Surgujia is an Indo-Aryan

language variety In sociolinguistics, a variety, also known as a lect or an isolect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, registers, styles, or other forms of language, as well as a standard variety.Meech ...

spoken in

Chhattisgarh Chhattisgarh (; ) is a landlocked States and union territories of India, state in Central India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, ninth largest state by area, and with a population of roughly 30 million, the List ...

. It belongs to the

Eastern Hindi The Eastern Hindi languages, are a branch of the Indo-Aryan language family spoken chiefly in Awadh region of Uttar Pradesh, Baghelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh, in Northern and Central India. Eastern Hindi languages evolved ...

group. It is often considered as a

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

Chattisgarhi language Chhattisgarhi () is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 16.25 million people from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in India. It is the official language of Chhattisgarh. It is grouped within the Eastern Hindi lang ...

Speakers

Surgujia is primarily spoken in Surguja,

Jashpur Jashpur District is a district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh bordering Jharkhand and Odisha. Jashpur Nagar is the administrative headquarters of the district. The district was formerly a princely state before Independence. Highly ...

, and

Koriya Korea State, currently spelt as Koriya, was a Rajput princely state in the Empire of India. After Indian independence in 1947, the ruler of Korea acceded to the Union of India on 1 January 1948, and Koriya was made part of Surguja Distric ...

districts of Chhattisgarh; and to a lesser extent in

Raigarh Raigarh is a city in northern Chhattisgarh known as the 'Cultural capital of Chhattisgarh'; Raigarh is famous for its dance form “SUWA” (as Raigarh Gharana) and classical music; Raigarh is also known as Sanskritidhani. It is also known for ...

and Korba. Speakers of Surgujia have often been conflated with those of

Chhattisgarhi Chhattisgarhi () is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 16.25 million people from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in India. It is the official language of Chhattisgarh. It is grouped within the Eastern Hindi lan ...

. Furthermore, as is the case with many

Hindi languages The Central Indo-Aryan languages or Hindi languages are a group of Indo-Aryan languages spoken across Northern and Central India. They historically form a dialect continuum that descends from the Middle Prakrits. Located in the Hindi Belt, t ...

and other regional languages, Surgujia has often been subsumed under the all-encompassing bracket of

Standard Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, alongside English, and is the ''lin ...

due to erroneous, arbitrary or politically-motivated categorisation.

Classification

It was previously regarded by many as a

, and was designated as such by the linguist

George A. Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

in his comprehensive ''

Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a lingu ...

''. Indeed, Surgujia possesses a lexical similarity of 71%-76% with Chhattisgarhi, according to Ethnologue. In recent times, however, Surgujia has come to be recognised as a distinct dialect.

References

{{Incubator, sgj Central Indo-Aryan languages Languages of India Languages listed as Hindi dialects in latest census