the AIT paradigm, should not be found to the east of Eastern Europe where Witzel, for example, places the ―fault line between the western Centum and eastern Satem languages‖ (WITZEL 2005:361). Although Tocharian was discovered and accepted in the last century, it was very difficult to fit it into the AIT paradigm: as Childe put it: ―To identify a wandering of Aryans across Turkestan from Europe in a relatively late prehistorical period is frankly difficult‖ (CHILDE 1926:95-96). It is much more difficult to identify a wandering of proto- Bangāṇi all the way from Europe to the Himalayan areas of Garhwal deep inside North India. (Talageri 2008)

Relations with Dravidian languages.

The linguists firmly refuse to even consider the evidence of the similarity of the first four numbers in Proto-Indo-European (*sem, *dwōu/*dwai, *tri and *qwetwor) and Proto-Austronesian (*esa, *dewha, *telu and *pati/*epati) in locating the PIE Homeland in the east: the first four numbers in Malay are sa/satu 'one', dua 'two', tiga 'three', epat 'four'. The dua and tiga need no explanation for an Indo-European speaker; for the other two, we have Tocharian sas/se 'one', Romanian patru 'four', Welsh pedwar 'four'. [1] ^[archive]

there are two words in the Rigveda which, however unpalatable it may be to Sanskrit-centric opponents of the AIT, are very definitely linguistically Dravidian words: 1. The verbal root pūj- "to revere, worship, respect, honour (usually an idol, with flowers)", derived from the Dravidian, e.g. Tamil pū-, "flower", representing a form of worship totally unknown to the Vedic culture, and representing the religion of the South. 2. The word kāṇa, "one-eyed" or "cross-eyed", very clearly derived from the Dravidian, e.g. Tamil kaṇ, "eye".

These two words are found (both in the New Rigveda) as follows:

a) pūj- in VIII.17.12, attributed to Irimbiṭhi Kāṇva, b) kāṇa in X.155.1, attributed to Śirimbiṭha Bhāradvāja. It cannot be a coincidence that both the words are composed by two different rishis with such strikingly similar, unusual and non-Indo-Aryan names. The rishi-ascriptions in book 10 are very often garbled - ... it is perfectly possible the composer of X.155 is also the same as the composer of VIII.17, i.e. Irimbiṭhi Kāṇva. The name is clearly Dravidian: in fact, we still have a place in Kerala named Irimbiḷiyam. Note that there are two more words in the same hymn, VIII.17, which have also been identified as Dravidian: a) -khaṇḍ- in VIII.17.12, b) kuṇḍa in VIII.17.13, and, to crown it all, the word muni, found in only 4 hymns in the whole of the Rigveda, and referring to holy men from the non-Vedic areas of the East and South within India, is also found in the next verse: in VIII.17.14. That we should have so many indications in three consecutive verses is incredible but extremely significant. Indian tradition has one more, and a very important, rishi who is unanimously and resoundingly associated, in the traditions of both the North and the South, with the South: Agastya. Puranic and Epic tradition tells us that Agastya migrated to the South and settled down there. The only reference to him, outside the New books 1 and 8 (I.117.11; 170.3; 179.6; 180.8; 184.5; VIII.5.26), is an incidental one in a Redacted Hymn, probably redacted by a descendant, in VII.33.10. And this hymn has a Dravidian word daṇḍa in the next verse VII.33.11.

[2] [archive]

Proto-Indo-Aryan

Main article: Proto-Indo-Aryan language

Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. It is intended to reconstruct the language of the pre-Vedic Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan (1500–300 BCE) which is directly attested as Vedic and Mitanni-Aryan. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a small number of archaic features lost in Vedic.

