Maithili

Maithili is a major language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family, specifically nested within the Eastern Indo-Aryan (Bihari) subgroup. Its Glottocode is mait1250 and its ISO 639-3 code is mai.

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, Maithili is spoken by approximately 13.58 million people in India. Additionally, a substantial speaker population of roughly 3 million resides in neighboring Nepal.

Distribution in India

Maithili is primarily distributed across the northern and eastern regions of the state of Bihar (historically referred to as the Mithila region, covering districts such as Madhubani, Darbhanga, Samastipur, and Saharsa). It is also spoken in contiguous parts of Jharkhand and extends across the border into the eastern Terai plains of Nepal.

Major grammatical features

• Phonology: Maithili maintains a standard Indo-Aryan consonant inventory characterized by a four-way contrast in stops (voiceless/voiced, unaspirated/aspirated) and a distinction between dental and retroflex consonants. Its vowel system famously retains the short neutral vowel /o/ (often phonetic [ɔ]), which plays an important role in word-final positions and lexical differentiation.
• Morphology: The language is typologically celebrated for its highly complex verbal morphology. Unlike many of its sister languages, Maithili verbs inflect not only to agree with the subject but also to show agreement with the direct/indirect object or even a non-argument associate, determined by a complex hierarchy of honorific status (ranging from high honorific to non-honorific). Nouns lack grammatical gender but utilize enclitic particles to express definiteness and size.
• Syntax: Maithili displays a basic Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order and utilizes postpositions. Syntactically, it lacks the split-ergativity found in Western Indo-Aryan languages, preferring a nominative-accusative alignment system.

Further reading

For an overview of the language’s history, literature, and detailed grammar, see the Maithili language Wikipedia article.