Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati (). In India, it is one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Union. It is also the official language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu. As of 2011, Gujarati is the 6th most widely spoken language in India by number of native speakers, spoken by 55.5 million speakers which amounts to about 4.5% of the total Indian population. It is the 26th most widely spoken language in the world by number of native speakers as of 2007.Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the 2010 estimates for the top dozen languages.
Gujarati, along with Meitei (alias Manipuri), hold the third place among the fastest growing languages of India, following Hindi (first place) and Kashmiri language (second place), according to the 2011 census of India.
Outside of Gujarat, Gujarati is spoken in many other parts of South Asia by Gujarati migrants, especially in Mumbai and Pakistan (mainly in Karachi). Gujarati is also widely spoken in many countries outside South Asia by the Gujarati diaspora. In North America, Gujarati is one of the fastest-growing and most widely spoken Indian languages in the United States (especially in New Jersey and New York City) and Canada. In Europe, Gujaratis form the second largest of the British South Asian speech communities, and Gujarati is the fourth most commonly spoken language in the UK's capital, of London. Gujarati is also spoken in Southeast Africa, particularly in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and South Africa. Elsewhere, Gujarati is spoken to a lesser extent in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Middle Eastern countries such as Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates.
History
Gujarati (sometimes spelled Gujerati, Gujarathi, Guzratee, Guujaratee, Gujrathi, and Gujerathi) is a modern Indo-Aryan (IA) language evolved from Sanskrit. The traditional practice is to differentiate the IA languages on the basis of three historical stages: Old IA (Vedic and Classical Sanskrit) Middle IA (various Prakrits and Apabhramshas) New IA (modern languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, etc.) Another view postulates successive family tree splits, in which Gujarati is assumed to have separated from other IA languages in four stages: IA languages split into Northern, Eastern, and Western divisions based on the innovate characteristics such as plosives becoming voiced in the Northern (Skt. danta "tooth" > Punj. dānd) and dental and retroflex sibilants merging with the palatal in the Eastern (Skt. sandhya "evening" > Beng. śājh). Western, into Central and Southern. Central, in Gujarati/Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Punjabi/Lahanda/Sindhi, on the basis of innovation of auxiliary verbs and postpositions in Gujarati/Rajasthani. Gujarati/Rajasthani into Gujarati and Rajasthani through development of such characteristics as auxiliary ch- and the possessive marker -n- during the 15th century.
The principal changes from the Middle Indo-Aryan stage are the following:
Phonological changes
Changes in common with other New Indo-Aryan languages Reduction of geminates to single consonants with lengthening of previous vowel (sometimes with spontaneous nasalisation) (#NIA-1/2) Loss of final vowels (#NIA-3) Lengthening of vowel in -VNC- sequences and consequent nasalisation (#NIA-4) Loss of unaccented vowels in non-final positions common (#NIA-5) Vowels in direct succession coalesce into long vowels or form diphthongs (#NIA-6) Coalescence of vowels of like quality (#NIA-6a) With unlike vowels, the first vowel is generally dominant (#NIA-6b) aï and aü eventually become ε and ɔ (#NIA-6b-3) Retroflextion of lateral approximant: -l- > -ḷ- (#SD-1c) Exception to #NIA-1 when a long vowel follows the geminate and the word is longer than two syllables (#SD-2) Middle Indo-Aryan Gujarati English Rule Refhatthahāthhand#NIA1aṭṭhaāṭheight#NIA1akkhiā̃kheye#NIA2jibbhājībhtongue#NIA3gaṇṭhigā̃ṭhknot#NIA4cittaāracitāropainter#NIA-6a*khavakho-lose#NIA-6aghiaghīghee#NIA-6bcaükkiācɔkcourtyard, square#NIA-6b-3phalaphaḷfruit#SD-1ckappūrakapūrcamphor#SD-2
Morphology and Syntax Morphological Reduction in the number of compounds Merger of the dual with plural Replacement of case affixes by postpositions Development of periphrastic tense/voice/mood constructions Syntax Split ergativity More complex agreement system Gujarati is then customarily divided into the following three historical stages:
Old Gujarati
Old Gujarātī (; 1200 CE–1500 CE), which descended from Prakrit and the ancestor of modern Gujarati and Rajasthani, was spoken by the Gujjars, who were residing and ruling in Gujarat, Punjab, Rajputana, and central India. The language was used as a literary language as early as the 12th century. Texts of this era display characteristic Gujarati features, such as direct/oblique noun forms, postpositions, and auxiliary verbs. It had three genders, as Gujarati does today, and by around the time of 1300 CE, a fairly standardised form of this language emerged. While generally known as Old Gujarati, some scholars prefer the name Old Western Rajasthani, based upon the argument that Gujarati and Rajasthani were not yet distinct. Factoring into this preference was the belief that modern Rajasthani sporadically expressed a neuter gender, based on the incorrect conclusion that the [ũ] that came to be pronounced in some areas for masculine [o] after a nasal consonant was analogous to Gujarati's neuter [ũ].Smith, J.D. (2001) "Rajasthani." Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates. pp. 591-593. A formal grammar, Prakrita Vyakarana, of the precursor to this language, Gurjar Apabhraṃśa, was written by the Jain monk and eminent scholar Acharya Hemachandra Suri, in the reign of Chaulukya king Jayasimha Siddharaja of Anhilwara (Patan).
