Chhattisgarhi

Chhattisgarhi belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European language family. It is classified under the East-Central Indo-Aryan group of languages. * ISO 639-3: hne * Glottocode: chha1249

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, Chhattisgarhi has approximately 16.25 million speakers.

Distribution in India

Chhattisgarhi is primarily spoken in the plains of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, where it holds official status. It is also spoken in adjacent border districts of neighboring states, including Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: The sound system features a contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops, and dental versus retroflex consonants, typical of Indo-Aryan languages. A notable phonetic feature is the frequent historical shift of the sibilant /s/ to the aspirate /h/.
• Morphology: Chhattisgarhi is split-ergative and largely analytic, using postpositions to mark grammatical cases. Unlike Hindi, grammatical gender is not strongly marked in nouns or verbs, and natural gender is typically indicated lexically.
• Syntax: The unmarked word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Nouns precede postpositions, and modifiers (adjectives, genitives) generally precede the nouns they modify.

Further reading

• Chhattisgarhi Language Search on Wikipedia
• Glottolog Entry for Chhattisgarhi
• ISO 639-3 Registration Authority