1.
South Asia
–
Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian Plate, which rises above sea level as Nepal and northern parts of India situated south of the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush. South Asia is bounded on the south by the Indian Ocean and on land by West Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an economic cooperation organisation in the region which was established in 1985, South Asia covers about 5.1 million km², which is 11. 51% of the Asian continent or 3. 4% of the worlds land surface area. The population of South Asia is about 1.749 billion or about one fourth of the worlds population, overall, it accounts for about 39. 49% of Asias population and is home to a vast array of peoples. The area of South Asia and its extent is not clear cut as systemic. Aside from the region of South Asia, formerly part of the British Empire, there is a high degree of variation as to which other countries are included in South Asia. Modern definitions of South Asia are consistent in including Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar is included by some scholars in South Asia, but in Southeast Asia by others. Some do not include Afghanistan, others question whether Afghanistan should be considered a part of South Asia or the Middle East, the mountain countries of Nepal and Bhutan, and the island countries of Sri Lanka and Maldives are generally included as well. Myanmar is often added, and by various deviating definitions based on often substantially different reasons, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the common concept of South Asia is largely inherited from the administrative boundaries of the British Raj, with several exceptions. The Aden Colony, British Somaliland and Singapore, though administered at various times under the Raj, have not been proposed as any part of South Asia. Additionally Burma was administered as part of the Raj until 1937, the 562 princely states that were protected by but not directly ruled by the Raj became administrative parts of South Asia upon joining Union of India or Dominion of Pakistan. China and Myanmar have also applied for the status of members of SAARC. This bloc of countries include two independent countries that were not part of the British Raj – Nepal, and Bhutan, Afghanistan was a British protectorate from 1878 until 1919, after the Afghans lost to the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The United Nations Statistics Divisions scheme of sub-regions include all eight members of the SAARC as part of Southern Asia, population Information Network includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as part of South Asia. Maldives, in view of its characteristics, was admitted as a member Pacific POPIN subregional network only in principle, the Hirschman–Herfindahl index of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific for the region includes only the original seven signatories of SAARC. The British Indian Ocean Territory is connected to the region by a publication of Janes for security considerations, the inclusion of Myanmar in South Asia is without consensus, with many considering it a part of southeast Asia and others including it within South Asia. Afghanistan was of importance to the British colonial empire, especially after the Second Anglo-Afghan War over 1878–1880, Afghanistan remained a British protectorate until 1919, when a treaty with Vladimir Lenin included the granting of independence to Afghanistan. Following Indias partition, Afghanistan has generally included in South Asia
South Asia
–
While South Asia had never been a coherent
geopolitical region, it has a distinct geographical identity
South Asia
–
South Asia
South Asia
–
Ethno-linguistic families of South Asia.
2.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
Central Asia
–
On the southern shore of Issyk Kul lake,
Issyk Kul Region.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia
Central Asia
–
Uzbek men from
Khiva, ca. 1861–1880
Central Asia
–
Kazakh man on a horse with golden eagle
3.
Western Asia
–
Western Asia, West Asia, Southwestern Asia or Southwest Asia is the westernmost subregion of Asia. The concept is in limited use, as it overlaps with the Middle East. The term is used for the purposes of grouping countries in statistics. The total population of Western Asia is an estimated 300 million as of 2015, in an unrelated context, the term is also used in ancient history and archaeology to divide the Fertile Crescent into the Asiatic or Western Asian cultures as opposed to ancient Egypt. As a geographic concept, Western Asia almost always includes the Levant, Mesopotamia, the term is used pragmatically and has no correct or generally agreed-upon definition. In contrast to this definition, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation in its 2015 yearbook also includes Armenia and Azerbaijan, unlike the UNIDO, the United Nations Statistics Division excludes Iran from Western Asia and include Turkey, Georgia, and Cyprus in the region. These four countries are listed in the European category of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, the Olympic Council of Asias multi-sport event West Asian Games are contested by athletes representing these thirteen countries. Among the regions sports organisations are the West Asia Basketball Association, West Asian Billiards and Snooker Federation, West Asian Football Federation, Western Asia was in use as a geographical term in the early 19th century, even before Near East became current as a geopolitical concept. Use of the term in the context of contemporary geopolitics or world economy appears to date from the 1960s, Western Asia is located directly south of Eastern Europe. The region is surrounded by seven major seas, the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. The Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut deserts in eastern Iran naturally delimit the region somewhat from Asia itself, three major tectonic plates converge on Western Asia, including the African, Eurasian, and Arabian plates. The boundaries between the plates make up the Azores-Gibraltar Ridge, extending across North Africa, the Red Sea. The Arabian Plate is moving northward into the Anatolian plate at the East Anatolian Fault, several major aquifers provide water to large portions of Western Asia. In Saudi Arabia, two large aquifers of Palaeozoic and Triassic origins are located beneath the Jabal Tuwayq mountains and areas west to the Red Sea. Cretaceous and Eocene-origin aquifers are located beneath large portions of central and eastern Saudi Arabia, including Wasia, flood or furrow irrigation, as well as sprinkler methods, are extensively used for irrigation, covering nearly 90,000 km² across Western Asia for agriculture. Western Asia is primarily arid and semi-arid, and can be subject to drought, the region consists of grasslands, rangelands, deserts, and mountains. Water shortages are a problem in parts of West Asia, with rapidly growing populations increasing demands for water. Major rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates, provide sources for water to support agriculture
Western Asia
–
A
Lebanese cedar forest in winter.
Western Asia
–
Western Asia
4.
South East Europe
–
Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical region of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkan peninsula. These boundaries can vary due to political, economic, historical, cultural. The first known use of the term Southeast Europe was by Austrian researcher Johann Georg von Hahn as a broader term than the traditional Balkans and this concept is based on the boundaries of the Balkan peninsula. The countries that have described as being entirely within the region are, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia. Countries that are, at least partially, described to be within the region are, Croatia, Greece, east Thrace comprises Edirne Province, Kırklareli Province, Tekirdağ Province, and part of Istanbul Province. The Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was an institution aimed at strengthening peace, democracy, human rights and it was replaced by the Regional Cooperation Council in February 2008. It had 235.6 million euro of funding available from 2007–2013
South East Europe
–
Geographic features of southeast Europe
South East Europe
–
Political view of Balkans
South East Europe
–
Geographically fully located
5.
Caucasus
–
The Caucasus /ˈkɔːkəsəs/ or Caucasia /kɔːˈkeɪʒə/ is a region at the border of Europe and Asia, situated between the Black and the Caspian seas. It is home to the Caucasus Mountains, which contain Europes highest mountain, politically, the Caucasus region is separated between northern and southern parts. The southern parts consist of independent sovereign states, and the parts are under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The region is known for its diversity, aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian, Northwest Caucasian. Pliny the Elders Natural History derives the name of the Caucasus from Scythian kroy-khasis, German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that the Latvian word Kruvesis also means ice. According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring, the South Caucasus region and southern Dagestan were the furthest points of Persian expansions, with areas to the north of Caucasus Mountains practically impregnable. The mythological mountain of Qaf, the worlds highest mountain that ancient lore shrouded in mystery, was said to be situated in this region, therefore, the Caucasus might be associated with the legendary mountain. The Ciscaucasus contains the majority of the Greater Caucasus Mountain range. It includes Southwestern Russia and northern parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Transcaucasus is bordered on the north by Russia, on the west by the Black Sea and Turkey, on the east by the Caspian Sea, and on the south by Iran. It includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands, all of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in South Caucasus. The main Greater Caucasus range is generally perceived to be the line between Asia and Europe. The highest peak in the Caucasus is Mount Elbrus in the western Ciscaucasus in Russia, the Caucasus is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions on Earth. The nation states that comprise the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia, Armenia, three territories in the region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful or by no independent states, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Abkhazia and South Ossetia are recognised by the majority of independent states as part of Georgia, the Russian divisions include Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, and the autonomous republics of Adygea, Karachay–Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan. The region has many different languages and language families, there are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. Russian is used as a common language, today the peoples of the Northern and Southern Caucasus tend to be either Eastern Orthodox Christians, Oriental Orthodox Christians, or Sunni Muslims. Shia Islam has had many adherents historically in Azerbaijan, located in the part of the region. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran, and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout its history, the Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world
Caucasus
–
Caucasus from the sea by
Ivan Aivazovsky, 1899
Caucasus
–
Caucasus mountain range
Caucasus
–
View of the Caucasus Mountains in
Dagestan, Russia
Caucasus
–
Petroglyphs in
Gobustan,
Azerbaijan, dating back to 10,000 BC indicating a thriving culture. It is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site.
