| Group |
Indic (with Vedic,
Sanskrit etc.), New Indic (with Hindi,
Bengali etc.) |
| Geography |
Marathi is one of the major languages of India, spoken by about 60
million people residing in the state of Maharashtra. There are 3 main groups
of dialects which are usually identified as Deshi (in the central areas
of the state, the basis of the literature language), Konkani (on the coast)
and Eastern Marathi. The Konkani dialect spoken in the former Portuguese
colony Goa is sometimes considered a separate tongue related to Marathi. |
| History |
Traditional poetry allows to trace the history of Marathi back up to
the 13th century. Maharashtri, one of the Middle Indic Prakrit
languages, showed some features which later developed into modern Marathi
phonetics and morphology. Before the English conquest of India, the Marathi
kingdom was one of the strongest on the subcontinent. The official norms
of the script, grammar and orthography were shaped in the 19th century
. |
| Phonetics |
Internal dialects of Marathi still preserve a series of nasal vowels
which normally disappeared in the language, together with the opposition
in vowel length. A number of dental affricate consonants have emerged in
the tongue, opposed to the palatal ones. |
| Morphology |
Marathi remains one of the most archaic languages of the Indo-Aryan
group. The nominal system still preserves the neuter gender and a set of
old flective case forms. The same goes for the verbal structure which remained
flective as a whole, with two types of declension and various impersonal
verbal forms. Verbal nouns and participles are also present in the language. |
| Writing |
Devanagari Script; Modi
script for cursive writing |
| Close Contacts |
Mainly neighbouring Indic tongues |
| Sample |
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| Picture |
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| More info |
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