Indian subcontinent

See also: Linguistic history of India

Dates indicate only a rough time frame

• Proto-Indo-Aryan (before 1500 BCE, reconstructed)
• Old Indo-Aryan (ca. 1500–300 BCE)
  • early Old Indo-Aryan: Vedic Sanskrit (ca. 1500 to 500 BCE)
  • late Old Indo-Aryan: Epic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit (ca. 200 CE to 1300 CE)
• Middle Indo-Aryan or Prakrits, (ca. 1400 BCE or 300 BCE to 1500 CE)
  • Mitanni middle Indo-Aryan features (ca. 1400 BCE)
  • Early Buddhist texts (ca. 6th or 5th century BCE)
  • early Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g. Ashokan Prakrits, Pali, Gandhari, (ca. 300 to 200 BCE)
  • middle Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g. Dramatic Prakrits, Elu (ca. 200 BCE to 700 CE)
  • late Old Indo-Aryan: e.g. Abahattha (ca. 700 to 1500 CE)
• Early Modern Indo-Aryan (Late Medieval India)
  • early Dakhini and emergence of the Khariboli dialect

Old Indo-Aryan

The earliest evidence of the group is from Mitanni Indo-Aryan. The only evidence of it is a few proper names and specialized loanwords.

Rigvedic Indo-Aryan has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns of the Rigveda, the earliest Vedic literature.

From the Rigvedic language, "Sanskrit" (literally "put together", meaning perfected or elaborated) developed as the prestige language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre, etc. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by modern scholars as 'Classical Sanskrit' in contradistinction to the so-called 'Rigvedic Sanskrit', which is largely intelligible to Sanskrit speakers.

Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrits)

Mitanni inscriptions show some middle Indo-Aryan characteristics along with Old Indo-Aryan, for example sapta in old Indo-Aryan becomes satta ('pt' is transformed into middle indo aryan 'tt'). According to S.S. Misra this language can be similar to Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit which might not be a mixed language but an early middle Indo-Aryan occurring much before prakrit.

Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. The oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardhamagadhi Prakrit, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan languages. Apabhraṃśa is the conventional cover term for transitional dialects connecting late Middle Indo-Aryan with early Modern Indo-Aryan, spanning roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. Some of these dialects showed considerable literary production; the Śravakacāra of Devasena (dated to the 930s) is now considered to be the first Hindi book.

The next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing Turco-Mongol Mughal Empire, Persian became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoptation of the foreign language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani. This Indo-Aryan language is a combination with Persian, Arabic, and Turkic elements in its vocabulary, with the grammar of the local dialects.

The two largest languages that formed from Apabhraṃśa were Bengali and Hindustani; others include Assamese, Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, and Punjabi.

New Indo-Aryan

Dialect continuum

The Indo-Aryan languages of North India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum. What is called "Hindi" in India is frequently Standard Hindi, the Sanskritized version of the colloquial Hindustani spoken in the Delhi area since the Mughals. However, the term Hindi is also used for most of the central Indic language varieties from Bihar to Rajasthan. The spoken New Indo-Aryan dialects from Assam in the east to the borders of Afghanistan in the west form a linguistic continuum across the plains of North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Medieval Hindustani

Main articles: Hindustani language and History of Hindustani

In the Central Zone Hindi-speaking areas, for a long time the prestige dialect was Braj Bhasha, but this was replaced in the 19th century by the Khariboli-based Hindustani. Hindustani was strongly influenced by Sanskrit and Persian, with these influences leading to the emergence of Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu as registers of the Hindustani language. This state of affairs continued until the division of the British Indian Empire in 1947, when Hindi became the official language in India and Urdu became official in Pakistan. Despite the different script the fundamental grammar remains identical, the difference is more sociolinguistic than purely linguistic. Today it is widely understood/spoken as a second or third language throughout South Asia and one of the most widely known languages in the world in terms of number of speakers.