6.
Language family
–
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
Language family
–
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see
Distribution of languages in the world.
7.
Indo-European languages
–
The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
Indo-European languages
–
Franz Bopp, pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.
Indo-European languages
8.
Indo-Aryan languages
–
The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family, Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers, and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe. The largest in terms of speakers are Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi. Proto-Indo-Aryan, or sometimes Proto-Indic, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages and it is intended to reconstruct the language of the Proto-Indo-Aryans. Proto-Indo-Aryan is meant to be the predecessor of Old Indo-Aryan which is attested as Vedic. Despite the great archaicity of Vedic, however, the other Indo-Aryan languages preserve a number of archaic features lost in Vedic. Vedic has been used in the ancient preserved religious hymns, the canon of Hinduism known as the Vedas. Mitanni-Aryan is of age to the language of the Rigveda. The language of the Vedas – commonly referred to as Vedic Sanskrit by modern scholars – is only marginally different from Proto-Indo-Aryan the proto-language of the Indo-Aryan languages. From the Vedic, Sanskrit developed as the language of culture, science and religion, as well as the court, theatre. Sanskrit is, by convention, referred to by scholars as Classical Sanskrit in contra-distinction to the so-called Vedic Sanskrit. Outside the learned sphere of Sanskrit, vernacular dialects continued to evolve, the oldest attested Prakrits are the Buddhist and Jain canonical languages Pali and Ardha Magadhi, respectively. By medieval times, the Prakrits had diversified into various Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, Apabhramsa 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 Sravakachar of Devasena is now considered to be the first Hindi book, the next major milestone occurred with the Muslim conquests on 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 language by the Mughal emperors. However, Persian was soon displaced by Hindustani and 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 Apabhramsa were Bengali and Hindustani, others include Sindhi, Gujarati, Odia, Marathi, the Indo-Aryan languages of Northern India and Pakistan form a dialect continuum
Indo-Aryan languages
–
Dogri–Kangri region
Indo-Aryan languages
–
1978 map showing Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (
Urdu is included under Hindi.
Romani,
Domari, and
Lomavren are outside the scope of the map.)
9.
Iranian languages
–
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, which in turn are a branch of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian people, historical Iranian languages are grouped in three stages, Old Iranian, Middle Iranian, and New Iranian. Of the Old Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian and Avestan, Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian, Parthian, and Bactrian. As of 2008, there were an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages, ethnologue estimates there are 86 Iranian languages, the largest among them being Persian, Pashto and Kurdish. The term Iranian is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language, Iranian derives from the Persian and Sanskrit origin word Arya. The use of the term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen, robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan and Indo-Aryan. Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention, the Eastern Iranian languages subdivided into, Southeastern, of which Pashto is the dominant member, Northeastern, by far the smallest branch, of which Ossetian is the dominant member. All Iranian languages are descended from an ancestor, Proto-Iranian. In turn, and together with Proto-Indo-Aryan and the Nuristani languages, the Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca.2000 BC. It was situated precisely in the part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of two have survived. These are, Avestan, the two languages/dialects of the Avesta, i. e. the liturgical texts of Zoroastrianism, Old Persian, the native language of a south-western Iranian people known as Persians. Indirectly attested Old Iranian languages are discussed below, Old Persian is the Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in south-western Iran by the inhabitants of Parsa, who also gave their name to their region and language. The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as Old Avestan, and Younger Avestan. These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since Younger Avestan is not only much younger than Old Avestan, the Old Avestan dialect is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Carduchi and Old Parthian. Additionally, the existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages, such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has a Median substrate in some of its vocabulary
Iranian languages
–
Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages
Iranian languages
–
Iranian languages family tree
10.
Ossetian language
–
Ossetian, also known as Ossete and Ossetic, is an Eastern Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. It is a descendant of the Scythian, Sarmatian and Alanic languages. Ossetian speakers number about 577,450, with 451,000 speakers in the Russian Federation recorded in the 2010 census, Ossetian belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Within Iranian it is placed in an Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, the other Eastern Iranian languages such as Pashto and Yaghnobi show certain commonalities but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetic. From deep Antiquity, the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, the more easterly Khorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms. Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans and it is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the names of ancient Iranian tribes in fact reflect this pluralization, e. g. Saromatae and Masagetae. The earliest known sample of Ossetian is an inscription which dates from the 10th to 12th centuries and was found near the River Bolshoi Zelenchuk at Arkhyz. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs, the scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is, dæ ban xʷærz, mæ sfili, xsinjæ kurθi kændæ and du farnitz, kintzæ mæ sfili, kajci fæ wa sawgin. Equivalents in modern Ossetian would be Dæ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinæ, kurdigæj dæ. and farm neč, the passage translates as, The Alans I greet in their language, Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from. Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from, and other things, When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this, Arent you ashamed, my lordly lady, that your cunt is being fucked by a priest. Arent you ashamed, my lady, to have an affair with the priest. Marginalia of Greek religious books, with parts of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have been recently found. Heavy-stem nouns possessed a long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest records of Ossetian presented above and this situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the openness of the vowel. The trend is found in a glossary of the Jassic dialect dating from 1422
Ossetian language
–
Ossetian text from a book published in 1935. Part of an alphabetic list of proverbs. Latin script.
Ossetian language
–
Ossetic text written with Georgian script, from a book on Ossetian folklore published in 1940 in South Ossetia
Ossetian language
–
The first page of the first issue of the Ossetian newspaper "
Ræstdzinad ". Sjögren's Cyrillic alphabet. 1923
11.
Balkans
–
The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with various and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea, the highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres in the Rila mountain range. In Turkish, Balkan means a chain of wooded mountains, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment, a reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, a third possibility is that Haemus derives from the Greek word haema meaning blood. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon, Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhons blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, there is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊. The concept of the Balkans was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, during the 1820s, Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term, zeunes goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has an area of about 470,000 km2. It is more or less identical to the known as Southeastern Europe. As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria, the current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, the Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania
Balkans
–
The Balkan Peninsula, as defined by the
Danube -
Sava -
Kupa line
Balkans
–
The Peninsula's most extensive definition, bordered by water on three sides and connected with a line on the fourth
Balkans
–
Panorama of
Stara Planina. Its highest peak is
Botev at a height of 2,376 m.
Balkans
–
View toward
Rila, the highest mountain in the Balkans which reaches 2925 m
12.
