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Indo-Aryan languages

The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages[a]) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal .[1] Moreover, apart from the Indian subcontinent, large immigrant and expatriate Indo-Aryan–speaking communities live in Northwestern Europe, Western Asia, North America, the Caribbean, Southeast Africa, Polynesia and Australia, along with several million speakers of Romani languages primarily concentrated in Southeastern Europe. There are over 200 known Indo-Aryan languages.[5]

Indo-Aryan

c. 800 million (2018)[1]–1.5 billion[2]

59= (phylozone)

Modern Indo-Aryan languages descend from Old Indo-Aryan languages such as early Vedic Sanskrit, through Middle Indo-Aryan languages (or Prakrits).[6][7][8][9] The largest such languages in terms of first-speakers are Hindi–Urdu (c. 330 million),[10] Bengali (242 million),[11] Punjabi (about 120 million),[12] Marathi (112 million), and Gujarati (60 million). A 2005 estimate placed the total number of native speakers of the Indo-Aryan languages at nearly 900 million people.[13] Other estimates are higher suggesting a figure of 1.5 billion speakers of Indo-Aryan languages.[2]

Kashmiri: , Kishtwari, Poguli;

Kashmiri

Shina: , Kundal Shahi, Shina, Ushojo, Kalkoti, Palula, Savi;

Brokskad

Chitrali: , Khowar;

Kalasha

Pashayi

Kunar: , Gawar-Bati, Nangalami, Shumashti.

Dameli

(before 1500 BCE, reconstructed)

Proto-Indo-Aryan

Old Indo-Aryan

Vedic Sanskrit

Middle Indo-Aryan

Early Modern Indo-Aryan (Late Medieval India): e.g. early and emergence of the Dehlavi dialect

Dakhini

: Languages in the Sindhic subfamily, as well as Saraiki, western Marwari dialects, and some dialects of Gujarati have developed implosive consonants from historical intervocalic geminates and word-initial stops. Sindhi has a full implosive series except for the dental implosive: ʄ ɓ/. It has been claimed that Wadiyari Koli has the dental implosive too. Other languages have less complete implosive series, e.g. Kacchi has just /ᶑ ɓ/.

Implosives

: Sinhala and Maldivian (Dhivehi) have a series of prenasalized stops covering all places except for palatal: /ᵐb ⁿd ᶯɖ ᵑɡ/.

Prenasalized stops

: Kashmiri (natively) and some Romani dialects (from contact with Slavic languages) have contrastive palatalisation.

Palatalization

In Gawarbati, some Pashai dialects, partly Bashkarik and some Shina dialects have /ɬ/ from clusters of tr kr or sometimes pr; dr gr and br merged with /l/ in these languages.

Voiceless lateral

: Bhadarwahi has an unusual series of lateral retroflex affricates (/ʈ͡ꞎ ɖ͡ɭ ɖ͡ɭʱ/ derived from historical /Cɾ/ clusters.

Lateral affricates

Sociolinguistics[edit]

Register[edit]

In many Indo-Aryan languages, the literary register is often more archaic and utilises a different lexicon (Sanskrit or Perso-Arabic) than spoken vernacular. One example is Bengali's high literary form, Sādhū bhāṣā, as opposed to the more modern Calita bhāṣā (Cholito-bhasha).[54] This distinction approaches diglossia.

Language and dialect[edit]

In the context of South Asia, the choice between the appellations "language" and "dialect" is a difficult one, and any distinction made using these terms is obscured by their ambiguity. In one general colloquial sense, a language is a "developed" dialect: one that is standardised, has a written tradition and enjoys social prestige. As there are degrees of development, the boundary between a language and a dialect thus defined is not clear-cut, and there is a large middle ground where assignment is contestable. There is a second meaning of these terms, in which the distinction is drawn on the basis of linguistic similarity. Though seemingly a "proper" linguistics sense of the terms, it is still problematic: methods that have been proposed for quantifying difference (for example, based on mutual intelligibility) have not been seriously applied in practice; and any relationship established in this framework is relative.[55]

Indo-Aryans

Iranic languages

Indo-Aryan migration

Proto-Vedic Continuity

The family of Brahmic scripts

Linguistic history of India

Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil

Dravidian languages

Languages of Bangladesh

Languages of India

Languages of Maldives

Languages of Nepal

Languages of Pakistan

Languages of Sri Lanka

Languages of South Asia

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ISBN

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Walter de Gruyter

Kausen, Ernst (2006). .

"Die Klassifikation der indogermanischen Sprachen (Microsoft Word, 133 KB)"

Kobayashi, Masato.; & (2004). Historical phonology of old Indo-Aryan consonants. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. ISBN 4-87297-894-3.

George Cardona

Misra, Satya Swarup. (1980). Fresh light on Indo-European classification and chronology. Varanasi: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan.

Misra, Satya Swarup. (1991–1993). The Old-Indo-Aryan, a historical & comparative grammar (Vols. 1–2). Varanasi: Ashutosh Prakashan Sansthan.

Sen, Sukumar. (1995). Syntactic studies of Indo-Aryan languages. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Foreign Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

Vacek, Jaroslav. (1976). The sibilants in Old Indo-Aryan: A contribution to the history of a linguistic area. Prague: Charles University.

25 October 2009

The Indo-Aryan languages

Colin P.Masica

The Indo-Aryan languages

(Rajesh Bhatt), 7 February 2003.

Survey of the syntax of the modern Indo-Aryan languages