Mitanni-Aryan

Main article: Mitanni-Aryan

Some theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggest that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrians in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion. In a treaty between the Hittites and the Mitanni, the deities Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the Ashvins (Nasatya) are invoked. Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms such as aika (eka, one), tera (tri, three), panza (pancha, five), satta (sapta, seven), na (nava, nine), vartana (vartana, turn, round in the horse race). The numeral aika "one" is of particular importance because it places the superstrate in the vicinity of Indo-Aryan proper as opposed to Indo-Iranian or early Iranian (which has "aiva") in general

Another text has babru (babhru, brown), parita (palita, grey), and pinkara (pingala, red). Their chief festival was the celebration of the solstice (vishuva) which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called marya, the term for warrior in Sanskrit as well; note mišta-nnu (= miẓḍha, ≈ Sanskrit mīḍha) "payment (for catching a fugitive)" (M. Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen, Heidelberg, 1986–2000; Vol. II:358).

Sanskritic interpretations of Mitanni royal names render Artashumara (artaššumara) as Ṛtasmara "who thinks of Ṛta" (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (biridašṷa, biriiašṷa) as Prītāśva "Whose Horse is Dear" (Mayrhofer II 182), Priyamazda (priiamazda) as Priyamedha "whose wisdom is dear" (Mayrhofer II 189, II378), Citrarata as Citraratha "Whose Chariot is Shining" (Mayrhofer I 553), Indaruda/Endaruta as Indrota "helped by Indra" (Mayrhofer I 134), Shativaza (šattiṷaza) as Sātivāja "Winning the Race Price" (Mayrhofer II 540, 696), Šubandhu as Subandhu "Having Good Relatives" (a name in Palestine, Mayrhofer II 209, 735), Tushratta (tṷišeratta, tušratta, etc.) as *tṷaiašaratha, Vedic Tvastar "Whose Chariot is Vehement" (Mayrhofer, Etym. Wb., I 686, I 736).

Romani, Lomavren, and Domari languages

Domari

Main article: Domari language

Domari is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by older Dom people scattered across the Middle East. The language is reported to be spoken as far north as Azerbaijan and as far south as central Sudan. Based on the systematicity of sound changes, we know with a fair degree of certainty that the names Domari and Romani derive from the Indo-Aryan word ḍom.

Lomavren

Main article: Lomavren language

Lomavren is a nearly extinct mixed language, spoken by the Lom people, that arose from language contact between a language related to Romani and Domari and the Armenian language.

Romani

Main article: Romani language

The Romani language is usually included in the Western Indo-Aryan languages. Romani—spoken mainly in various parts of Europe—is conservative in maintaining almost intact the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, and in maintaining consonantal endings for nominal case—both features that have been eroded in most other modern languages of Central India. It shares an innovative pattern of past-tense person concord with the languages of the Northwest, such as Kashmiri and Shina. This is believed to be further proof that Romani originated in the Central region, then migrated to the Northwest.

There are no known historical documents about the early phases of the Romani language.

Linguistic evaluation carried out in the nineteenth century by Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) showed that the Romani language is to be classed as a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), not Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA), establishing that the ancestors of the Romani could not have left India significantly earlier than AD 1000.

The principal argument favouring a migration during or after the transition period to NIA is the loss of the old system of nominal case, and its reduction to just a two-way case system, nominative vs. oblique. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation. Romani has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this old system even today.

It is argued that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. Most of the neuter nouns became masculine while a few feminine, like the neuter अग्नि (agni) in the Prakrit became the feminine आग (āg) in Hindi and jag in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have been cited as evidence that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, perhaps even as late as the tenth century.

Classification

There can be no definitive enumeration of Indo-Aryan languages because their dialects merge into one another. The major ones are illustrated here; for the details, see the dedicated articles.

The classification follows Masica (1991) and Kausen (2006).

