Marathi is a South Indian language
The classification of Indian languages into Dravidian and Indo-European is well known. I would like to propose a new classification based on pronunciation -- South and North Indian.
1. Pronunciation of the vowels 'ai' and 'au'
If the vowels rhyme with "why" and "cow" respectively, the language is South Indian. If they are pronounced like "way" and "cause" respectively, the language is North Indian.
2. Pronunciation of the conjunct consonant 'jJa'
If it is pronounced as 'gya', the language is North Indian.
3. Pronunciation of the aspirate 'pha'
If the consonant is pronounced as F, the language is North Indian.
4. Extent of eliding the vowel 'a'
This criterion is more of degree than black-and-white. The extent of elision is close to 100% in North Indian languages.
In the case of Marathi, it meets all the criteria except the third. Observe how a Marathi speaker pronounces the words vaidya, gaurava, jJAna. Also note the non-elision of the vowel 'a' in the names Ranade, Thackeray and Fadake, and in the Varakari chant 'viTThala, viTThala.'
By the same token, Sanskrit is a South Indian language too.
1. Pronunciation of the vowels 'ai' and 'au'
If the vowels rhyme with "why" and "cow" respectively, the language is South Indian. If they are pronounced like "way" and "cause" respectively, the language is North Indian.
2. Pronunciation of the conjunct consonant 'jJa'
If it is pronounced as 'gya', the language is North Indian.
3. Pronunciation of the aspirate 'pha'
If the consonant is pronounced as F, the language is North Indian.
4. Extent of eliding the vowel 'a'
This criterion is more of degree than black-and-white. The extent of elision is close to 100% in North Indian languages.
In the case of Marathi, it meets all the criteria except the third. Observe how a Marathi speaker pronounces the words vaidya, gaurava, jJAna. Also note the non-elision of the vowel 'a' in the names Ranade, Thackeray and Fadake, and in the Varakari chant 'viTThala, viTThala.'
By the same token, Sanskrit is a South Indian language too.
Labels: Language
7 Comments:
Why do you say that it doesn't meet criterion 3? Most Marathi speakers I know pronounce pha as pha to a fault. This is true even when they pronounce words containing 'f' in other languages like English.
Thanks, I was not aware of that... That, I think, only strengthens my main point.
Possibly, there are variations among Marathi speakers on the pronunciation of 'pha'.
It certainly does strengthen your point. At least by these criteria Marathi would probably be classified as not-North Indian (though I would hesitate to call it South Indian).
Another curious thing I have found is that South Indians by and large classify both Maharashtrians and people further north (say Delhi) as North Indians. Maharashtrians wouldn't call themselves North Indians but would classify anyone from Delhi as obviously North Indian. I do not know if the same thing holds in the other direction. i.e., does a Delhi-ite consider a Maharashtrian to be South Indian?
Goes to show how inadequate such labels can be...
In my opinion, people from the 4 southern states mistakenly consider Maharashtra to be North India because:
* Marathi is written in Devanagari. (This is actually a relatively recent development.)
* Mumbai is Hindi-speaking, and is the capital of "Bollywood".
Yes, north and south are relative. But hopefully, this post has defined NI and SI languages more objectively. :-)
Marathi meets all four criteria that you have mentioned to qulify as a South Indian langauge. The pronounciation in Marathi is "Pha" and not "F". Marathi people saying "F" do so due to effect of English speaking.
By the way, actually, the languages have NOT bneen classified as North or South Indian but as Indo-Aryan and Dravidian. All the Indo-Aryan languages are based on Sanskrit in the sense that their grammar (like sentence construction) is based on Sanskrit grammar. Dravidian langauge grammar is NOT based on Sanskrit. So even if Kannada, Telugu and Malyalam have many Sanskrit words, they are classified as Dravidian language, In this sense, Marathi is an Ind--Aryan language without doubt. However, if you want to classify as North and South Indian only, then it would fall more towards South than North. As it is, Marathi langauge evolved in a geographical area wherein Dravidian langauge(s) (perhaps Kannada or an extingushied proto-Dravidian langauge) was spoken while Marathi was being evolved. That is why some pure Marathi words have Dravidian origins. Same is the reason why there are much more number of Dravidian words in Marathi than in any other northern Indo-Aryan langauge.
So according to me, it would be more appropriate to say that Marathi is a South Indian Aryan language.
Thanks Subhash - I agree with you.
I have also corrected the post regarding the pronunciation of 'pha' based on your (and Kaushik's) comment.
I never heard of this language, very interesting!
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