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Bagheli language

Bagheli
Native to India
Native speakers
8.2 million (2004)
Census results conflate some speakers with Hindi.
Devanagari script
Official status
Official language in
India (Madhya Pradesh)
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
bfy – Bagheli
pwr – Powari
Glottolog bagh1251  (Bagheli)
powa1246  (Powari)
Linguasphere 59-AAF-rc

Bagheli (Devanagari: बघेली or बाघेली), or Baghelkhandi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Baghelkhand region of central India.

An independent language belonging to the Eastern Hindi subgroup, Bagheli is one of the languages designated as a 'dialect of Hindi' by the Indian Census Report of 2001. Bagheli is a regional language used for intra-group and inter-group communication.

George Abraham Grierson in his Linguistic Survey of India classified Bagheli under Eastern Hindi. The extensive research conducted by local specialist Dr. Bhagawati Prasad Shukla is commensurate with Grierson’s classification. Ethnologue cites Godwani, Kumhari and Rewa as dialects of Bagheli. According to Shukla, the Bagheli language has three varieties:

Like many other Indo-Aryan languages, it has often been subject to erroneous, arbitrary, or politically-motivated designation as a dialect, instead of a language. Furthermore, as is the case with other Hindi languages, Bagheli speakers have been conflated with those of Standard Hindi in censuses.

Bagheli is primarily spoken in the Rewa, Satna, Sidhi, Singrauli, Shahdol, Umaria, Anuppur and Jabalpur districts of Madhya Pradesh; and Allahabad and Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh the Bilaspur and Koriya districts of Chhattisgarh.


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