Model Political System
A project for educating about political system of India.
Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of India and Nepal. It is native to the Mithila region, which encompasses parts of the eastern Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand as well as Nepal's Koshi and Madhesh Provinces. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. It is the second most commonly spoken native Nepalese language constitutionally registered as one of the fourteen provincial official languages of Nepal.
It is spoken by 21.7 million people. Of those, 3.2 million are Nepalese speakers. The language is predominantly written in Devanagari, but the historical Tirhuta and Kaithi scripts retained some use until today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maithili_language
Malayalam (മലയാളം) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was designated a "Classical Language of India" in 2013. Malayalam has official language status in Kerala, Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé), and is also the primary spoken language of Lakshadweep. Malayalam is spoken by 35.6 million people in India. Malayalam is also spoken by linguistic minorities in the neighbouring states; with a significant number of speakers in the Kodagu and Dakshina Kannada districts of Karnataka, and Kanyakumari, Coimbatore and Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu. It is also spoken by the Malayali Diaspora worldwide, especially in the Persian Gulf countries, due to the large populations of Malayali expatriates there. They are a significant population in each city in India including Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad etc.
The origin of Malayalam remains a matter of dispute among scholars. The mainstream view holds that Malayalam descends from a western coastal dialect of early Middle Tamil and separated from it sometime between the 9th and 13th centuries, although this medieval western dialect also preserved some archaisms suggesting an earlier divergence of the spoken dialects in the prehistoric period. A second view argues for the development of the two languages out of "Proto-Dravidian" or "Proto-Tamil-Malayalam" either in the prehistoric period or in the middle of the first millennium A.D., although this is generally rejected by historical linguists. The Quilon Syrian copper plates of 849/850 CE are considered by some to be the oldest available inscription written in Old Malayalam. However, the existence of Old Malayalam is sometimes disputed by scholars. They regard the Chera Perumal inscriptional language as a diverging dialect or variety of contemporary Tamil. The oldest extant literary work in Malayalam distinct from the Tamil tradition is Ramacharitam (late 12th or early 13th century).
The earliest script used to write Malayalam was the Vatteluttu script. The current Malayalam script is based on the Vatteluttu script, which was extended with Grantha script letters to adopt Indo-Aryan loanwords. It bears high similarity with the Tigalari script, a historical script that was used to write the Tulu language in South Canara, and Sanskrit in the adjacent Malabar region. The modern Malayalam grammar is based on the book Kerala Panineeyam written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. The first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam Varthamanappusthakam, written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785.
Robert Caldwell describes the extent of Malayalam in the 19th century as extending from the vicinity of Kumbla in the north where it supersedes with Tulu to Kanyakumari in the south, where it begins to be superseded by Tamil, beside the inhabited islands of Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea.
Marathi is a classical Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken by Marathi people in the Indian state of Maharashtra and is also spoken in Goa, and parts of Gujarat, Karnataka and the territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. It is the official language of Maharashtra, and an additional official language in the state of Goa, where it is used for replies, when requests are received in Marathi.
It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, with 83 million speakers as of 2011. Marathi ranks 13th in the list of languages with most native speakers in the world. Marathi has the third largest number of native speakers in India, after Hindustani and Bengali. Marathi has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indian languages. The major dialects of Marathi are Standard Marathi and the Varhadi Marathi. Marathi was designated as a classical language by the Government of India in October 2024.
Marathi distinguishes inclusive and exclusive forms of 'we' and possesses three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Its phonology contrasts apico-alveolar with alveopalatal affricates and alveolar with retroflex laterals ([l] and [ɭ] (Marathi letters ल and ळ respectively).
Meitei (মৈতৈলোন্) also known as Manipuri (মণিপুরী), is a Tibeto-Burman language of northeast India. It is the official language and the lingua franca of Manipur and an additional official language in four districts of Assam. It is one of the constitutionally scheduled official languages of the Indian Republic. Meitei is the most widely-spoken Tibeto-Burman language of India and the third most widely spoken language of northeast India after Assamese and Bengali. There are 1.76 million Meitei native speakers in India according to the 2011 census, 1.52 million of whom are found in the state of Manipur, where they represent the majority of its population. There are smaller communities in neighbouring Indian states, such as Assam (168,000), Tripura (24,000), Nagaland (9,500), and elsewhere in the country (37,500). The language is also spoken by smaller groups in neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Meitei and Gujarati jointly hold the third place among the fastest growing languages of India, following Hindi and Kashmiri.
