Khariboli,
Braj,
Haryanvi
Haryanvi ( ' or '), also known as Bangru, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the state of Haryana in India, and to a lesser extent in Delhi. Haryanvi is considered to be part of the dialect group of Western Hindi, which also includes Kharib ...
,
Bundeli,
Kannauji,
Parya;
* Eastern Hindi:
Bagheli,
Chhattisgarhi,
Surgujia;
**
Awadhi:
Fiji Hindi,
Caribbean Hindustani
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as i ...
Eastern Zone
The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, also known as Magadhan languages, are spoken throughout the eastern subcontinent, including
Odisha
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
and
Bihar
Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...
, alongside other regions surrounding the northwestern Himalayan corridor.
Bengali is the seventh most-spoken language in the world, and has a strong literary tradition; the
national anthem
A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and Europea ...
s of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
and
Bangladesh
Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...
are written in Bengali.
Assamese and
Odia are the official languages of
Assam
Assam (; ) is a state in northeastern India, south of the eastern Himalayas along the Brahmaputra and Barak River valleys. Assam covers an area of . The state is bordered by Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh to the north; Nagaland and Manipur ...
and
Odisha
Odisha (English: , ), formerly Orissa ( the official name until 2011), is an Indian state located in Eastern India. It is the 8th largest state by area, and the 11th largest by population. The state has the third largest population of ...
, respectively. The Eastern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Magadhan
Apabhraṃśa and ultimately from
Magadhi Prakrit.
*
Bihari:
**
Bhojpuri,
Caribbean Hindustani
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as i ...
,
Fiji Hindi;
**
Magahi,
Khortha;
**
Maithili,
Angika
Angika (also known as ''Anga'', ''Angikar'' or ''Chhika-Chhiki'') is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken in some parts of the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, as well as in parts of Nepal.
It is closely related to languages such as Mai ...
,
Bajjika, Dehati;
**
Sadanic:
Nagpuri (Sadri),
Kurmali (Panchpargania);
**
Tharu,
Kochila Tharu,
Buksa,
Majhi,
Musasa;
**
Kumhali, Kuswaric:
Danwar,
Bote-Darai;
*
Halbic:
Halbi,
Kamar,
Bhunjia
Bhunjias, are an ethnic group found in India mainly reside in Sunabeda plateau in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. They are mostly found in Nuapada district, which is roughly between 22° 55′ N and 21° 30′ N latitude and 82° 35′ E longitude. It ...
,
Nahari;
*
Odia:
Baleswari, Kataki,
Ganjami,
Sundargadi,
Sambalpuri,
Desia;
**
Bodo Parja,
Bhatri,
Reli,
Kupia;
*
Bengali–Assamese:
Bishnupriya Manipuri,
Hajong,
Chittagonian,
Chakma,
Noakhailla,
Tanchangya,
Rohingya
The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...
,
Sylheti
Sylheti may refer to:
* Sylhetis, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group in the Sylhet division and South Assam
* Sylheti language, a language of the Sylheti region
* Sylheti Nagri
Sylheti Nagri or Sylheti Nagari ( syl, , ISO: , ), known in cla ...
,;
** Bengali-Gauda:
Bengali,
Bangali,
Rarhi,
Varendri, Sundarbani,
Manbhumi,
Dhakaiya Kutti
Dhakaiya Kutti ( bn, ঢাকাইয়া কুট্টি, Dhakaiya Kutti, Dhakaiya of the rice-huskers), also known as Old Dhakaiya ( bn, পুরান ঢাকাইয়া, Purān Dhākāiyā) or simply Dhakaiya, is a Bengali dialec ...
,
Dobhashi
Dobhashi ( bn, দোভাষী, Dobhāṣī, bilingual) is a neologism used to refer to a historical Register (sociolinguistics), register of the Bengali language which borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It became ...
;
** Kamarupic:
Assamese,
Kamrupi,
Goalpariya,
Rangpuri,
Surjapuri,
Rajbanshi;
Southern Zone
Marathi-Konkani languages are ultimately descended from
Maharashtri Prakrit, whereas Insular Indo-Aryan languages are descended from
Elu Prakrit and possess several characteristics that markedly distinguish them from most of their mainland Indo-Aryan counterparts.