File:Circle frame.svg

Percentage of Indo-Aryan speakers by native language:

  Hindustani (including Hindi and Urdu) (25.4%)

  Bengali (20.7%)

  Punjabi (9.4%)

  Marathi (5.6%)

  Gujarati (3.8%)

  Bhojpuri (3.1%)

  Maithili (2.6%)

  Odia (2.5%)

  Sindhi (1.9%)

  Others (25%)

Dardic

Main article: Dardic languages

Kashmiri - 5.6 million speakers

Shina

• Shina - 500,000 speakers
• Brokskat - 10,000 speakers
• Domaaki - 340 speakers
• Kundal Shahi - 700 speakers
• Kalkoti - 6,000 speakers
• Ushoji - 2,000 speakers
• Palula - 10,000 speakers
• Savi - 3,000 speakers

Pashayi - 400,000 speakers

Kunar

• Dameli - 5,000 speakers
• Gawar-Bati - 9,500 speakers
• Nangalami - 5,000 speakers
• Shumashti - 1,000 speakers

Chitral

• Kalasha - 5,000 speakers
• Khowar - 290,000 speakers

Kohistani

• Maiya - 200,000 speakers
• Bateri - 29,000
• Chilisso - 1,000 speakers
• Gowro - 200 speakers
• Kalami - 100,000 speakers
• Tirahi - 100 speakers
• Torwali - 80,000 speakers
• Wotapuri-Katarqalai †

Northern Zone

Main article: Northern Indo-Aryan languages

Central Pahari

• Garhwali - 2.9 million speakers
• Kumaoni - 2.4 million speakers

Eastern Pahari

• Nepali - 17 million speakers
• Jumli - 85,000

Northwestern Zone

Dogri - 4 million speakers

Himachali

• Kangri - 1.1 million speakers
• Mandeali - 1.7 million
• Jaunsari - 100,000 speakers
• Kullu - 110,000
• Pahari Kinnauri - 6,300 speakers
• Mahasu Himachali - 1 million speakers
• Hinduri - 30,000 speakers
• Sirmauri - 400,000 speakers

Punjabi

• Punjabi - 122 million speakers
• Doabi
• Lahnda
  • Saraiki - 20 million speakers
  • Hindko - 3.7 million speakers
  • Jakati †
  • Pothwari - 2.5 million speakers
• Majhi
• Malwai
• Puadhi

Sindhi

• Sindhi - 25 million speakers
• Jadgali - 25,000 speakers
• Kutchi - 873,000 speakers
• Luwati - 5,000 speakers
• Memoni

Western Zone

Ethnologue lists the following languages under the Western Zone that are not already covered in other subgroups:

• Rajasthani
• Rajasthani proper - 25.8 million speakers
• Bagri - 2.1 million speakers
• Marwari - 22 million speakers
• Mewati - 3 million speakers
• Dhundari - 9.6 million speakers
• Harauti - 4.7 million speakers
• Mewari - 5.1 million speakers
• Shekhawati - 3 million speakers
• Bagri - 2.1 million speakers
• Dhatki - 150,000 speakers
• Malvi - 5.6 million speakers
• Nimadi - 2.31 million speakers
• Gujarati
• Gujarati - 49 million speakers
• Jandavra - 5,000 speakers
• Saurashtra - 190,000 speakers
• Aer - 100 speakers
• Vaghri - 10,000 speakers
• Vasavi - 1.2 million speakers
• Koli - 1.4 million speakers
• Parkari Koli - 250,000 speakers
• Kachi Koli - 500,000 speakers
• Wardiyara Koli - 542,000 speakers
• Bhil
• Northern Bhil
• Bauria - 27,000 speakers
• Bhilori - 200,000 speakers
• Magari
• Central Bhil
  • Bhili proper - 3.5 million speakers
  • Bhilali - 1.1 million speakers
  • Chodri - 210,000 speakers
  • Dhodia - 170,000 speakers
  • Dhanki - 140,000 speakers
  • Dubli - 250,000 speakers
• Bareli
  • Palya Bareli - 10,000 speakers
  • Pauri Bareli - 640,000 speakers
  • Rathwi Bareli - 100,000 speakers
  • Pardhi - 49,000 speakers
• Kalto - 15,000 speakers

