Gujarati Language

Gujarati Language, official language of Gujarat State in India, with 45,479,000 first-language speakers in India. It is one of the 18 languages recognized in Schedule VIII of the Indian constitution as having special status. It is an Indo-Aryan language, descended from Sanskrit, as are the majority of languages of northern and western India.

The Gujarati script is based on the Devanagari alphabet, used in Hindi and Bangla, but without the continuous line along the top which joins the letters of a word. The literary standard is based on the dialect of the Baroda district of Gujarat, and there is not much dialectal variation. The literary language dates from the 14th century. Mohandas Gandhi was one of the most influential writers in the modern literary medium.

Gujarati has three genders—masculine, feminine, and neuter—and six noun cases. The language also has a relatively complex system of verb tenses and moods. In other respects it is fairly similar to other modern Indo-Aryan languages.

Gujarati-speaking communities are very widespread: not only is the language spoken in all major cities of India, but also in the United Kingdom, Fiji, and several African countries, among descendants of emigrants.

Selected statistical data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World, SIL International.