*
Marathi-Konkani
** Marathic:
Marathi,
Varhadi
Varhadi is a dialect of Marathi spoken in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and by Marathi people of adjoining parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in India.
Vocabulary and grammar
Although all the dialects of Marathi are mutu ...
,
Andh,
Berar-Deccan Marathi,
Phudagi,
Katkari,
Varli,
Kadodi
Kadodi, Samavedi is the language spoken by the Samvedi Brahmin and Kupari community in Vasai, Maharashtra
Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Dec ...
;
** Konkanic:
Konkani,
Canarese Konkani,
Maharashtrian Konkani.
Insular Indic
Insular Indic languages (of
Sri Lanka and
Maldives
Maldives (, ; dv, ދިވެހިރާއްޖެ, translit=Dhivehi Raajje, ), officially the Republic of Maldives ( dv, ދިވެހިރާއްޖޭގެ ޖުމްހޫރިއްޔާ, translit=Dhivehi Raajjeyge Jumhooriyyaa, label=none, ), is an archipelag ...
) started developing independently and diverging from the continental Indo-Aryan languages from around 5th century BCE.
* Insular Indo-Aryan
**
Sinhala
**
Maldivian: Dhivehi, Mahl
Unclassified
The following languages are otherwise unclassified within Indo-Aryan:
*
Chinali–Lahul Lohar:
Chinali,
Lahul Lohar.
*
Badeshi
History
Proto-Indo-Aryan
Proto-Indo-Aryan (or sometimes Proto-Indic) is the
reconstructed proto-language
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattes ...
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
upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''.
The Vedas (, , ) are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the ...
and
Mitanni-Aryan. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a small number of
conservative features lost in Vedic.
Mitanni-Aryan hypothesis
Some theonyms, proper names, and other terminology of the Late
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
Mitanni
Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or ''Naharin'' in ...
civilization of
Upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate. While what few written records left by the Mittani are either in
Hurrian (which appears to have been the predominant language of their kingdom) or
Akkadian (the main
diplomatic language
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
of the Late Bronze Age Near East), these apparently Indo-Aryan names suggest that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the
Hurrians in the course of the
Indo-Aryan expansion. If these traces are Indo-Aryan, they would be the earliest known direct evidence of Indo-Aryan, and would increase the precision in dating the split between the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages (as the texts in which the apparent Indicisms occur can be dated with some accuracy).
In a treaty between the
Hittites
The Hittites () were an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing first a kingdom in Kussara (before 1750 BC), then the Kanesh or Nesha kingdom (c. 1750–1650 BC), and next an empire centered on Hattusa in north-centra ...
and the Mitanni, the deities
Mitra,
Varuna
Varuna (; sa, वरुण, , Malay: ''Baruna'') is a Vedic deity associated initially with the sky, later also with the seas as well as Ṛta (justice) and Satya (truth). He is found in the oldest layer of Vedic literature of Hinduism, such ...
,
Indra, and the
Ashvins
The Ashvins ( sa, अश्विन्, Aśvin, horse possessors), also known as Ashwini Kumara and Asvinau,, §1.42. are Hindu twin gods associated with medicine, health, dawn and sciences. In the ''Rigveda'', they are described as youthful div ...
(
Nasatya) are invoked.
Kikkuli's horse training text includes technical terms such as ''aika'' (cf. Sanskrit ''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 in general or early Iranian (which has ''aiva''). Another text has ''babru'' (''babhru'', "brown"), ''parita'' (''palita'', "grey"), and (''pingala'', "red"). Their chief festival was the celebration of the
solstice
A solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21. In many countr ...
(''vishuva'') which was common in most cultures in the ancient world. The Mitanni warriors were called ''marya'', the term for "warrior" in
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
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
Artashumara Akkadian: ), brother of Tushratta and son of Shuttarna II, briefly held the throne of Mitanni in the fourteenth century BC.
