Gujarati

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Gujarati ( ગુજરાતી )

Spoken in

India ( Gujarat , Mumbai )
speaker 55 million
Linguistic
classification
Official status
Official language in India , Gujarat State , Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu Union Territory
Language codes
ISO 639 -1

gu

ISO 639 -2

guj

ISO 639-3

guj

Approximate distribution area of ​​the Gujarati

Gujarati ( ગુજરાતી , f., Gujarātī , [ guʤəˈrɑːtiː ], language of Gujarat) belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian subgroup of the Indo-European languages .

The distribution area of ​​the Gujarati largely coincides with the Indian state of Gujarat , whose borders were drawn in 1960 along the language border of the Gujarati. There are also larger numbers of Gujarati speakers in the Mumbai (Bombay) area. Furthermore, Gujarati has been spoken in various African countries since the British colonial era and more recently by foreigners in the Gulf States , Great Britain and the USA . According to the 2011 Indian census, Gujarati is spoken by around 55 million people as their mother tongue. Of these, 52 million live in Gujarat, where Gujarati speakers make up 86 percent of the population. The Gujarati is the official language in the state of Gujarat and in the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu . It is also recognized as one of the 22 national languages ​​of India on a supraregional level .

font

Like many languages ​​in India, Gujarati has its own script, the Gujarati script . This is quite similar to the Devanagari script , but the Gujarati script lacks the characteristic upper crossbar (cf. e.g. Gujarati ત and Devanagari त for ta ).

Monument to Narsinh Mehta in Vadodara

Narsinh Mehta is considered to be the founder of Gujarati literature in the 15th century. However , his award songs were only passed down orally in the original language.

literature

  • Elvira Friedrich: Introduction to the Indian Scriptures . Part 2: Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Bengali, Oria . Buske, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 978-3-87548-219-5 .

Web links

Wikipedia on Gujarati
Wiktionary: Gujarati  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations


Individual evidence

  1. ^ Data on Language and Mother Tongue. Part A: Distribution of the 22 scheduled languages-India / States / Union Territories - 2011 census. (PDF) Census of India 2011