Romani language
–
Romani is any of several languages of the Romani people belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. According to Ethnologue, seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their own, the largest of these are Vlax Romani, Balkan Romani, and Sinte Romani. The differences between various varieties can be as big as, for example, differences between various Slavic languages, speakers of the Romani language usually refer to the language as řomani čhib the Romani language or řomanes in a Rom way. This derives from the Romani word řom, meaning either a member of the group or husband and this is also where the term Roma derives in English, although some Roma groups refer to themselves using other demonyms. The English spelling Rromani language may also be found, reflecting a different transcription of the Romani phoneme ř, before the late nineteenth century, English-language texts usually referred to the language as the Gypsy language. In the USA, gypsy is still the term, as Romani is not in common use there. In the 18th century, it was shown by studies that Romani belongs to the Indo-European language family. Romani is an Indo-Aryan language that is part of the Balkan sprachbund and it is the only New Indo-Aryan spoken exclusively outside of the Indian subcontinent. Romani is sometimes classified in the Central Zone or Northwestern Zone Indo-Aryan languages, Romani shares a number of features with the Central Zone languages. The most significant isoglosses are the shift of Old Indo-Aryan r̥ to u or i, however, unlike other Central Zone languages, Romani preserves many dental clusters. This implies that Romani split from the Central Zone languages before the Middle Indo-Aryan period, however, Romani shows some features of New Indo-Aryan, such as erosion of the original nominal case system towards a nominative/oblique dichotomy, with new grammaticalized case suffixes added on. This means that the Romani exodus from India could not have happened until late in the first millennium CE, many words are similar to the Marwari and Lambadi languages spoken in large parts of India. However, Romani is nearer to the Marwari spoken in Rajasthan, Romani also shows some similarity to the Northwestern Zone languages. In particular, the grammaticalization of enclitic pronouns as person markers on verbs is also found in such as Kashmiri. This evidences a northwest migration during the split from the Central Zone languages consistent with a migration to Europe. Based on these data, Matras views Romani as kind of Indian hybrid, to r and ř, and shift of inflectional -a to -o. After exiting the Indian subcontinent, Romani was heavily affected by contact with European languages, the most significant of these was Medieval Greek, which contributed lexically, phonemically, and grammatically to Early Romani. This includes inflectional affixes for nouns, and verbs that are productive with borrowed vocabulary, the shift to VO word order
Romani language
–
Map showing the migrations of Romani people through Europe and Asia minor.
13.
Sarikoli language
–
The Sarikoli language is a member of the Pamir subgroup of the Southeastern Iranian languages spoken by Tajiks in China. It is officially referred to in China as the Tajik language, Sarikoli is officially referred to as Tajik in China. However, it is not closely related to Tajik as spoken in Tajikistan and it is also referred to as Tashkorghani, after the ancient capital of the Sarikoli kingdom, however, this usage is not widespread among scholars. The earliest written accounts in English, from the 1870s, generally use the name Sarikoli, the number of speakers is around 35,000, most reside in the Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County in southern Xinjiang Province, China. The Chinese name for the Sarikoli language, as well as the usage of Sarikol as a toponym, is Sèlèkùěr yǔ, speakers in China typically use Uyghur and Chinese to communicate with people of other ethnic groups in the area. The rest are found in the Pakistani-controlled sector of Kashmir, closely hugging the Pakistan-Chinese international borders and it is mutually unintelligible with the related Wakhi language. The language has no written form. The majority of Sarikoli-speakers attend schools using Uyghur as the medium of instruction, Sarikoli vowels as used in Russian works, a, e, ɛy, ɛw, ə, i, o, u, ы. In some dialects also long variants of vowels can appear, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ы̄. Also, several noun declensions and verb inflections regularly place stress on their first syllable, an Acoustic, Historical, and Developmental Analysis of Sarikol Tajik Diphthongs. 中国塔吉克语色勒库尔方言概述/A Probe into China-Tajik Selekur Dialect, the Tajik Ethnic Group in China
Sarikoli language
–
Xinjiang province. Light blue are areas where Sarikoli is spoken.
14.
Assam
–
Assam (English pronunciation, /əˈsæm/ listen is a state in northeastern India. Located south of the eastern Himalayas, Assam comprises the Brahmaputra Valley, Assam, along with Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and Meghalaya, is one of the Seven Sister States. Geographically, Assam and these states are connected to the rest of India via a 22 kilometres strip of land in West Bengal called the Siliguri Corridor or Chickens Neck. Assam shares a border with Bhutan and Bangladesh, and its culture, people. Assam is known for Assam tea and Assam silk, the first oil well in Asia was drilled here. The state has conserved the one-horned Indian rhinoceros from near extinction, along with the water buffalo, pygmy hog, tiger. It provides one of the last wild habitats for the Asian elephant, the Assamese economy is aided by wildlife tourism, centred around Kaziranga National Park and Manas National Park which are World Heritage Sites. Sal tree forests are found in the state which, as a result of abundant rainfall, Assam receives more rainfall compared to most parts of India. This rain feeds the Brahmaputra River, whose tributaries and oxbow lakes provide the region with a hydro-geomorphic and aesthetic environment, the precise etymology of Assam came from Ahom Dynasty. In the classical period and up to the 12th century the region east of the Karatoya river, largely congruent to present-day Assam, was called Kamarupa, in medieval times the Mughals used Asham and Kamrup, and during British colonialism, the English used Assam. Though many authors have associated the name with the 13th century Shan invaders the precise origin of the name is not clear. It was suggested by some that the Sanskrit word Asama was the root, which has been rejected by Kakati, among possible origins are Tai and Bodo. Assam and adjoining regions have evidences of settlements from all the periods of the Stone ages. The hills at the height of 1, 500–2,000 feet were popular habitats probably due to availability of exposed dolerite basalt, useful for tool-making. According to a text, Kalika Purana, the earliest ruler of Assam was Mahiranga Danav of the Danava dynasty. The last of these rulers, also Naraka, was slain by Krishna, narakas son Bhagadatta became the king, who fought for the Kauravas in the battle of Kurukshetra with an army of kiratas, chinas and dwellers of the eastern coast. Samudraguptas 4th century Allahabad pillar inscription mentions Kamarupa and Davaka as frontier kingdoms of the Gupta Empire, ruled by three dynasties Varmanas, Mlechchha dynasty and Kamarupa-Palas, from their capitals in present-day Guwahati, Tezpur and North Gauhati respectively. All three dynasties claimed their descent from Narakasura, an immigrant from Aryavarta, in the reign of the Varman king, Bhaskar Varman, the Chinese traveller Xuanzang visited the region and recorded his travels
Assam
–
Montage of Assam Clockwise from top left: academic complex of
IIT Guwahati,
Ahom Raja's Palace (
Garhgaon),
Kamakhya temple (
Guwahati),
Rang Ghar pavilions (
Sivasagar),
Kolia Bhomora bridge over
Brahmaputra river (
Tezpur),
one horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) at
Kaziranga National Park, and
Sivadol (
Sivasagar).
Assam
–
The Kamrup Kingdom
Assam
–
Madan Kamdev ruins
Assam
–
Kareng ghar, the palace of the Ahom kings
15.