Reign
He is known only from a single mention in a tablet found in Tell Brak "Artassumara the king, son of Shut ...
(''artaššumara'') as ''Ṛtasmara'' "who thinks of
Ṛta" (Mayrhofer II 780), Biridashva (''biridašṷa, biriiašṷ''a) 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
Tvashtr ( sa, त्वष्टृ, Tvaṣṭṛ) is a Vedic artisan god or fashioner. He is also mentioned in later literature of Hinduism like the ''Harivamsa''. Sometimes, Tvashtr is identified with another deity named Vishvakarma. In Hindu ...
"whose chariot is vehement" (Mayrhofer, Etym. Wb., I 686, I 736).
Indian subcontinent
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: includes
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
(ca. 1500 to 500 BCE)
** late Old Indo-Aryan:
Epic Sanskrit
Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called ''Kavya'' (or ''Kāvya''; Sanskrit: काव्य, IAST: ''kāvyá''). The ''Ramayana'' and the ''Mahabharata'', which were originally composed in ...
,
Classical Sanskrit (ca. 200 CE to 1300 CE)
**
Mitanni Indo-Aryan (ca. 1400 BCE)
*
Middle Indo-Aryan or
Prakrit
The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...
s (ca. 300 BCE to 1500 CE)
** early Buddhist texts (ca. 6th or 5th century BCE)
** early Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g. Ashokan Prakrits,
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddh ...
,
Gandhari, (ca. 300 BCE to 200 BCE)
** middle Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g.
Dramatic Prakrit Dramatic Prakrits were those standard forms of Prakrit dialects that were used in dramas and other literature in medieval India. They may have once been spoken languages or were based on spoken languages, but continued to be used as literary languag ...
s,
Elu (ca. 200 BCE to 700 CE)
** late Middle Indo-Aryan: e.g.
Abahattha (ca. 700 CE to 1500 CE)
* Early Modern Indo-Aryan (Late Medieval India): e.g. early
Dakhini
Deccani (also known as Deccani Urdu and Deccani Hindi). https://knowledgehubadda.blogspot.com/2022/02/blog-post_74.html? m=1 or Dakni, Dakhni, Dakhini, Dakkhani and Dakkani (, ''dekanī'' or , ''dakhanī''), is a variety of Hindustani spoken ...
and emergence of the
Dehlavi dialect
Kauravi ( hi, कौरवी, ur, ), also known as Khaṛībolī is a set of Western Hindi varieties of Shauraseni Prakrit mainly spoken in Northwestern Uttar Pradesh.
Standard Hindi and Urdu are based on Khariboli, specifically on its ...
Old Indo-Aryan
The earliest evidence of the group is from
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
, that is used in the ancient preserved texts of the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
, the foundational canon of the
Hindu synthesis known as the
Vedas. The
Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
Some loanwords in the variant of the Hurrian language spoken in the Mitanni kingdom, during the 2nd millennium BCE, are identifiable as originating in an Indo-Aryan language; these are considered to constitute an Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni ...
is of similar age to the language of the
Rigveda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one ...
, but the only evidence of it is a few proper names and specialized loanwords.
While Old Indo-Aryan is the earliest stage of the Indo-Aryan branch, from which all known languages of the later stages Middle and New Indo-Aryan are derived, some documented Middle Indo-Aryan variants cannot fully be derived from the documented form of Old Indo-Aryan (on which Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are based), but betray features that must go back to other undocumented variants/dialects of Old Indo-Aryan.
From Vedic Sanskrit, "
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
" (literally "put together", "perfected" or "elaborated") developed as the prestige language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre, etc. Sanskrit of the later Vedic texts is comparable to
Classical Sanskrit, but is largely
mutually unintelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with Vedic Sanskrit.
Middle Indo-Aryan (Prakrits)
Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects (
Prakrit
The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...
s) continued to evolve. The oldest attested Prakrits are the
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
and
Jain
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...
canonical languages
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddh ...
and
Ardhamagadhi Prakrit
Ardhamagadhi Prakrit was a Middle Indo-Aryan language and a Dramatic Prakrit thought to have been spoken in modern-day Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and used in some early Buddhist and Jain drama. It was likely a Central Indo-Aryan language, related ...
