Southern Indo-Aryan languages

Indo-Aryan
Indic
Geographic distribution:	South Asia
Linguistic classification:	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan
Proto-language:	Proto-Indo-Aryan
Subdivisions:	Dardic Northern Zone Northwestern Zone Western Zone Central Zone Eastern Zone Southern Zone (the NW, W, C, and E zones all include languages traditionally counted as dialects of Hindi)
ISO 639-5:
Linguasphere:	59= (phylozone)
Glottolog:	indo1321
1978 map showing Geographical distribution of the major Indo-Aryan languages. (Urdu is included under Hindi. Romani, Domari, and Lomavren are outside the scope of the map.) Dotted/striped areas indicate where multilingualism is common.   Central   Dardic   Eastern   Northern   Northwestern   Southern   Western

The Indo-Aryan or Indic languages are the dominant language family of the Indian subcontinent. They constitute a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family. Indo-Aryan speakers form about one half of all Indo-European speakers (about 1.5 of 3 billion), and more than half of all Indo-European languages recognized by Ethnologue. While the languages are primarily spoken in South Asia, pockets of Indo-Aryan languages are found to be spoken in Europe and the Middle East.

The largest in terms of native speakers are Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu, about 329 million),Bengali (about 200 million), Punjabi (about 100 million),Marathi (about 70 million), Gujarati (about 50 million), Bhojpuri (about 40 million), Awadhi (about 38 million), Maithili (about 30 million), Odia (about 30 million), Sindhi (about 26 million), Braj Bhasha (about 21 million), Rajasthani (about 20 million), Saraiki (about 20 million), Chhattisgarhi (about 18 million), Nepali (about 16 million), Sinhala (about 15 miilion), Assamese (about 15 million), Haryanvi (about 13 million), Kannauji (about 9 million), Bagheli (about 8 million), Kashmiri (about 6 million), Dogri (about 4 million), and Bundeli (about 3 million), Garhwali (about 3 million), Kumaoni (about 2 million), with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million.