Assamese language
–
It is one of the easternmost of the Indo-Aryan languages it is spoken by over 13 million native speakers, and serves as a lingua franca in the region. It is also spoken in parts of Arunachal Pradesh and other northeast Indian states, Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in Nagaland and parts of Assam. Nefamese is an Assamese-based pidgin used in Arunachal Pradesh, small pockets of Assamese speakers can be found in Bangladesh. In the past, it was the language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century. The origin of Assamese language is not clear, some believe that it originated from Kamarupi Prakrit used in ancient Kamarupa Kingdom. Its sister languages include Maithali, Odia, Chittagonian, Sylheti and it is written in the Assamese script, an abugida system, from left to right, with a large number of typographic ligatures. Assamese language was in use much before Bengali language was developed as Kamrupa was mentioned in Mahabharata, kampura has its northern boundary at Koshi River and Orissa. Assamese influence can be easily felt in Oriya and Maithali languages. Assamese originated in Old Indo-Aryan dialects, though the nature of its origin. It is generally believed that Assamese and the Kamatapuri lects derive from the Kamarupa dialect of Eastern Magadhi Prakrit. </ref>By keeping to the north of the Ganges, the Indo-Aryan language in Kamarupa had differentiated by the 7th-century, before it did in Bengal or Orissa. These changes were due to non-Indo-Aryan speakers adopting the language. The evidence of language is found in the Prakritisms of the Kamarupa inscriptions. In these works, Assamese features coexist with features from other Modern Indian Languages, from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, songs – Borgeets, dramas – Ankiya Naat and the first prose writings were composed. The literary language, based on the dialects of Assam moved to the court of the Ahom kingdom in the seventeenth century. This period saw the development of prose infused with colloquial forms. The literary language, having become infused with the idiom, became the standard literary form in the nineteenth century. As the political and commercial center shifted to Guwahati after the mid-twentieth century, Assamese is native to Assam Valley which includes Upper-Assam and Lower-Assam regions of the state of Assam. It is also spoken in states of Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, presence of Assamese script can be found in Rakhine state of present Myanmar
Assamese language
–
Silver rupee of Rudra Sinha in Assamese
Assamese language
–
Genealogically, Assamese belongs to the group of Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, here marked in yellow.
16.
Maldives
–
The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, is a South Asian island country, located in the Indian Ocean, situated in the Arabian Sea. It lies southwest of India and Sri Lanka, the chain of twenty-six atolls stretches from Ihavandhippolhu Atoll in the north to the Addu City in the south. Malé is the capital and most populated city, traditionally called the Kings Island for its central location. With an average elevation of 1.5 metres above sea level, it is the worlds lowest country, with even its highest natural point being the lowest in the world. Due to the subsequent risks posed by rising sea-levels, the government pledged in 2009 to make the Maldives a carbon-neutral country by 2019, the Maldives have been historically and culturally linked to the Indian subcontinent since the fourth century BCE. The Maldivian archipelago was Islamised in the 12th century and consolidated as a sultanate, developing commercial and cultural ties with Asia. From the mid 16th-century, the region came under the influence of European colonial powers. Independence from the United Kingdom was achieved in 1965 and a republic was established in 1968 with an elected Peoples Majlis. The ensuing decades have been characterised by political instability, efforts at democratic reform, the Maldives is a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It is also a member of the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the World Bank classifies the Maldives as having an upper middle income economy. Fishing has historically been the dominant economic activity, and remains the largest sector by far, along with Sri Lanka, it is one of only two South Asian countries rated high on the Human Development Index, with its per capita income the highest among SAARC nations. The name Maldives may derive from the Malayalam words maala and dweepu or the Tamil maalai and theevu, the Maldivian people are called Dhivehin. The word theevu means island, and Dhives means islanders, the ancient Sri Lankan chronicle Mahawamsa refers to an island called Mahiladiva in Pali, which is probably a mistranslation of the same Sanskrit word meaning garland. Jan S Hogendorn, Grossman Professor of Economics, theorises that the name Maldives derives from the Sanskrit mālādvīpa, in Tamil, Garland of Islands can be translated as Malai Theevu. In Malayalam, Garland of Islands can be translated as Maladweepu, in Kannada, Garland of Islands can be translated as Maaledweepa. This is the name inscribed on the scroll in the Maldive state emblem. The classical Persian/Arabic name for Maldives is Dibajat, the Dutch referred to the islands as the Maldivische Eilanden, while the British anglicised the local name for the islands first to the Maldive Islands and later to Maldives. One such community are the Giraavaru people and they are mentioned in ancient legends and local folklore about the establishment of the capital and kingly rule in Malé
Maldives
–
The Buddhist Stupa (the best preserved, the largest and the last of the Buddhist temples that were destroyed) at Kuruhinna in
Gan Island (Haddhunmathi Atoll).
Maldives
–
Flag
Maldives
–
Isdhoo Lōmāfānu is the oldest
copper-plate book to have been discovered in the Maldives to date. The book was written in AD 1194 (590 AH) in the Evēla form of the
Divehi akuru, during the reign of
Siri Fennaadheettha Mahaa Radun (Dhinei Kalaminja).
Maldives
–
A Plaque in Juma Mosque, Malé, Maldives, on which
Yusuf Tabrizi 's name is written. Yusuf Tabrizi was an Iranian who is said to have converted Maldives in 12th century AD to
Islam.
17.
Maldivian language
–
Maldivian is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by about 350,000 people in the Maldives, where it is the national language. It is also the first language of nearly 10,000 people on the island of Minicoy in the Union territory of Lakshadweep, India, where the Mahl dialect of the Maldivian language is spoken. The ethnic autonym for the language, Divehi, is found in English as Dhivehi. Maldivian is written in the Thaana script, the major dialects of Maldivian are Malé, Huvadhu, Mulaku, Addu, Haddhunmathee, and Maliku. The standard form of Maldivian is Malé, which is spoken in the Maldivian capital of the same name, the Maliku dialect spoken in Minicoy is officially referred to as Mahl by the Lakshadweep administration. This has been adopted by many authors when referring to Maldivian spoken in Minicoy, Maldivian is a descendent of Maharashtri Prakrit and is closely related to the Marathi, Konkani and Sinhalese languages, but not mutually intelligible with them. Many languages have influenced the development of the Maldivian language through the ages, others include French, Persian, Portuguese, Hindustani, and English. The English words atoll and dhoni are anglicised forms of the Maldivian words atoḷu, the origin of the word Divehi is Div+vehi meaning Islanders. Bas means language, so Divehi-bas means Islanders language, harry Charles Purvis Bell, one of the first Dhivehi linguists, called it Divehi. This was consistent with Maldives, the name of the country, for the -dives of Maldives, Wilhelm Geiger, a German linguist who undertook the first research on Maldivian linguistics in the early 20th century, also called the language Divehi. An h was added to the name of the language— Dhivehi— in 1976, today the spelling with an h is both common and official usage in the Maldives. Maldivian is an Indo-Aryan language closely related to the Sinhalese language of Sri Lanka, Maldivian represents the southernmost Indo-Aryan language. Together with Sinhala, Maldivian represents a subgroup within the Modern Indo-Aryan languages which is called Insular Indo-Aryan, however, Sinhala and Maldivian are not mutually intelligible. Maldivian is descended from the Maharashtri Prakrit of ancient and medieval India and these Prakrits were originally derived from Old Indo-Aryan vernaculars related to Vedic Sanskrit. Maldivian has a written history of about eight hundred years. The earliest writings were on the lōmāfānu of the 12th and 13th centuries, early inscriptions on coral stone have also been found. The oldest inscription found to date is an inscription on a coral stone, Maldivian is an Indo-Aryan language of the Sinhalese-Maldivian subfamily. It developed in isolation from other languages until the 12th century
Maldivian language
–
12th-century
lōmāfānu, copper plates in which early Maldivian sultans wrote orders and grants
18.
