Bhariati is an unclassified likely Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Patalkot Valley of

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital city, capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, Sagar, and Rewa, India, Rewa being the othe ...

in central India. It is not clear how many of the

Bharia people Bharia is one of Dravidian-speaking tribes of Madhya Pradesh in India. The Bharias live in Patalkot, which is completely isolated valley some 400 metres below Tamia in Chhindwara district of Madhya Pradesh. This valley is the source of Dudhi ...

of the 1981 census figure, who were spread out over several states outside the Patalkot Valley, speak the Bhariati language, or a form of Hindi. Not all Bharia people are Bhariati speakers, and the extent of the language has not been determined. Some Bhariati speakers also hold that it is not distinctive enough to be called a language independent of other Indic languages. Bhariati has mistakenly been described as "Bharia language" in some texts, however, Bharia describes the Bharia people rather than the language. This publication '' Ethnologue'' and the adjacent Bible translation organization

SIL International SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to e ...

have characterized the language as Dravidian, but this claim is unsubstantiated and the basis for it is unclear. Linguistic research on the language is scant to date, but it has been posited to be an Indo-Aryan language on the basis of similarities to

Hindustani Hindustani may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Hindustan (another name of India) * Hindustani language, an Indo-Aryan language, whose two official norms are Hindi and Urdu * Fiji Hindi, a variety of Eastern Hindi spoken in Fiji, and ...

and other languages derived from

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

. The language has a number of cognate features to Hindustani, and incorporates loan words from it. Bhariati is primarily a spoken language which is rarely written, but writers who have used it have tended to use a

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the a ...

orthography as it has many phonetic features in common with other languages which use the script. The language is critically endangered.

References

{{reflist Unclassified languages of Asia Endangered languages of India