, respectively. Inscriptions in
Ashokan Prakrit were also part of this early Middle Indo-Aryan stage.
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
The Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent mainly took place from the 13th to 17th centuries. Earlier Muslim conquests include the invasions into what is now modern-day Pakistan and the Umayyad campaigns in India in eighth century and res ...
in the 13th–16th centuries. Under the flourishing
Turco-Mongol
The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century, among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these Khanates eventuall ...
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...
,
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
became very influential as the language of prestige of the Islamic courts due to adoption of the foreign language by the Mughal emperors.
The two largest languages that formed from Apabhraṃśa were
Bengali and
Hindustani; others include
Assamese,
Sindhi,
Gujarati,
Odia,
Marathi, and
Punjabi.
New Indo-Aryan
= Medieval 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
Dehlavi-based
Hindustani. Hindustani was strongly influenced by
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, with these and later Sanskrit influence leading to the emergence of Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard
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
became official in Pakistan. Despite the different script the fundamental grammar remains identical, the difference is more
sociolinguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
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.
Outside the Indian subcontinent
Domari
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
Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...
and as far south as central Sudan.
[*Matras, Y. (2012). ''A grammar of Domari''. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton (Mouton Grammar Library).] Based on the systematicity of sound changes, linguists have concluded that the ethnonyms ''Domari'' and ''
Romani'' derive from the Indo-Aryan word ''ḍom''.
Lomavren
Lomavren is a nearly extinct
mixed language
A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgin ...
, spoken by the
Lom people, that arose from
language contact between a language related to
Romani and
Domari and the
Armenian language
Armenian ( classical: , reformed: , , ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian Highlands, today Armenian is widely spoken th ...
.
Romani
The Romani language is usually included in the Western Indo-Aryan languages. Romani varieties, which are mainly spoken throughout Europe, are noted for their relatively conservative nature; maintaining the Middle Indo-Aryan present-tense person concord markers, alongside consonantal endings for nominal case. Indeed, these features are no longer evident in most other modern Central Indo-Aryan languages. Moreover, Romani shares an innovative pattern of past-tense person, which corresponds to Dardic languages, such as Kashmiri and Shina. This is believed to be further indication that proto-Romani speakers were originally situated in central regions of the subcontinent, before migrating to northwestern regions. However, there are no known historical sources regarding the development of the Romani language specifically within India.
Research conducted by nineteenth-century scholars Pott (1845) and Miklosich (1882–1888) demonstrated that the Romani language is most aptly designated as a New Indo-Aryan language (NIA), as opposed to Middle Indo-Aryan (MIA); establishing that proto-Romani speakers 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, coupled with its reduction to a two-way nominative-oblique case system. A secondary argument concerns the system of gender differentiation, due to the fact that Romani has only two genders (masculine and feminine). Middle Indo-Aryan languages (named MIA) generally employed three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and some modern Indo-Aryan languages retain this aspect today.
It is suggested that loss of the neuter gender did not occur until the transition to NIA. During this process, most of the neuter nouns became masculine, while several became feminine. For example, the neuter ''aggi'' "fire" in Prakrit morphed into the feminine ''āg'' in Hindi, and ''jag'' in Romani. The parallels in grammatical gender evolution between Romani and other NIA languages have additionally been cited as indications that the forerunner of Romani remained on the Indian subcontinent until a later period, possibly as late as the tenth century.
Sindhic migrations
Kholosi,
Jadgali, and
Luwati
Luwati (Al-Lawatia, ar, اللواتية, translit=al-lawātiyya; also known as Khoja, Khojki, Lawatiyya, Lawatiya, or Hyderabadi) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by 5,000 to 10,000 people known as the Lawatiya (also called the Khojas or Hydera ...
represent offshoots of the Sindhic subfamily of Indo-Aryan that have established themselves in the
Persian gulf
The Persian Gulf ( fa, خلیج فارس, translit=xalij-e fârs, lit=Gulf of Fars, ), sometimes called the ( ar, اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in Western Asia. The bod ...
region, perhaps through sea-based migrations. These are of a later origin than the Rom and Dom migrations which represent a different part of Indo-Aryan as well.