Hindustani language
–
Hindustani, historically also known as Hindavi, Dehlvi and Rekhta, is the lingua franca of North India and Pakistan. It is an Indo-Aryan language, deriving primarily from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi, before the Partition of the British Indian Empire, the terms Hindustani, Urdu, and Hindi were synonymous, all covered what would be called Urdu and Hindi today. Hindustani is also spoken by a number of people in Mauritius. Early forms of present-day Hindustani developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan apabhramsha vernaculars of present-day North India in the 7th–13th centuries. Amir Khusro, who lived in the 13th century CE during the Delhi Sultanate period in North India, used these forms in his writings, the Delhi Sultanate, which comprised several Turkic and Afghan dynasties that ruled from Delhi, was succeeded by the Mughal Empire in 1526. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianised Central Asian Turkic, the term Hindustani was the name given to that variant of Khariboli. For socio-political reasons, though essentially the variant of Khariboli with Persian vocabulary, the more highly Persianised version later established as a language of the court was called Rekhta, or mixed. As an emerging common dialect, Hindustani absorbed large numbers of Persian, Arabic, and Turkic words and its development was centred on the poets of the Mughal courts of cities in Uttar Pradesh such as Delhi, Lucknow, and Agra. He continued, But it has all the magnitude and importance of separate language and it is linguistic result of Mohammedan invasions of eleventh & twelfth centuries and is spoken by many Hindus in North India and by Musalman population in all parts of India. Next to English it was the language of British Indian Empire, was commonly written in Arabic or Persian characters. When the British colonised the Indian subcontinent from the late 18th through to the late 19th century, they used the words Hindustani, Hindi and they developed it as the language of administration of British India, further preparing it to be the official language of modern India and Pakistan. However, with independence, use of the word Hindustani declined, being replaced by Hindi and Urdu. It has a literature of 500 years, with prose, poetry, religion & philosophy, under the Bahmani Kings and it is a living language, still prevalent all over the Deccan Plateau. Note that the term Hindustani has generally fallen out of usage in modern India, except to refer to Indian as a nationality. The term used to refer to it is Hindi or Urdu, depending on the religion of the speaker, in common usage in India, the term Hindi includes all these dialects except those at the Urdu end of the spectrum. Urdu is the language of Pakistan and an officially recognised regional language of India. It is also a language in the Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, National Capital Territory of Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar. In a specific sense, Hindustani may be used to refer to the dialects and varieties used in speech, in contrast with the standardised Hindi
Hindustani language
–
Rigveda manuscript in Devanagari (early 19th century)
Hindustani language
–
Hindustani
Hindustani language
–
Hindustani, in its standardised registers, is one of the official languages of both India (Hindi) and Pakistan (Urdu).
19.
Bengali language
–
Bengali, also known by its endonym Bangla, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in South Asia. With over 210 million speakers, Bengali is the seventh most spoken language in the world. Dominant in the last group was Persian, which was also the source of some grammatical forms, more recent studies suggest that the use of native and foreign words has been increasing, mainly because of the preference of Bengali speakers for the colloquial style. Today, Bengali is the language spoken in Bangladesh and the second most spoken language in India. Both the national anthems of Bangladesh and India were composed in Bengali, in 1952, the Bengali Language Movement successfully pushed for the languages official status in the Dominion of Pakistan. In 1999, UNESCO recognized 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of the movement in East Pakistan. Language is an important element of Bengali identity and binds together a diverse region. Sanskrit was spoken in Bengal since the first millennium BCE, during the Gupta Empire, Bengal was a hub of Sanskrit literature. The Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were spoken in Bengal in the first millennium when the region was a part of the Magadha Realm and these dialects were called Magadhi Prakrit. They eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi, Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what are called Apabhraṃśa languages at the end of the first millennium. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000–1200 AD from Sanskrit, for example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around the 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. Proto-Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty, during the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterized by the elision of word-final অ ô, the spread of compound verbs and Arabic and Persian influences. Bengali was a court language of the Sultanate of Bengal. Muslim rulers promoted the development of Bengali as part of efforts to Islamize. Bengali became the most spoken language in the Sultanate. This period saw borrowing of Perso-Arabic terms into Bengali vocabulary, major texts of Middle Bengali include Chandidas Shreekrishna Kirtana. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the dialect spoken in the Nadia region, a west-central Bengali dialect. Bengali presents a case of diglossia, with the literary
Bengali language
–
Shohid Minar, or the Martyr's monument, in
Dhaka, commemorates the struggle for the Bengali language.
Bengali language
–
The word "Bangla" in the
Bengali alphabet
Bengali language
–
Pages from the
Charyapada.
Bengali language
–
An example of handwritten Bengali. Part of a poem written in Bengali (and with its English translation below each Bengali paragraph) by Nobel Laureate
Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 in Hungary.
20.
Punjabi language
–
Punjabi /pʌnˈdʒɑːbi/ is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by over 100 million native speakers worldwide, making it the 10th most widely spoken language in the world. It is the language of the Punjabi people who inhabit the historical Punjab region of India. Among the Indo-European languages it is unusual in being a tonal language, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan, the 11th most widely spoken in India and the third-most spoken native language in the Indian Subcontinent. Punjabi is the fourth-most spoken language in the United Kingdom and third-most spoken native language in Canada, the language also has a significant presence in the United Arab Emirates, United States, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. The Punjabi language is written in the Shahmukhi and Gurmukhi scripts, the word Punjabi is derived from the word Panj-āb, Persian for Five Waters, referring to the five major eastern tributaries of the Indus River. Panj is cognate with Sanskrit pañca and Greek πέντε five, the historical Punjab region, now divided between India and Pakistan, is defined physiographically by the Indus River and these five tributaries. One of the five, the Beas River, is a tributary of another, Punjabi developed from Sanskrit through Prakrit language and later Apabhraṃśa From 600 BC Sanskrit gave birth to many regional languages in different parts of India. These all languages are called Prakrit language collectively, Shauraseni Prakrit was one of these Prakrit languages, which was spoken in north and north-western India and Punjabi and western dialects of Hindi developed from this Prakrit. Later in northern India Shauraseni Prakrit gave rise to Shauraseni Aparbhsha, Punjabi emerged as an Apabhramsha, a degenerated form of Prakrit, in the 7th century A. D. and became stable by the 10th century. By the 10th century, many Nath poets were associated with earlier Punjabi works, Arabic and Persian influence in the historical Punjab region began with the late first millennium Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent. The Persian language was introduced in the subcontinent a few centuries later by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic, many Persian and Arabic words were incorporated in Punjabi. Punjabi has more Persian and Arabic vocabulary than Bengali, Marathi, later, it was influenced by Portuguese and English, though these influences have been minor in comparison to Persian and Arabic. However, in India English words in the language are more widespread than Hindi. Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan, the seventh-most widely spoken in India, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language in Pakistan. Punjabi is the language in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. Punjabi is spoken as a language by over 44. 15% of Pakistanis. About 70. 0% of the people of Pakistan speak Punjabi as either their first or second language, Lahore, the capital of the Punjab Province of Pakistan, is the largest Punjabi-speaking city in the world. 86% of the population of Lahore is native Punjabi and Islamabad
Punjabi language
–
Varan Gyan Ratnavali by 16th century historian
Bhai Gurdas
Punjabi language
–
Gurmukhi alphabetic excluding vowels.
Punjabi language
–
Administrative divisions of Punjab Pakistan
Punjabi language
–
Southall Station (United Kingdom) sign in Punjabi, in the Gurmukhī script
21.
