India

Khariboli

also: Standard Hindi, Dehlavi

The variety spoken around Delhi and the western Doab. Forms the basis of Modern Standard Hindi and shares its core grammar with Standard Urdu.

Awadhi

also: Avadhi

Spoken across the Awadh region of central Uttar Pradesh. Carries a major literary tradition through Tulsidas' Ramcharitmanas.

Bhojpuri

Spoken across eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, and parts of southern Nepal. Carried abroad by indenture-era diasporas to Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad.

Braj Bhasha

also: Braj

The variety of the Braj region around Mathura and Vrindavan. A major literary medium of medieval Hindi devotional poetry, especially the bhakti tradition.

Haryanvi

also: Bangaru

The Western Hindi variety of Haryana and adjacent districts of Delhi. Distinct from Khariboli in vowels, perfective forms, and rural vocabulary.

Bundeli

also: Bundelkhandi

Spoken in the Bundelkhand region straddling Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, around Jhansi. Carries a strong oral epic tradition.

Marwari

The Rajasthani variety of the Marwar region around Jodhpur. Often classified separately from Hindi in linguistic literature, but commonly grouped with the wider Hindi-belt continuum.

Indian English

The pluricentric variety of English used across India. Shaped by long contact with Hindi and other Indian languages, with its own pronunciation, grammar, and lexical norms.

Standard Bengali

also: West Bengal Bengali, Kolkata Bengali

The variety of West Bengal centred on Kolkata. The basis of literary Bengali and the medium of a major modern literature including the works of Tagore.

Standard Tamil

also: Chennai Tamil

The Chennai-area variety of Tamil that forms the basis of the modern spoken standard. Tamil itself has one of the longest continuous literary traditions in the world.

Madurai Tamil

The Tamil of Madurai and the broader southern Tamil Nadu region. Carries a distinctive lexicon and intonation widely featured in Tamil cinema.

Coastal Telugu

also: Andhra Telugu

The Telugu of the coastal Andhra region around Vijayawada. Forms the basis of the literary standard and of much of Telugu cinema.

Telangana Telugu

also: Hyderabadi Telugu

The Telugu of Telangana, centred on Hyderabad. Distinguished from Coastal Telugu in lexicon and shaped by long contact with Dakhini Urdu.

Standard Marathi

also: Puneri, Pune Marathi

The Pune-area variety of Marathi that forms the literary and educational standard across Maharashtra.

Varhadi

also: Vidarbha Marathi

The Marathi of the Vidarbha region in eastern Maharashtra. Distinct from Standard Marathi in pronouns, verb endings, and Hindi-contact vocabulary.

Majhi Punjabi

also: Standard Punjabi

The Majhi variety of central Punjab on both sides of the India-Pakistan border. The basis of the literary standard for both Gurmukhi-script Indian Punjabi and Shahmukhi-script Pakistani Punjabi.

Doabi

The Punjabi of the Doaba region between the Beas and Sutlej rivers. The variety with the largest Sikh diaspora footprint, especially in the United Kingdom and Canada.

Standard Gujarati

also: Surati / Charotari

The Gujarati of central and southern Gujarat around Ahmedabad and Vadodara. The basis of the literary and broadcast standard.

Kathiawari Gujarati

The Gujarati of the Kathiawar peninsula in western Gujarat. Distinct in vowels, verb endings, and a number of regional vocabulary items.

Urdu

The Hindustani national language of Pakistan and one of India's scheduled languages. Linguistically the same spoken language as Standard Hindi, distinguished by its Perso-Arabic script and Persian-Arabic literary register.

Nepali

also: Nepāli

An Indo-Aryan language and the official language of Nepal. Also a scheduled language of India, with substantial communities in Sikkim, West Bengal, and Bhutan.

Sindhi

An Indo-Aryan language of Sindh province in Pakistan, with substantial communities in India after Partition. Around 25 million speakers; written in both Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts.

Kashmiri

also: Koshur

A Dardic Indo-Aryan language of the Kashmir valley, traditionally written in a Perso-Arabic script (Naskh) but also in Devanagari and the Sharada heritage script.

Great Andamanese

also: Present-day Great Andamanese, Jeru

A koine of the four North Great Andamanese languages, with a grammar based mainly on Jeru, spoken on Strait Island in the Andaman archipelago. Around three elderly speakers remain of one of the world's primary language families, notable for a grammatical system in which nouns and verbs are obligatorily marked with body-part-based prefixes.

Aka-Bo

also: Bo

A North Great Andamanese language originally of northern Great Andaman, whose surviving speakers were resettled on Strait Island. Died with Boa Sr in 2010; her speech and songs were recorded by Anvita Abbi in the Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese project.