Indentured labourer migrations
The use by the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...
of indentured labourers led to the transplanting of Indo-Aryan languages around the world, leading to locally influenced lects that diverged from the source language, such as
Fiji Hindi and
Caribbean Hindustani
Caribbean Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by Indo-Caribbeans and the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. It is mainly based on the Bhojpuri and Awadhi dialects. These Hindustani dialects were the most spoken dialects by the Indians who came as i ...
.
Phonology
Consonants
Stop positions
The normative system of New Indo-Aryan stops consists of five
places of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
:
labial,
dental, "
retroflex",
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
, and
velar
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive a ...
, 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 , claims to be a more accurate rendering.
Moving away from the normative system, some languages and dialects have alveolar affricates instead of palatal, though some among them retain in certain positions: before
front vowels (esp. ), before , or when
geminate
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...
d. 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 (, > ), and in
Kashmiri. The addition of a
retroflex affricate to this in some
Dardic languages
The Dardic languages (also Dardu or Pisaca) or Hindu-Kush Indo-Aryan languages, are a group of several Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, northwestern India and parts of northeastern Afghanistan.
The term "Dardic" is stated to b ...
maxes out the number of stop positions at seven (barring borrowed ), while a reduction to the inventory involves *ts > , which has happened in
Assamese,
Chittagonian,
Sinhala (though there have been other sources of a secondary ), and Southern Mewari.
Further reductions in the number of stop articulations are in Assamese and
Romani, which have lost the characteristic dental/retroflex contrast, and in Chittagonian, which may lose its labial and velar articulations through
spirantisation in many positions (> ).
/q x ɣ f/ are restricted to Perso-Arabic loanwords in most IA languages but they occur natively in Khowar. According to Masica (1991) some dialects of Pashayi have a /θ/ which is unusual for IA languages. Domari which is spoken in the Middle East and had high contact with Middle Eastern languages has /q ħ ʕ ʔ/ and emphatic consonants from loanwords.
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, Saurashtri, and Sindhi have been analysed as having this full complement of phonemic nasals , with the last two generally as the result of the loss of the stop from a
homorganic nasal + stop cluster ( > and > ), though there are other sources as well.
In languages that lack phonemic nasals at some places of articulation, they can still occur allophonically from place assimilation in a nasal + stop culture, e.g. Hindi > .
Aspiration and breathy-voice
Most Indo-Aryan languages have contrastive
aspiration (), and some retain historical
breathy voice on voiced consonants (). Sometimes both phenomena are analysed as a single aspiration contrast. The places and manners of articulation which allow contrastive aspiration vary by language; e.g. Sindhi permits phonemic , but the phonemic status of this sound in Hindi is uncertain, and many "Dardic" languages lack aspirated retroflex sibilants despite having unaspirated equivalents.
In languages that have lost breathy-voice, the contrast has often been replaced with tone.
Regional developments
Some of these are mentioned in .
*
Implosives
Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Ro ...
: Languages in the
Sindhic subfamily, as well as
Saraiki, western
Marwari dialects, and some dialects of Gujarati have developed implosive consonants from historical intervocalic geminates and word-initial stops. Sindhi has a full implosive series except for the dental implosive: . It has been claimed that
Wadiyari Koli has the dental implosive too. Other languages have less complete implosive series, e.g. Kacchi has just .
*
Prenasalized stops: Sinhala and Maldivian (Dhivehi) have a series of prenasalized stops covering all places except for palatal: .
*
Palatalization: Kashmiri (natively) and some Romani dialects (from contact with Slavic languages) have contrastive palatalisation.
*
Voiceless lateral In Gawarbati, some Pashai dialects, partly Bashkarik and some Shina dialects have /ɬ/ from clusters of tr kr or sometimes pr; dr gr and br merged with /l/ in these languages.
*
Lateral affricates: Bhadarwahi has an unusual series of lateral retroflex affricates ( derived from historical clusters.
