Maithili is an Indo-Aryan language that is part of the Indo-European family of languages. Distributed in the Indian state of Bihar and in Nepal .
| Maithili | |
|---|---|
| Self name | मैथिली maithilī |
| Country | India , Nepal |
| Regions | Bihar |
| Official status | Bihar |
| Total number of speakers | 45 million |
| Rating | 40 |
| Classification | |
| Category | Languages of Eurasia |
Indo-European family
| |
| Writing | Devanagari , Kaithi , Mithilakshar |
| Language Codes | |
| GOST 7.75–97 | May 412 |
| ISO 639-1 | bh ( Bihari ) |
| ISO 639-2 | mai |
| ISO 639-3 | mai |
| WALS | |
| Ethnologue | |
| IETF | |
| Glottolog | |
At present, Maithili, along with Bhojpuri and a number of less common languages, belong to the Western group of East Indian languages (the so-called Biharic languages ), in contrast to Hindi , which is the Central Indian language. In earlier studies, Maithili was considered a dialect of Hindi or Bengali .
History
The name Maithili comes from the name Mithila , the capital of the ancient state of Videh . Maithili is also one of the names of Sita , the wife of Rama .
Maithili for a long time remained a folk language - Sanskrit was used in official communication. The first writer to write in Maithili is the medieval Bihar poet Vidyapati (~ 1352 - ~ 1448). He also convinced the authorities of the importance of using the vernacular in public administration.
Maithili was recognized as a separate language in India in 2003. As a result of the struggle to give the language an official status, in 2004 Maithili was included in the eighth list of the Indian Constitution , which gives the right to use it in education, government agencies and office work at the state level.
Despite its official status, Maithili is a non-prestigious language . The language has a rich literary tradition, however, the amount of available literature and the press is limited; daily newspapers are not published in the language. Maithili speakers are divided religiously and caste , which impedes the development of the language.
Writing
For writing maithili traditionally used their own script ( tirhuta , mithilakshar ), which is a type of oriental nagari , as well as the letter of kaithi . Currently, its own writing system is largely supplanted by Devanagari writing and is used only to a limited extent, mainly for religious purposes.
Steps are being taken to preserve and develop the traditional Maithil script. In 2003, the first Maithillian font appeared , and the project was adopted to include Mithilakshara in the Unicode standard.
In November 2014, the Wikipedia section on Maithili was opened.
Notes
Literature
- Zograf G.A. Languages of South Asia. M., 1990.
- Languages of Asia and Africa. T. 1: Indo-Aryan languages. M., 1976.
- Davis AI Basic colloquial Maithili: a Maithili-Nepali-English vocabulary with some structure notes.Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984.
- Jha S. The Formation of the Maithili Language. London: Luzac & Co, 1958.
- Jha SK Maithili: Some Aspects of its Phonetics and Phonology, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2001.
- Yadav R. Maithili Phonetics and Phonology. Mainz: Selden and Tamm, 1984.
- Yadav R. A Reference Grammar of Maithili. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996.
Links
- Maithili at Ethnologue. Languages of the World .
- List of laureates of the Sakhity Academy Literary Prize for work in Maithili (inaccessible link)
- Maithili information (inaccessible link)
- Maithili Language History
- Indian Maithili Poets
- Maithil Songs (inaccessible link)
- Maithili on the Rosetta Project website (inaccessible link)
- Maithili on the Linguist website (inaccessible link)
- Request for inclusion of Maithili in the Unicode standard
- Download Madhyam - text editor for Maithili