Marathi language
–
Marathi is an Indian language spoken predominantly by the Marathi people of Maharashtra. It is the language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively. There were 73 million speakers in 2001, Marathi ranks 19th in the list of most spoken languages in the world, Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi, Bengali and Telugu in that order. Marathi has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indo-Aryan languages, the major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. Malvani Konkani has been influenced by Marathi varieties. Marathi has several features that set it aside from most other Indian languages, Marathi distinguishes inclusive and exclusive forms of we and possesses a three-way gender system that features the neuter in addition to the masculine and the feminine. In its phonology it contrasts apico-alveolar with alveopalatal affricates and, in common with Gujarati, Marathi is primarily spoken in Maharashtra and parts of neighbouring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, union-territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The cities of Baroda, Surat, and Ahmedabad, Belgaum, Karwar, Nipani, Indore, Gwalior, Adoni, Hyderabad, Marathi is also spoken by Maharashtrian emigrants worldwide, especially in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, Mauritius, and Canada. Marathi is the language of Maharashtra and co-official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra. In Goa, Konkani is the official language, however. Marathi is included among the languages which stand a part of the Eight Schedule of the Constitution of India, the contemporary grammatical rules described by Maharashtra Sahitya Parishad and endorsed by the Government of Maharashtra are supposed to take precedence in standard written Marathi. Traditions of Marathi Linguistics and the rules give special status to tatsamas. This special status expects the rules for tatsamas to be followed as in Sanskrit and this practice provides Marathi with a large treasure of Sanskrit words to cope with demands of new technical words whenever needed. Jawaharlal Nehru University has announced plans to establish a department for Marathi. Marathi Day is celebrated on 27 February, the birthday of poet Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar, Indian languages, including Marathi, that belong to the Indo-Aryan language family are derived from early forms of Prakrit. Marathi is one of languages that further descend from Maharashtri Prakrit. Marathi literature began and grew owing to the rise of the Seuna dynasty of Devgiri, further growth and usage of the language was because of two religious sects – the Mahanubhava and Varkari panthans – who adopted Marathi as the medium for preaching their doctrines of devotion. Marathi had attained a place in court life by the time of the Seuna kings
Marathi language
–
The popular
Marathi language newspapers at a newsstand in Mumbai, 2006
Marathi language
–
regions where Marathi is the language of the majority
Marathi language
–
Marathi neon signboard at
Maharashtra Police headquarters in Mumbai.
22.
Gujarati language
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Gujarati /ɡʊdʒəˈrɑːti/ is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat. It is part of the greater Indo-European language family, Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati. In India, it is the language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra. Gujarati is the language of the Gujjars, who had ruled Rajputana, according to the Central Intelligence Agency,4. 5% of the Indian population speaks Gujarati, which amounts to 54.6 million speakers in India. There are about 65.5 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide, Gujarati was the first language of Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Gujarati is a modern IA language evolved from Sanskrit, Central, in Gujarati/Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Punjabi/Lahanda/Sindhi, on the basis of innovation of auxiliary verbs and postpositions in Gujarati/Rajasthani. Gujarati/Rajasthani into Gujarati and Rajasthani through development of such characteristics as auxiliary ch-, grammatically, a new plural marker of -o developed. In literature, the quarter of the 19th century saw a series of milestones for Gujarati. The printing was introduced in Gujarati in 1812, the first printed book published was the Gujarati translation of Dabestan-e Mazaheb prepared and printed by Parsi priest Fardunjee Marzban in 1815. 1822, first Gujarati newspaper, Mumbai Samachar, the oldest newspaper in India still in circulation, 1840s, personal diary composition, Nityanondh, Durgaram Mehta. 1845, first modern Gujarati poem, Bapani Piparu, Dalpatram 1851, first essay, Mandaḷī Maḷvāthi Thātā Lābh, Narmadashankar Dave 1866, first original novel, Karaṇ Ghelo, Nandshankar Mehta. 1866, first social novel, Sasu Vahu ni Ladai, Mahipatram Rupram Nilkanth 1866, first autobiography, Mārī Hakīkat,1900, first original short story, Shantidas, Ambalal Desai. Of the approximately 46 million speakers of Gujarati in 1997, roughly 45, however, Gujarati community leaders in Pakistan claim that there are 3 million Gujarati speakers in Karachi. There is an amount of Mauritian population and a large amount of Réunion Island people who are from Gujarati descent among which some of them still speak Gujarati. According to the 2011 census, Gujarati is the seventeenth most spoken language in the Greater Toronto Area, most, with British passports, settled in the UK. Gujarati is offered as a GCSE subject for students in the UK, a distribution of the geographical area can be found in Linguistic Survey of India by George A. Grierson. Gujarati is one of the recognized constitutional languages and fourteen regional languages of India. It is officially recognized in the state of Gujarat, India, in A simplified grammar of the Gujarati language by William Tisdall, two major dialects of Gujarati are mentioned, a standard Hindu dialect and a Parsi dialect
Gujarati language
Gujarati language
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Distribution of native Gujarati speakers in India
Gujarati language
Gujarati language
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India Square,
Jersey City,
New Jersey, USA. Gujarati has achieved high linguistic prominence in many urban districts worldwide, including the
New York City Metropolitan Area.
23.
Bhojpuri language
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Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand region of North India and in Terai region of Nepal. It is chiefly spoken in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, in the part of Bihar state. Bhojpuri is one of the national languages of Nepal and has official status in Fiji as Fiji Hindi. It is also a language in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname. Bhojpuri is also spoken in Pakistan, Jamaica, Belize, other parts of the Caribbean, more Indians in Suriname know Bhojpuri. In Mauritius a dialect of Bhojpuri remains in use, and it is locally called Bojpury, the day-to-day usage of the language in Mauritius is dropping and today, it is spoken by less than 5% of the population, according to latest census. Bhojpuri was historically written in Kaithi scripts, but since 1894, Government gazetteers report that Kaithi was used in a few districts of Bihar through the 1960s. By 1894, official texts in Bihar were written in Kaithi, at present almost all Bhojpuri texts are written in Devanagari even in the overseas islands where Bhojpuri is spoken. For example, in Mauritius, both Kaithi and Devanagari scripts have been in use since the arrival of Bhojpuri people from India, the Kathi script was considered informal in Mauritius, with the structure of Kaithi similar to Devanagari. In modern Mauritius, Bhojpuri script is Devanagari, Bhojpuri is, sociolinguistically, one of the seven Hindi languages. Of these seven, Bhojpuri has the most allophonic variations in vowels, robert Trammell has published the phonology of Bhojpuri. Bhojpuri has six vowel phonemes, and ten vocoids, the higher vowels are relatively tense, while lower vowels are relatively lax. The language has 31 consonant phonemes and 34 contoids, according to Trammell, the syllable system is peak type, every syllable has the vowel phoneme as the highest point of sonority. Codas may consist of one, two or three consonants, vowels occur as simple peaks or as peak nuclei in diphthongs. The intonation system involves four pitch levels and three terminal contours, the United Nations has published the universal declaration of human rights in Bhojpuri and Sarnámi, one of 154 languages of the world. Ohi djanne ke lage sab ke samadj-boedj aur hierdaai hai aur doesare se sab soemmat sè, article 1, All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood, Bhojpuri syntax and vocabulary reflect a three-tier system of politeness. Any verb can be conjugated as per these tiers, for example, the verb to come in Bhojpuri is aana and the verb to speak is bolna
Bhojpuri language
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The word "Bhojpuri" in
Devanagari script
Bhojpuri language
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Bhojpuri
Bhojpuri language
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Bhojpuri story written in Kaithi script, written by Babu Rama Smaran Lal in 1898
24.
