ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 58: Marathi Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primar
ayearinlanguage: A Year in Language, Day 58: Marathi Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in the Indian state of Maharashtra. With well over 70 million speakers it is the 19th most spoken language in the world. You may wonder why I am doing another Indo-Aryan language immediately after Sanskrit. The reason is simple: today, February 27th, is Marathi Language Day, a national holiday. When discussing other Indo-Aryan languages I have mentioned the four way distinction many of them have in stop consonants, contrasting between voicing and aspiration. Now I reveal to you that every time I said that I was being mildly dishonest. For most Indo-Aryan languages, if not all, voiced consonants are not aspirated but “murmered” or said with “breathy voice” (yes, these are the actual linguistic terms). This is similar to aspiration in that it basically requires subtle maneuvering of the glottis aka. vocal chords, but while aspiration is kind of like hard breathing or whispering while making a sound murmuring is more like humming. So why then, did I tell you it was a distinction of aspiration? Because, to my eyes, this is a perfect example of sound patterns i.e. phonology usurping the technicalities of the actual acoustics i.e. phonetics. Though on an acoustic level voiceless consonants undergo one contrast (aspirated vs. unaspirated) and voiced ones undergo another (murmured vs. not murmered) the simple fact is that Marathi and its sisters dont perceive it like this. The sound rules of the language treat the two things as though they were one, so I treat them that way to. As another fun bit of trivia, Marathi does not limit murmuring to stops; it also makes the contrast in nasals and approximants. Grammatically Marathi is relatively standard for an Indo-Aryan language, though as one might expect from its geographical location, poking into the Dravidian speaking parts of the subcontinent, that it contains a stronger Dravidian influence. So while it has a Sanskrit style gender distinction, case system, and basic word order, it also distinguishes between exclusive and inclusive we and constructs phrasal verbs in a Dravidian pattern. -- source link