More on Marathi
Origin of the Marathi language - Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language.
It's speaker and more information about it - Marathi is a language spoken predominantly by around 83 million Marathi people of Maharashtra,India It is the official language and co-official language in the Maharashtra and Goa states of Western India, respectively, and is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. With 83 million speakers as 2011, Marathi ranks 10th in the list of most spoken languages in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindi and Bengali. The language has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages, dating from around 600 AD. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi dialect. Koli and Malvani Konkani have been heavily influenced by Marathi varieties.
Geographic Distribution - Marathi is primarily spoken in Maharashtra, and parts of neighbouring states of Gujarat (in Vadodara]), Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka (in the districts of Belgaum, Bidar, Gulbarga and Uttara Kannada), Telangana, union-territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.The former Maratha ruled cities of Baroda, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Tanjore have had sizable Marathi speaking populations for centuries. Marathi is also spoken by Maharashtrian migrants to other parts of India and overseas. For instance, the people from western India, that emigrated to Mauritius in the early 19th century also speak Marathi.
There were 83 million native Marathi speakers in India, according to the 2011 census, making it the third most spoken native language after Hindi and Bengali. Native Marathi speakers form 6.86% of India's population. Native speakers of Marathi formed 70.34% of the population in Maharashtra, 10.89% in Goa, 7.01% in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, 4.53% in Daman and Diu, 3.38% in Karnataka, 1.7% in Madhya Pradesh and 1.52% in Gujarat.
Status - Marathi is the official language of Maharashtra and co-official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. In Goa, Konkani is the sole official language; however, Marathi may also be used for some official purposes in some cases. Marathi is included among the languages which stand a part of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, thus granting it the status of a "scheduled language". The Government of Maharashtra has submitted an application to the Ministry of Culture to grant classical language status to Marathi.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 above-mentioned rules give special status to tatsamas, words adapted from Sanskrit. This special status expects the rules for tatsamas to be followed as in Sanskrit. This practice provides Marathi with a large corpus of Sanskrit words to cope with demands of new technical words whenever needed. In addition to all universities in Maharashtra, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Vadodara,Osmania University in Hyderabad, Karnataka University in Dharwad,[20] Gulbarga University in Kalaburagi, Devi Ahilya University in Indore and Goa University in Goa have special departments for higher studies in Marathi linguistics. Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) has announced plans to establish a special department for Marathi.Marathi Day is celebrated on 27 February, the birthday of the poet Kusumagraj (Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar).
History - Indian languages, including Marathi, that belong to the Indo-Aryan language family are derived from early forms of Prakrit. Marathi is one of several languages that further descend from Maharashtri Prakrit. Further change led to the Apabhraṃśa languages like Old Marathi, however, this is challenged by Bloch (1970), who states that Apabhraṃśa was formed after Marathi had already separated from the Middle Indian dialect.
The earliest example of Maharashtri as a separate language dates to approximately 3rd century BCE: a stone inscription found in a cave at Naneghat, Junnar in Pune district had been written in Maharashtra using Brahmi script. A committee appointed by the Maharashtra State Government to get the Classical status for Marathi has claimed that Marathi existed at least 2300 years ago alongside Sanskrit as a sister language. Marathi, a derivative of Maharashtra, is probably first attested in a 739 CE copper-plate inscription found in Satara. Several inscriptions dated to the second half of the 11th century feature Marathi, which is usually appended to Sanskrit or Kannada in these inscriptions.[28] The earliest Marathi-only inscriptions are the ones issued during the Shilahara rule, including a c. 1012 CE stone inscription from Akshi taluka of Raigad district, and a 1060 or 1086 CE copper-plate inscription from Dive that records a land grant (agrahara) to a Brahmin. A 2-line 1118 CE Marathi inscription at Shravanabelagola records a grant by the Hoysalas. These inscriptions suggest that Marathi was a standard written language by the 12th century. However, there is no record of any literature produced in Marathi until the late 13th century.
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