Maithili language
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Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Mithila region which is today mainly situated in northern Bihar of India and a few districts of the Nepal Terai. It is one of the largest languages in India and the second largest language in Nepal, less commonly, it was written with a Maithili variant of Kaithi, a script used to transcribe other neighboring languages such as Bhojpuri, Magahi, and Awadhi. In 2002, Maithili was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which allows it to be used in education, government and it is recognized as one of the largest languages in India and is the second most widely used language in Nepal. In 2007, Maithili was included in the Interim Constitution of Nepal 2063, Part 1, in the past, Maithili was written primarily in Mithilakshar, but today it is written in the Devanagari script. Native speakers are referred to as Maithils, Madhubani and Darbhanga constitute cultural and linguistic centers. Native speakers also reside in Delhi, Kolkata, Ranchi and Mumbai, in Nepal, Maithili is spoken mainly in the Outer Terai districts including Sarlahi, Mahottari, Dhanusa, Sunsari, Siraha and Saptari Districts. Janakpur is an important linguistic centre of Maithili, in the 19th century, linguistic scholars considered Maithili as a dialect of Eastern Hindi languages and grouped it with other languages spoken in Bihar. Hoernlé compared it with Gaudian languages and recognised that it shows similarities with Bengali languages than with Hindi. Grierson recognized it as a language and published the first grammar in 1881. Chatterji grouped Maithili with Magadhi Prakrit, the standard form of Maithili is spoken in Darbhanga and Madhubani districts in Bihar, India. Several geographic variations of Maithili dialects are spoken in India and Nepal, including Dehati, Some dialects such as Bantar, Barmeli, Musar and Tati are spoken only in Nepal, while the Kortha, Jolaha and Thetiya dialects are spoken in India. All the dialects are intelligible to native Maithili speakers, other dialects include, Thēthi is spoken between the western part of the Mahottari and the eastern part of the Sarlahi districts of Nepal, and in adjacent areas in Bihar. The Madhubani dialect spoken in north India is generally considered to be the standard form, central Maithili is also considered as the standard form. The Kulhaiya dialect is spoken in most of north-eastern Bihar, Maithili dates back to the 14th century. The Varna Ratnākara is the earliest known text, preserved from 1507. The name Maithili is derived from the word Mithila, an ancient kingdom of which King Janaka was the ruler, Maithili is also one of the names of Sita, the wife of King Rama and daughter of King Janaka. Scholars in Mithila used Sanskrit for their work and Maithili was the language of the common folk. In 1324, Ghyasuddin Tughluq, the emperor of Delhi invaded Mithila, defeated Harasimhadeva, entrusted Mithila to his family priest Kameshvar Jha, a Maithil Brahmin of the Oinwar dynasty
Maithili language
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Consonants in Mithilakshar
Maithili language
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The word "Maithili" in
Devanagari script
25.
Odia language
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Odia or Oriya, both renderings of oḍiā, is a language spoken by 3. 2% of Indias population. Odia is one of the official languages of India, it is the official language of Odisha. The language is spoken by a sizable population of at least 10 million people in Chhattisgarh. Odia is the sixth Indian language to be designated a Classical Language in India on the basis of having a long literary history, the earliest known inscription in Odia dates back to the 10th century AD. The Odia diaspora constitute a number in several countries around the world. Midnapori Odia, Spoken in the undivided Midnapore District of West Bengal, singhbhumi Odia, Spoken in East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum and Saraikela-Kharsawan district of Jharkhand Baleswari Odia, Spoken in Baleswar, Bhadrak and Mayurbhanj district of Odisha. Ganjami Odia, Spoken in Ganjam and Gajapati districts of Odisha, desiya Odia, Spoken in Koraput, Rayagada, Nowrangpur and Malkangiri Districts of Odisha and in the hilly regions of Vishakhapatnam, Vizianagaram District of Andhra Pradesh. Bhatri, Spoken in South-western Odisha and eastern-south Chhattisgarh, halbi, Spoken in undivided Bastar district of Chhattisgarh state is a mixture of Odia and Chatishgarihi tribal languages with major Marathi influence on it. Sounti, Spoken in Northern Odisha and South west Bengal, bathudi, Spoken in Northern Odisha and South west Bengal. Kondhan, A tribal dialect spoken in Western Odisha, laria, Spoken in bordering areas of Chatishgarh and Western Odisha. Aghria, Spoken mostly by the people of Aghria caste in Western Odisha. Bhulia, Tribal form spoken in Western Odisha, sadri, A mixture of Odia and Hindi language with major regional tribal influence. Bodo Parja / Jharia, Tribal dialect of Odia spoken mostly in Koraput district of Southern Odisha, matia, Tribal dialect of Odia spoken in Southern Odisha. Bhuyan, Tribal dialect of Odia spoken in Southern Odisha, reli, Spoken in Southern Odisha and bordering areas of Andhra Pradesh. Kupia, Spoken by Valmiki caste people in the Indian state of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, mostly in Hyderabad, Mahabubnagar, Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, East Godavari, Odia is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-Aryan language family. Odia appears to have had little influence from Persian and Arabic. The history of the Odia language is divided into eras, Old Odia, The earliest evidence of Old Odia is found in the 3rd century BC Ashoka edit of Dhauli and 1st century BC Hathigumpha inscription. The old colloquial literature is the Charyapada, poetry written in an Apabhraṃśa ancestral to Odia, Bengali, early Middle Odia, The earliest use of prose can be found in the Madala Panji of the Jagannath Temple at Puri, which dates back to the 12th century
Odia language
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A detailed chart depicting evolution of the Odia script as displayed in a museum at
Ratnagiri, Odisha
Odia language
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Eastern Hemisphere in the year 200.
Odia language
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Governance
26.
Marwari language
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Marwari is a Rajasthani language spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari is also found in the state of Gujarat and Haryana. With some 20 million or so speakers, it is one of the largest varieties of Rajasthani, most speakers live in Rajasthan, with a quarter million in Sindh and a tenth that number in Nepal. There are two dialects of Marwari. Marwari is popularly written in Devanagari script, as is Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit, Marwari currently has no official status as a language of education and government. There has been a push in the recent past for the government to recognize this language. The state of Rajasthan recognizes Rajasthani as a language, in Pakistan, there are two varieties of Marwari. They may or may not be enough to Indian Marwari to be considered the same language. Marwari speakers are concentrated in Sindh, in Pakistan, Marwari is generally written using a modified version of the Arabic Alphabet. Marwari is still widely in and around Bikaner. There are ongoing efforts to identify and classify this language cluster and it is said that Marwari and Gujarati evolved from Gujjar Bhakha or Maru-Gurjar, language of the Gurjars. Formal grammar of Rajasthani was written by Jain monk and eminent Gujarati scholar Hemachandra Suri, Marwari is primarily spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari speakers have dispersed widely throughout India and other countries but are found most notably in the state of Gujarat. Speakers are also found in Bhopal, with some 13.2 million speakers it is the largest of the Marwari subgroup of the Rajasthani cluster of western dialects of Hindi. There are several dialects, Thaḷī, Bāgṛī, Bhitrauti, Sirohī and it shares a 50%-65% lexical similarity with Hindi. Marwari has many words with Hindi. Notable phonetic correspondences include /s/ in Hindi with /h/ in Marwari, for example, /sona/ gold and /hono/ gold. There are also a variety of vowel changes, most of the pronouns and interrogatives are, however, distinct from those of Hindi
Marwari language
27.
Sindhi language
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Sindhi /ˈsɪndi/ is an Indo-Aryan language of the historical Sindh region, spoken by the Sindhi people. It is the language of the Pakistani province of Sindh. In India, Sindhi is one of the scheduled languages officially recognized by the federal government, most Sindhi speakers are concentrated in Pakistan in the Sindh province, and in India, the Kutch region of the state of Gujarat and in the Ulhasnagar region of the state of Maharashtra. The Sindhi language and other languages of Pakistan are struggling to be officially given the status of national language in Pakistan. Before the inception of Pakistan, Sindhi was the language of Sindh. There are many Sindhi language television channels broadcasting in Pakistan such as KTN, Sindh TV, Awaz Television Network, besides this, Indian television Doordarshan have been asked by the Indian court to start a news channel for Hindu Sindhis of India. Sindhi Computing is the used for the Software developed for the Sindhi language. Sindhi language software such as Sindhi language keyboards have been developed for the Windows OS, various other online websites provide Sindhi keyboard such as, M. B Sindhi keyboard by Majid Bhurgri. The name Sindhi is derived from Sindhu, the name of the Indus River. When Sindh was occupied by British army and was annexed with Bombay, Sir Bartle Frere, the then commissioner of Sindh, issued orders on August 29,1857 advising civil servants in Sindh to qualify examination in Sindhi. He also ordered Sindhi to be used in all official communication, seven-grade education system commonly known as Sindhi-Final was introduced in Sindh. Sindhi Final was made a prerequisite for employment in revenue, police, like other languages of this family, Sindhi has passed through Old Indo-Aryan and Middle Indo-Aryan stages of growth, and it entered the New Indo-Aryan stage around the 10th century CE. In the year 1868, the Bombay Presidency assigned Narayan Jagannath Vaidya to replace the Abjad used in Sindhi, the script was decreed a standard script by the Bombay Presidency thus inciting anarchy in the Muslim majority region. A powerful unrest followed, after which Twelve Martial Laws were imposed by the British authorities, according to Islamic Sindhi tradition, the first translation of the Quran into Sindhi was completed in the year 883 CE /270 AH in Mansura, Sindh. The first extensive Sindhi translation was done by Akhund Azaz Allah Muttalawi, the first to appear in print was by Muhammad Siddiq. Sindhi has a large inventory of both consonants and vowels compared to other languages. Sindhi has 46 consonant phonemes and 16 vowels, the consonant to vowel ratio is around average for worlds languages at 2.8. All plosives, affricates, nasals, the flap and the lateral approximant /l/ have aspirated or breathy voiced counterparts
Sindhi language
Sindhi language
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Sindhi
28.