Meitei is not endangered: its status has been assessed as safe by Ethnologue (where it is assigned to EGIDS level 2 "provincial language"). However, it is considered vulnerable by UNESCO.
The Manipuri language is associated with the Ningthouja dynasty (Mangangs), the Khuman dynasty, the Moirangs, the Angoms, the Luwangs, the Chengleis (Sarang-Leishangthems), and the Khaba-Nganbas. Each had their respective distinct dialects and were politically independent from one another. Later, all of them fell under the dominion of the Ningthouja dynasty, changing their status of being independent "ethnicities" into those of "clans" of the collective Meitei community. The Ningthouja dialect was predominant, and received heavy influences from the speech forms of the other groups.
Meitei is one of the advanced literary languages recognised by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.
Nepali (नेपाली) or Gorkhali is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Himalayas region of South Asia. It is the official and most widely spoken language of Nepal, where it also serves as a lingua franca. Nepali has official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration of West Bengal. It is spoken by about a quarter of Bhutan's population. Nepali also has a significant number of speakers in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand. In Myanmar it is spoken by the Burmese Gurkhas. The Nepali diaspora in the Middle East, Brunei, Australia and worldwide also use the language. Nepali is spoken by approximately 19 million native speakers and another 14 million as a second language.
Nepali is commonly classified within the Eastern Pahari group of the Northern zone of Indo-Aryan. The language originated from the Sinja Valley, Karnali Province then the capital city of the Khasa Kingdom around the 10th and 14th centuries. It developed proximity to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, most significantly to other Pahari languages. Nepali was originally spoken by the Khas people, an Indo-Aryan ethno-linguistic group native to the Himalayan region of South Asia. The earliest inscription in the Nepali language is believed to be an inscription in Dullu, Dailekh District which was written around the reign of King Bhupal Damupal around the year 981. The institutionalisation of the Nepali language arose during the rule of the Kingdom of Gorkha (later became known as the Kingdom of Nepal) in the 16th century. Over the centuries, different dialects of the Nepali language with distinct influences from Sanskrit, Maithili, Hindi, and Bengali are believed to have emerged across different regions of the current-day Nepal and Uttarakhand, making Nepali the lingua franca.
Nepali is a highly fusional language with a moderately free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–object–verb word order (SOV). There are three major levels or gradations of honorific, as well as two more based on dialect and socio-economic class: low, medium, high, very high, and royal. Low honorific is used where no respect is due, medium honorific is used to signify equal status or neutrality, and high or very high honorific signifies respect. The last, royal form was used to refer exclusively to and by the royal family. Like all modern Indo-Aryan languages, Nepali grammar has syncretised heavily, losing much of the complex declensional system present in the older languages. Nepali developed significant literature within a short period of a hundred years in the 19th century. Around 1830, several Nepali poets wrote on themes from the Sanskrit epics Ramayana and the Bhagavata Purana, which was followed by Bhanubhakta Acharya translating the Ramayana in Nepali which received "great popularity for the colloquial flavour of its language, its religious sincerity, and its realistic natural descriptions".
Odia (ଓଡ଼ିଆ; formerly rendered as Oriya) is a classical Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Indian state of Odisha. It is the official language in Odisha (formerly rendered as Orissa), where native speakers make up 82% of the population, and it is also spoken in parts of Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Odia is one of the official languages of India; it is the official language of Odisha and the second official language of Jharkhand. The Odia language has various dialects varieties, including the Baleswari Odia (Northern dialect), Kataki, Dhenkanalia, Anugulia(central dialect), Ganjami Odia (Southern dialect), Sundargadi Odia (Northwestern dialect), Sambalpuri Odia (Western dialect), Desia (South-western dialect) and Tribal Community dialects spoken by the tribals groups in Odisha who adopted the Odia language.
Odia is the sixth Indian language to be designated a classical language. It traces its linguistic roots to the Eastern Magadhi Prakrit, evolving through stages such as Proto Odia (7th–9th century CE), Old Odia (10th-13th century CE), Middle Odia (14th–17th century CE), and Modern Odia (from the 18th century onward). The language displays a distinct phonological and morphological character shaped by centuries of interaction with tribal and Dravidian tongues. Recognized as a classical language of India, Odia has an unbroken literary tradition, with inscriptions dating back over a thousand years.