Khandeshi - 1.9 million speakers

Domari - 4 million speakers

Romani - 1.5 million speakers

• Northern Romani
  • Sinte Romani - 200,000 speakers
  • Carpathian Romani - 160,000 speakers
  • Finnish Kalo - 12,000 speakers
  • Baltic Romani - 35,000 speakers
• Carpathian Romani - 150,000 speakers
• Balkan Romani - 560,000 speakers
• Vlax Romani - 540,000 speakers

Central Zone (Madhya or Hindi)

File:Hindi Indoarisch.png

Indic, Central Zone

Main article: Hindi languages

Parya - 4,000 speakers

Western Hindi

• Hindustani (including Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu) - 329 million speakers
• Braj - 21 million speakers
• Haryanvi - 8 million speakers
• Bundeli - 3.1 million speakers
• Kannauji - 9.5 million speakers

Eastern Hindi

• Awadhi - 3.5 million speakers
  • Fiji Hindi - 460,000 speakers
• Bagheli - 8.4 million speakers
• Chhattisgarhi - 24 million speakers

Parya historically belonged to the Central Zone but lost intelligibility with other languages of the group due to geographic distance and numerous grammatical and lexical innovations.

Eastern Zone

These languages derive from Magadhan Apabhraṃśa Prakrit.

Bihari

• Bhojpuri - 51 million speakers
  • Caribbean Hindustani - 166,000 speakers
• Magahi/मगही - 20 million speakers
• Maithili/मैथिली/মৈথিলি - 33.9 million speakers
• Angika/अंगिका/অঙ্গিকা - 743,000 speakers
• Khortha - 8.04 million speakers
• Sadri (Nagpuri) - 5.1 million speakers
• Kurmali - 556,089 speakers

Tharu - 1.9 million speakers

Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ) - 34 million speakers

Halbic

• Halbi - 766,000 speakers
• Bhatri - 334,000 speakers
• Kamar - 40,000 speakers
• Mirgan - 60,000 speakers
• Nahari - 20,000 speakers

Bengali–Assamese (বাংলা-অসমীয়া)

• Assamese (অসমীয়া) - 15 million speakers
  • Kamrupi dialect
    • Barpetia dialect
    • Nalbaria dialect
    • Palasbaria dialect
  • Goalpariya dialect
• Bengali (বাংলা) - 268 million speakers
  • Bangali - 97 million speakers
  • Rarhi - 30 million speakers
  • Varendri - 24 million speakers
  • Sundarbani - 20 million speakers
  • Jharkandi - 12 million speakers
• Bishnupriya Manipuri (বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী) - 120,000 speakers
• Chakma (𑄌𑄋𑄴𑄟𑄳𑄦) - 330,000 speakers
• Chittagonian (চাঁটগাঁইয়া) - 16 million speakers
• KRNB (কোচ ৰাজবংশী/রংপুরী/কমতা) - 15 million speakers
• Rohingya/Ruáingga - 1.8 million speakers
• Sylheti (ꠍꠤꠟꠐꠤ/ছিলটি) - 13 million speakers
  • Jalalabadi dialect - 11 million speakers
  • Jaintian dialect - 0.5 million speakers
  • Barak dialect - 1 million speakers

unclassified

Kuswaric

• Danwar - 46,000 speakers
• Bote-Darai - 20,000 speakers

Southern Zone languages

This group of languages developed from Maharashtri Prakrit. It is not clear if Dakhini (Deccani, Southern Urdu) is part of Hindustani along with Standard Urdu, or a separate Persian-influenced development from Marathi.

