Marathi Language

Marathi Language, state language of Maharashtra State in central-western India. It had 62,481,681 speakers according to the 1991 census of India, although more recent estimates put this figure at 68 million. Marathi is a member of the Southern Zone group of Indo-Aryan languages (a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages), closely related to its geographical neighbour Gujarati and the minor languages Konkani and Saurashtri. Marathi has a wide variety of dialects, which tend to merge gradually into these languages. It also has a relatively low literacy rate.

Marathi is written in the Devanagari script, derived from Sanskrit. It is believed to have been first written in the 13th century by Jnaneshvar, the first of a series of Marathi poet-saints. Broadly speaking, Marathi grammar and syntax are similar to other Indo-Aryan languages, with three genders and similar verb paradigms, but with some archaic features and some Dravidian influence, in the use of participial rather than relative clause constructions.

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