PROFILE
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| Total Speakers
64,783,000 (1994)
Usage by Country
Official Language: Maharashtra/India
Background
It belongs to the Indo-European family, Indic group and is spoken in the Maharashtra state, which includes the city of Bombay, and other adjacent states. Speakers of Marathi extend down the coast as far as Goa, though there a special dialect called Konkani is spoken, different enough from Marathi to be considered by some linguists as a separate language. The alphabet (Devanagari) is the same as that used in Hindi. With over 60 million speakers, Marathi ranks as one of the major languages of India. The dialect situation throughout the greater Marathi-speaking area is complex. Dialects bordering other major language areas share many features with those languages.
Received: 19980525
Posted: 19981116
Checked: 19981116
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