Marathi-Konkani

• Marathi (मराठी) - 73 million speakers
• Phudagi - 1,000 speakers
• Kadodi
• Konkani (कोंकणी) - 2.26 million speakers
• Katkari - 12,000 speakers
• Kukna - 110,000 speakers
• Varli - 387,000 speakers
• Maharashtrian Konkani - 2.4 million speakers

Insular Indo-Aryan

• Sinhala (සිංහල) - 17 million
• Maldivian (ދިވެހި) - 340,000 speakers
  • Mahl - 10,000 speakers

The Insular Indo-Aryan languages share several characteristics that set them apart significantly from the continental languages.

Unclassified

The following languages are related to each other, but otherwise unclassified within Indo-Aryan:

Chinali–Lahul Lohar

• Chinali - 750 speakers
• Lahul Lohar - 750 speakers

The following other poorly attested languages are listed as unclassified within the Indo-Aryan family by Ethnologue 17:

• Kanjari (Punjabi?), Od (Marathi?), Vaagri Booli, Andh, Kumhali (perhaps in Central).

Also Degaru, Mina, Bhalay and Gowlan are all names for the Gowli caste, rather than a language.

Kholosi

The Kholosi language is a more recently discovered Indo-Aryan language spoken by aroud 1800 people in two villages in southern Iran and remains currently unclassified.

Phonology

Consonants

Stop positions

The normative system of New Indo-Aryan stops consists of five points of articulation: labial, dental, "retroflex", palatal, and velar, which is the same as that of Sanskrit. The "retroflex" position may involve retroflexion, or curling the tongue to make the contact with the underside of the tip, or merely retraction. The point of contact may be alveolar or postalveolar, and the distinctive quality may arise more from the shaping than from the position of the tongue. Palatals stops have affricated release and are traditionally included as involving a distinctive tongue position (blade in contact with hard palate). Widely transcribed as [tʃ], Masica (1991:94) claims [cʃ] to be a more accurate rendering.

Moving away from the normative system, some languages and dialects have alveolar affricates [ts] instead of palatal, though some among them retain [tʃ] in certain positions: before front vowels (esp. /i/), before /j/, or when geminated. Alveolar as an additional point of articulation occurs in Marathi and Konkani where dialect mixture and others factors upset the aforementioned complementation to produce minimal environments, in some West Pahari dialects through internal developments (*t̪ɾ, t̪ > /tʃ/), and in Kashmiri. The addition of a retroflex affricate to this in some Dardic languages maxes out the number of stop positions at seven (barring borrowed /q/), while a reduction to the inventory involves *ts > /s/, which has happened in Assamese, Chittagonian, Sinhala (though there have been other sources of a secondary /ts/), and Southern Mewari.

Further reductions in the number of stop articulations are in Assamese and Romany, which have lost the characteristic dental/retroflex contrast, and in Chittagonian, which may lose its labial and velar articulations through spirantization in many positions (> [f, x]).

Stop series	Language(s)
/p/, /t̪/, /ʈ/, /tʃ/, /k/	Hindi, Punjabi, Dogri, Sindhi, Gujarati, Bihari, Maithili, Sinhala, Odia, Standard Bengali, dialects of Rajasthani (except Lamani, NW. Marwari, S. Mewari)
/p/, /t̪/, /ʈ/, /ts/, /k/	Nepali, dialects of Rajasthani (Lamani and NW. Marwari), Northern Lahnda's Kagani, Kumauni, many West Pahari dialects (not Chamba Mandeali, Jaunsari, or Sirmauri)
/p/, /t̪/, /ʈ/, /ts/, /tʃ/, /k/	Marathi, Konkani, certain W. Pahari dialects (Bhadrawahi, Bhalesi, Padari, Simla, Satlej, maybe Kulu), Kashmiri
/p/, /t̪/, /ʈ/, /ts/, /tʃ/, /tʂ/, /k/	Shina, Bashkarik, Gawarbati, Phalura, Kalasha, Khowar, Shumashti, Kanyawali, Pashai
/p/, /t̪/, /ʈ/, /k/	Rajasthani's S. Mewari
/p/, /t̪/, /t/, /ts/, /tɕ/, /k/	E. and N. dialects of Bengali (Dhaka, Mymensing, Rajshahi)
/p/, /t/, /k/	Assamese
/p/, /t/, /tʃ/, /k/	Romani
/t̪/, /ʈ/, /k/ (with /i/ and /u/)	Sylheti
/t̪/, /t/	Chittagonian