Punjabi, sometimes spelled Panjabi, is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Punjab region of Pakistan and India. It is one of the most widely spoken native languages in the world, with approximately 150 million native speakers.
Punjabi is the most widely-spoken first language in Pakistan, with 88.9 million native speakers according to the 2023 Pakistani census, and the 11th most widely-spoken in India, with 31.1 million native speakers, according to the 2011 census. It is spoken among a significant overseas diaspora, particularly in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and the Gulf states.
In Pakistan, Punjabi is written using the Shahmukhi alphabet, based on the Perso-Arabic script; in India, it is written using the Gurmukhi alphabet, based on the Indic scripts. Punjabi is unusual among the Indo-Aryan languages and the broader Indo-European language family in its usage of lexical tone.
Sanskrit (संस्कृत) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.
Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda, a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini. The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa, wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language.
The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to the most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer. As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European. Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around the turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts, and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari.
Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India's Eighth Schedule languages. However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but the numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule. Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants.
Santali (সাঁওতালি, ସାନ୍ତାଳୀ, सान्ताली) is a Kherwarian Munda language spoken natively by the Santal people of South Asia. It is the most widely-spoken language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho and Mundari, spoken mainly in the Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripura and West Bengal. It is one of the constitutionally scheduled official languages of the Indian Republic and the additional official language of Jharkhand and West Bengal per the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. It is spoken by around 7.6 million people in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, making it the third most-spoken Austroasiatic language after Vietnamese and Khmer.
Santali is characterized by a split into at least a northern and southern dialect sphere, with slightly different sets of phonemes: Southern Santali has six phonemic vowels, in contrast with eight or nine in Northern Santali, different lexical items, and to a certain degree, variable morphology. Santali is recognized by linguists as being phonologically conservative within the Munda branch. Unlike many Munda languages that had their vowel systems restructured and shrunk to five such as Mundari, Ho, and Kharia, Santali retains a larger vowel system of eight phonemic cardinal vowels, which is very unusual in the South Asian linguistic area. The language also uses vowel harmony processes in morphology and expressives similar to Ho and Mundari. Morphosyntactically, Santali, together with Sora, are considered less restructured than other Munda languages, having less influence from Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. Clause structure is topic-prominent by default.
Santali is primarily written in Ol Chiki script, an indigenous alphabetic writing system developed in 1925 by Santal writer Raghunath Murmu. Additionally, it is also written in various regional Indian writing systems such as Bengali-Assamese script, Odia script, Devanagari, and the Santali Latin alphabet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santali_language
Sindhi (سِنڌِي or सिन्धी (Devanagari)) is a language spoken by more than 30 million people in the Pakistani province of Sindh, where it has official status, as well as by 1.7 million people in India, where it is a scheduled language without state-level official status. Sindhi is primarily written in the Perso-Arabic script in Pakistan, while in India, both the Perso-Arabic script and Devanagari are used.
Sindhi is a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language, and thus related to, but not mutually intelligible with, Saraiki and Punjabi. Sindhi has several regional dialects.
The earliest written evidence of modern Sindhi as a language can be found in a translation of the Qur’an into Sindhi dating back to 883 AD. Sindhi was one of the first Indo-Aryan languages to encounter influence from Persian and Arabic following the Umayyad conquest in 712 AD. A substantial body of Sindhi literature developed during the Medieval period, the most famous of which is the religious and mystic poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai from the 18th century. Modern Sindhi was promoted under British rule beginning in 1843, which led to the current status of the language in independent Pakistan after 1947.
Sindhi is an inflected language, with five cases for noun, three for personal pronoun, four for third-person pronoun; eleven case markers; two genders (masculine, feminine); and two numbers (singular, plural). The base of its vocabulary is derived from Sanskrit in the form of Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa, while a significant portion of its high-register speech is derived from Persian and Arabic, along with a number of recent loanwords borrowed from English; and to a lesser extent from Portuguese and French. It has also had minor influence from and on neighbouring languages such as Punjabi, Balochi, Brahui, Gujarati, and Marwari.
Sindhi has a number of dialects and an established standard form, referred to as Standard Sindhi, which is based on the dialect of Hyderabad and surrounding areas of central Sindh. The primary regulatory agency for the development and promotion of the language is the Sindhi Language Authority, an autonomous institution of the government of Sindh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhi_language