Vowels
Vowel typologies are varied across Indo-Aryan due to diachronic mergers and (in some cases) splits, as well as different accounts by linguists for even the widely-spoken languages. Vowel systems per are listed below. Many languages also have phonemic nasal vowels.
Sylheti language
Sylheti ( Sylheti Nāgarī: ; bn, সিলেটি ) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by an estimated 11 million people, primarily in the Sylhet Division of Bangladesh and in parts of Northeast India."Sylheti is an Indo-Aryan language spok ...
being a
tonal, still classified as the Indo-Aryan language. The vowels of Sylheti language listed below.
Charts
The following are consonant systems of major and representative New Indo-Aryan languages, mostly following , 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.
Sociolinguistics
Register
In many Indo-Aryan languages, the literary register is often more archaic and utilises a different lexicon (Sanskrit or Perso-Arabic) than spoken vernacular. One example is Bengali's high literary form,
Sādhū bhāśā as opposed to the more modern
Calita bhāśā (Cholito-bhasha). This distinction approaches
diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia () is a situation in which two dialects or languages are used (in fairly strict compartmentalization) by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety (labeled ...
.
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
The reputation of a social entity (a person, a social group, an organization, or a place) is an opinion about that entity typically as a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria, such as behavior or performance.
Reputation is a ubiquitous ...
. 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
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
) have not been seriously applied in practice; and any relationship established in this framework is relative.
See also
*
Indo-Aryans
Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of Indo-European peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent. Historically, Aryan were the Indo-European pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and intr ...
*
Iranic languages
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are groupe ...
*
Indo-Aryan migration
The Indo-Aryan migrations were the migrations into the Indian subcontinent of Indo-Aryan peoples, an ethnolinguistic group that spoke Indo-Aryan languages, the predominant languages of today's North India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lank ...
*
Proto-Vedic Continuity
* The family of
Brahmic scripts
*
Linguistic history of India
*
Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil
*
Languages of Bangladesh
*
Languages of India
Languages spoken in India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages spoken by 78.05% of Indians and the Dravidian languages spoken by 19.64% of Indians, both families together are sometimes known ...
*
Languages of Maldives
*
Languages of Nepal
*
Languages of Pakistan
Pakistan is a multilingual country with dozens of languages spoken as first languages. The majority of Pakistan's languages belong to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-European language family.
Urdu is the national language and the lingua fr ...
*
Languages of Sri Lanka
*
Languages of South Asia
South Asia is home to several hundred languages, spanning the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka. It is home to the third most spoken language in the world, Hindi–Urdu; and the sixth m ...
Notes
References
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.
*Morgenstierne, Georg. "Early Iranic Influence upon Indo-Aryan." Acta Iranica, I. série, Commemoration Cyrus. Vol. I. Hommage universel (1974): 271-279.
* .
* Madhav Deshpande (1979). ''Sociolinguistic attitudes in India: An historical reconstruction''. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers. , (pbk).
*
Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). ''A comparative study of Santali and Bengali''. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co.
* Erdosy, George. (1995). ''The Indo-Aryans of ancient South Asia: Language, material culture and ethnicity''. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, known as De Gruyter (), is a German scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature.
History
The roots of the company go back to 1749 when Frederick the Great granted the Königliche Realschule in Be ...
. .
Ernst Kausen, 2006. ''Die Klassifikation der indogermanischen Sprachen''(
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor, word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other pla ...
, 133 KB)
* Kobayashi, Masato.; &
George Cardona
George Cardona (; born June 3, 1936) is an American linguist, Indologist, Sanskritist, and scholar of Pāṇini. Described as "a luminary" in Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, and Pāṇinian linguistics since the early sixties, Cardona has been recogni ...
(2004). ''Historical phonology of old Indo-Aryan consonants''. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. .
* .
* 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 25 October 2009
The Indo-Aryan languagesColin P.Masica
Survey of the syntax of the modern Indo-Aryan languages(Rajesh Bhatt), 7 February 2003.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Indo-Aryan Languages
Indo-European languages