Nasals

Sanskrit was noted as having five nasal-stop articulations corresponding to its oral stops, and among modern languages and dialects Dogri, Kacchi, Kalasha, Rudhari, Shina, Saurasthtri, and Sindhi have been analyzed as having this full complement of phonemic nasals /m/ /n/ /ɳ/ /ɲ/ /ŋ/, with the last two generally as the result of the loss of the stop from a homorganic nasal + stop cluster ([ɲj] > [ɲ] and [ŋɡ] > [ŋ]), though there are other sources as well.

Charts

The following are consonant systems of major and representative New Indo-Aryan languages, as presented in Masica (1991:106–107), though here they are in IPA. Parentheses indicate those consonants found only in loanwords: square brackets indicate those with "very low functional load". The arrangement is roughly geographical.

Romani p t (ts) tʃ k pʲ tʲ kʲ b d (dz) dʒ ɡ bʲ dʲ ɡʲ pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ m n nʲ (f) s ʃ x (fʲ) sʲ v (z) ʒ ɦ vʲ zʲ ɾ l lʲ j	Shina p t̪ ʈ ts tʃ tʂ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɖʐ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tsʰ tʃʰ tʂʰ kʰ m n ɳ ɲ ŋ (f) s ʂ ɕ z ʐ ʑ ɦ ɾ l ɽ w j	Kashmiri p t̪ ʈ ts tʃ k pʲ t̪ʲ ʈʲ tsʲ kʲ b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ bʲ d̪ʲ ɖʲ ɡʲ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tsʰ tʃʰ kʰ pʲʰ t̪ʲʰ ʈʲʰ tsʲʰ kʲʰ m n ɲ mʲ nʲ s ʃ sʲ z ɦ zʲ ɦʲ ɾ l ɾʲ lʲ w j wʲ
Saraiki p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ m n ɳ ɲ ŋ mʱ nʱ ɳʱ s (ʃ) (x) (z) (ɣ) ɦ ɾ l ɽ ɾʱ lʱ ɽʱ w j wʱ	Punjabi p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ m n ɳ [ɲ ŋ (f) s ʃ (z) ɦ ɾ l ɽ ɭ [w] [j]	Nepali p t̪ ʈ ts k b d̪ ɖ dz ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tsʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dzʱ ɡʱ m n ŋ mʱ nʱ s ʃ ɦ ɾ l ɾʱ lʱ [w] [j]	Assamese p t k b d ɡ pʰ tʰ kʰ bʱ dʱ ɡʱ m n ŋ s x z ɦ ɹ l [w]	Sylheti t̪ ʈ (tʃ) k b d̪ ɖ (dʒ) ɡ m n ŋ f s (ʃ) x z ɦ ɾ l ɽ [w]
Sindhi p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ m n ɳ ɲ ŋ mʱ nʱ ɳʱ s (ʃ) (x) (z) (ɣ) ɦ ɾ l ɽ ɾʱ lʱ ɽʱ w j wʱ	Marwari p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ ɓ ɗ̪ ɗ ɠ m n ɳ mʱ nʱ s ɦ ɾ l ɽ ɭ w j wʱ	Hindustani p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ m n (f) s (ʃ) (z) ɦ ɾ l ɽ ɽʱ ([w]) ([j])	Assamese p t k b d g pʰ tʰ kʰ bʱ dʱ ɡʱ m n ŋ s x z ɦ ɹ l [w]
Bengali p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ m n ʃ ɦ ɾ l ɽ [w] [j]	Gujarati p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ m n ɳ mʱ nʱ ɳʱ s ʃ ɦ ɾ l ɭ ɾʱ lʱ w j	Marathi p t̪ ʈ ts tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dz dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dzʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ m n ɳ mʱ nʱ s ʃ ɦ ɾ l ɭ ɾʱ lʱ w j wʱ	Odia p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ pʰ t̪ʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ bʱ d̪ʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ m n ɳ s ɦ ɾ l [ɽ] ɭ [ɽʱ] [w] [j]	Sinhala p t̪ ʈ tʃ k b d̪ ɖ dʒ ɡ ᵐb ⁿ̪d̪ ᶯɖ ᵑɡ m n ɲ ŋ s ɦ ɾ l w j