Middle Gujarati Middle Gujarati (AD 1500–1800) split off from Rajasthani, and developed the phonemes ɛ and ɔ, the auxiliary stem ch-, and the possessive marker -n-. Major phonological changes characteristic of the transition between Old and Middle Gujarati are:
i, u develop to ə in open syllables diphthongs əi, əu change to ɛ and ɔ in initial syllables and to e and o elsewhere əũ develops to ɔ̃ in initial syllables and to ű in final syllables
These developments would have grammatical consequences. For example, Old Gujarati's instrumental-locative singular in -i was levelled and eliminated, having become the same as Old Gujarati's nominative/accusative singular in -ə.
Modern Gujarati (1800–present)
A major phonological change was the deletion of final ə, such that the modern language has consonant-final words. Grammatically, a new plural marker of -o developed. In literature, the third quarter of the 19th century saw a series of milestones for Gujarati, which previously had verse as its dominant mode of literary composition.Yashaschandra, S. (1995) "Towards Hind Svaraj: An Interpretation of the Rise of Prose in 19th-century Gujarati Literature." Social Scientist. Vol. 23, No. 10/12. pp. 41–55. In the 1920s, the efforts to standardise Gujarati were carried out.
Demographics and distribution
Of the approximately million speakers of Gujarati in 2022, roughly million resided in India, 250,000 in Tanzania, in Kenya, and some thousands in Pakistan. Many Gujarati speakers in Pakistan are shifting to Urdu; however, some Gujarati community leaders in Pakistan claim that there are 3 million Gujarati speakers in Karachi.
Mahatma Gandhi used Gujarati to serve as a medium of literary expression. He helped to inspire a renewal in its literature, and in 1936 he introduced the current spelling convention at the Gujarati Literary Society's 12th meeting.
Some Indo-Mauritians and many Réunion islanders are of Gujarati descent and some of them still speak Gujarati.
A considerable Gujarati-speaking population exists in North America, especially in the New York City Metropolitan Area and in the Greater Toronto Area, which have over 100,000 speakers and over 75,000 speakers, respectively, but also throughout the major metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada. According to the 2016 census, Gujarati is the fourth most-spoken South Asian language in Toronto after Hindustani, Punjabi and Tamil.
The UK has over 200,000 speakers, many of them situated in the London area, especially in North West London (in Harrow and Wembley), but also in Birmingham, Manchester, and in Leicester, Coventry, Rugby, Bradford and the former mill towns within Lancashire. A portion of these numbers consists of East African Gujaratis who, under increasing discrimination and policies of Africanisation in their newly independent resident countries (especially Uganda, where Idi Amin expelled 50,000 Asians), were left with uncertain futures and citizenships. Most, with British passports, settled in the UK. Gujarati is offered as a GCSE subject for students in the UK.
Some Gujarati parents in the diaspora are not comfortable with the possibility that their children will not be fluent in the language. In a study, 80% of Malayali parents felt that "Children would be better off with English", compared to 36% of Kannada parents and only 19% of Gujarati parents.
Besides being spoken by the Gujarati people, many non-Gujarati residents of Gujarat also speak it, among them the Kutchis (as a literary language) and the Parsis (adopted as a mother tongue).
Official status
Gujarati is one of the twenty-two official languages. It is the official language of the state of Gujarat and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Gujarati is recognised and taught as a minority language in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu and the union territory of Delhi.
Dialects
According to British historian and philologist William Tisdall, who was an early scholar of Gujarati grammar, three major varieties of Gujarati exist: a standard 'Hindu' dialect, a 'Parsi' dialect and a 'Muslim' dialect.
However, Gujarati has undergone contemporary reclassification with respect to the widespread regional differences in vocabulary and phrasing; notwithstanding the number of poorly attested dialects and regional variations in naming. Standard Gujarati: this forms something of a standardised variant of Gujarati across news, education and government. It is also spoken in pockets of Maharashtra. The varieties of it include Mumbai Gujarati, Nagari. Saurashtra: spoken primarily by the Saurashtrians who migrated from the Lata region of present-day Gujarat to Southern India in the Middle Ages. Saurashtra is closely related to Gujarati and the older dialects of Rajasthani and Sindhi. The script of this language is derived from the Devanagari script and shares similarities with modern-day Gujarati. Amdawadi Gujarati: spoken primarily in Ahmedabad and the surrounding regions, in addition to Bharuch and Surat, where it is colloquially known as 'Surati'. The varieties of it include Ahmedabad Gamadia, Anawla, Brathela, Charotari, Eastern Broach Gujarati, Gramya, Patani, Patidari, Surati, Vadodari. Kathiawari: a distinctive variant spoken primarily in the Kathiawar region and subject to significant Sindhi influence. The varieties of it include Bhavnagari, Gohilwadi, Holadi/Halari, Jhalawadi, Sorathi. Kharwa, Kakari and Tarimuki (Ghisadi) are also often cited as additional varieties of Gujarati. Parsi: spoken by the Zoroastrian Parsi minority. This highly distinctive variety has been subject to considerable lexical influence by Avestan, the liturgical Zoroastrian language.