Magahi

Magahi (ISO 639-3: mag, Glottocode: maga1260) belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family, specifically falling within the Eastern Zone (Bihari group), closely related to Maithili and Bhojpuri.

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, there are approximately 12.7 million speakers of Magahi in India, though this figure carries some uncertainty as Magahi is often classified under the umbrella of Hindi in official census tabulations.

Distribution in India

Magahi is principally spoken in the eastern Indian states of Bihar (concentrated in the southern districts of Patna, Gaya, Jehanabad, Nalanda, Nawada, and Aurangabad) and Jharkhand (primarily in the northern districts such as Hazaribagh, Chatra, and Giridih), with minor populations in adjacent areas of West Bengal.

Major Grammatical Features

• Phonology: The phonemic inventory features a standard Indo-Aryan contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops (both voiced and voiceless), alongside a dental-retroflex distinction. It retains lexical vowel length variations and characteristic vowel-shortening rules in non-initial syllables.
• Morphology: Magahi features a highly complex verbal agreement system. Verbs inflect not only for the person, number, and honorific status of the subject, but also for those of the object (addressee/non-addressee marking). Nouns generally do not have grammatical gender but inflect for number and case through the cliticization of postpositions.
• Syntax: The default word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). It is a postpositional language with relatively free word order facilitated by rich case-marking enclitics.

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article on Magahi
• Glottolog Entry for Magahi