Language and dialect

In the context of South Asia, the choice between the appellations "language" and "dialect" is a difficult one, and any distinction made using these terms is obscured by their ambiguity. In one general colloquial sense, a language is a "developed" dialect: one that is standardised, has a written tradition and enjoys social prestige. As there are degrees of development, the boundary between a language and a dialect thus defined is not clear-cut, and there is a large middle ground where assignment is contestable. There is a second meaning of these terms, in which the distinction is drawn on the basis of linguistic similarity. Though seemingly a "proper" linguistics sense of the terms, it is still problematic: methods that have been proposed for quantifying difference (for example, based on mutual intelligibility) have not been seriously applied in practice; and any relationship established in this framework is relative.

See also

• Indo-Aryans
• Iranic languages
• Indo-Aryan migration
• Proto-Vedic Continuity
• The family of Brahmic scripts
• Linguistic history of the Indian subcontinent
• Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil
• Languages of Bangladesh
• Languages of India
• Languages of Pakistan
• Languages of Nepal

Further reading

• John Beames, A comparative grammar of the modern Aryan languages of India: to wit, Hindi, Panjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, and Bangali. Londinii: Trübner, 1872–1879. 3 vols.
• Cardona, George; Jain, Dhanesh, eds. (2003), The Indo-Aryan Languages ^[archive], Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-77294-5.
• Madhav Deshpande (1979). Sociolinguistic attitudes in India: An historical reconstruction. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers. ISBN 0-89720-007-1, ISBN 0-89720-008-X (pbk).
• Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 81-7074-128-9
• Erdosy, George. (1995). The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia: Language, material culture and ethnicity. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-014447-6.
• Ernst Kausen, 2006. Die Klassifikation der indogermanischen Sprachen ^[archive] (Microsoft Word, 133 KB)
• Kobayashi, Masato.; & George Cardona (2004). Historical phonology of old Indo-Aryan consonants. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. ISBN 4-87297-894-3.
• Masica, Colin (1991), The Indo-Aryan Languages ^[archive], Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-29944-2.
• Misra, Satya Swarup. (1980). Fresh light on Indo-European classification and chronology. Varanasi: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan.
• Misra, Satya Swarup. (1991–1993). The Old-Indo-Aryan, a historical & comparative grammar (Vols. 1–2). Varanasi: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan.
• Sen, Sukumar. (1995). Syntactic studies of Indo-Aryan languages. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Foreign Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
• Vacek, Jaroslav. (1976). The sibilants in Old Indo-Aryan: A contribution to the history of a linguistic area. Prague: Charles University.

External links

• The Indo-Aryan languages ^[archive], 10-25-2009
• The Indo-Aryan languages ^[archive] Colin P.Masica
• Survey of the syntax of the modern Indo-Aryan languages ^[archive] (Rajesh Bhatt), February 7, 2003.

http://www.pragyata.com/mag/on-the-classification-of-indic-languages-429 ^[archive]

https://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2023/12/14/some-historico-linguistic-considerations-on-indo-aryan/ ^[archive]

https://subhashkak.medium.com/indian-languages-of-east-turkestan-9d8b2568fc4c ^[archive]

https://subhashkak.medium.com/the-kashmiri-language-mystery-ed3023b63e95 ^[archive]