Rajasthani language
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Rajasthani refers to a group of Indo-Aryan languages spoken primarily in the states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in India. There are also Rajasthani-speakers in the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab, Rajasthani is one of the two major language strains descended from Maru-Gujar or Maruwani, the other being modern Gujarati. Rajasthani has a tradition of literature aging approximately 1500 years. Ancient astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta of Bhinmal composed Brahsfut Siddhanta, in 779 A. D. Udhyotan Suri wrote Kuvalaya Mala partly in Prakrit & partly in Aprabransh. Maru-Gurjar or Maruwani or Gujjar Bhakha, ancestor of Gujarati and Rajasthani, was spoken by the Gurjars in Gujarat, texts of this era display characteristic Gujarati features such as direct/oblique noun forms, post-positions, and auxiliary verbs. It had three genders as Gujarati does today, during the medieval period, the literary language split away from Gujarati. By around 1300 CE a fairly standardised form of this language emerged, while generally known as Old Gujarati, some scholars prefer the name of Old Western Rajasthani, based on the argument that Gujarati and Rajasthani were not distinct at the time. A formal grammar of the precursor to language was written by Jain monk. Maharana Kumbha wrote Sangeet Raj, a book on musicology and a treatise on Jai Deva’s Geet Govinda, the Rajasthani languages belong to the Western Indo-Aryan language family. However, they are controversially conflated with the Hindi languages of the Central-Zone in the Indian national census, the varieties of the Rajasthani language are, Rajasthani Standard, the common lingua franca of Rajasthani people and is spoken by over 18 million people in different parts of Rajasthan. It has to be taken into consideration, however, that speakers of Standard Rajasthani are conflated with Hindi speakers in the census. Marwari, the most spoken Rajasthani language with approximately 45 to 50 million speakers situated in the historic Marwar region of western Rajasthan, the 2001 census, however, records only 15 million speakers. Like Standard Rajasthani, many Marwari speakers are conflated with Hindi speakers in the census, malvi, approximately 10 million speakers in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh. Dhundhari, approximately 8 million speakers in the Dhundhar region of Rajasthan, Harauti, approximately 4 million speakers in the Hadoti region of Rajasthan. Mewari, approximately 5 million speakers in the Mewar region of Rajasthan, mewati, approximately 645,000 speakers in the Mewat region, comprising Haryana and Rajasthan. Shekhawati, approximately 3 million speakers in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, wagdi, approx 2.2 million speakers, spoken mainly in southern region which include Dungarpur & Banswara districts also called Wagad region. Bagri, approximately 1.4 million speakers in northern Rajasthan, there are also speakers situated in southern Punjab. Nimadi, approximately 2.2 million speakers in the Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthani languages are also spoken in the Bahawalpur and Multan sectors of the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Tharparkar district of Sindh
Rajasthani language
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Rajasthani Art & Culture
29.
Chhattisgarhi language
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Chhattisgarhi is a language spoken in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, by 17.5 million people. It is an Eastern Hindi language with heavy vocabulary and linguistic features from Munda, Chhattisgarhi is also known as Dakshin Kosali and Kosali as in ancient times Chhattisgarh was known as Dakshin Kosal. Chhattisgarhi has been known by the name Khaltahi to surrounding hill-people, the speakers are concentrated in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh and in adjacent areas of Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Jharkhand. Chhattisgarhi cultural and political movements, with going back to the 1920s, affirmed Chhattisgarhi linguistic and cultural identity. This came about in 2000 when 16 districts of the state of Madhya Pradesh became the new state of Chhattisgarh. Its precise relationship to Hindi is complex and as other members of the Hindustani dialect continuum. According to the Indian Government, Chhattisgarhi is a dialect of Hindi. In addition to Chhattisgarhi Proper, the dialects of Chhattisgarhi are Baighani, Bhulia, Binjhwari, Kalanga, Kavardi, Khairagarhi, Sadri Korwa, Surgujia is considered by some to be a distinct language. Chhattisgarhi, like Hindi, is using the Devanagari script. After the formation of the new state, films in Chhattisgarhi attracted artists everywhere around India, world-renowned singer Lata Mangeshkar and others also sang Chhattisgarhi songs. Languages of India Languages with official status in India List of Indian languages by total speakers G. A. Zograph, Languages of South Asia,1960, Routledge, London. C. K. Chandrakar, Chhattisgarhi Shabadkosh C. K. Chandrakar, Manak Chhattisgarhi Vyakaran C. K. Chandrakar, Chhattisgarhi Muhawara Kosh Chhattisgarh Rajbhasha Aayog, Prashashnik Shabdkosh Voll. I & II Web magazine of Chhattisgarhi language गुरतुर गोठ. gurturgoth. com webpage on Chhattisgarhi language by Sanjeeva Tiwari, Durg
Chhattisgarhi language
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Governance
30.
Sinhalese language
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Sinhalese, known natively as Sinhala, is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages, Sinhalese has its own writing system, the Sinhalese alphabet, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet. Sinhalese is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, along with Pali, played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. The closest relative of Sinhalese is the language of the Maldives and Minicoy Island, Sinhala is a Sanskrit term, the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan word is Sīhala. The name is a derivation from siṃha, the Sanskrit word for lion Siṃhāla is attested as a Sanskrit name of the island of in the Bhagavata Purana, the name is sometimes glossed as abode of lions, and attributed to a supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahavamsa, written in Pali, Prince Vijaya, in the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India which led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets, e. g. the words mässā and mäkkā, some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language. Sinhalese has many words that are found in Sinhalese, or shared between Sinhalese and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Common examples are kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda, dola for pig in Vedda, Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones. The author of the oldest Sinhalese grammar, Sidatsangarava, written in the 13th century CE, the grammar lists naramba and kolamba as belonging to an indigenous source. Kolamba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo, however, formal Sinhalese is more similar to Pali and medieval Sinhalese. g. I do not know whether it is new, as a result of centuries of colonial rule, modern Sinhalese contains some Portuguese, Dutch and English loanwords. It is now spoken by a few families in Macau and in the Macanese diaspora, Sinhalese shares many features common to other Indo-European languages. For native speakers all dialects are mutually intelligible, and they might not even realise that the differences are significant, the language of the Vedda people resembles Sinhala to a great extent, although it has a large number of words which cannot be traced to another language. The Rodiya use another dialect of Sinhalese, Rodiya used to be a caste in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka no longer recognizes castes, in Sinhalese there is distinctive diglossia, as in many languages of South Asia
Sinhalese language
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Sinhalese
