| Adivasi Oriya | Indo-Aryan contact variety | Uttarandhra | A simplified Odia used as the market and inter-community language of the agency tracts, in an area administered in Telugu. Almost nobody's mother tongue and almost everybody's second language. |
| AgriReturned within Marathi in the census; field estimates run to a few million | Indo-Aryan, Marathi group | North Konkan | The speech of the salt-pan and khar-land cultivators of Raigad, Thane and Panvel. Distinctive verb endings and a well-known intonation that urban Marathi speakers imitate and mock in equal measure. |
| Ahirani | Indo-Aryan, Khandeshi | Khandesh | The main variety, spoken across the Tapi valley floor in Jalgaon, Dhule and parts of Nandurbar and northern Nashik. Named after the Ahir pastoral community, which is a naming by caste rather than by place. |
| Ahirwati | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani-Haryanvi transition | Dhundhar & Shekhawati | Spoken across the Narnaul, Mahendragarh and Rewari tract on the other side of the administrative line. It is the clearest evidence that this region does not end where the state does. |
| Ahirwati | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Haryana Bangar & Bagar | Rewari, Mahendragarh and the Narnaul tract, transitional towards Mewati and Shekhawati and spoken largely by Ahir cultivating communities. |
| Andaman Creole HindiWidely spoken across the settler population; native speakers concentrated around Port Blair | Creole, Hindi-lexified with Bengali and Tamil input | Andaman Islands | Grew out of the penal settlement after 1858, when convicts, guards and officials had no common language; reinforced after 1947 and again after 1971 by Bengali and Tamil resettlement. It has its own ISO code, hca, and is one of very few Indian languages whose formation can be dated to a specific institution. |
| AngikaAround 7.5 lakh returned in the 2011 Census, against field estimates several times higher | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Bihari group) | Anga & Seemanchal | The language of Anga, closely related to Maithili and Magahi, with a long-running campaign for recognition and a written literature that has never had institutional support. |
| Antarvedi Braj (Agra, Hathras, Aligarh) | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Braj | Shading eastward towards Kanauji; Hathras was the centre of the Nautanki tradition that carried Braj forms into popular theatre. |
| AntruziThe Ponda taluk and its surroundings | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | The New Conquest inland variety that became the base of the standardised literary Devanagari Konkani. That a standard was drawn from an inland Hindu taluk rather than from the far more populous coastal ones is itself part of the script argument. |
| Assamese (Asamiya)c. 15 million | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Brahmaputra Valley | The easternmost Indo-Aryan language, with sounds — notably the voiceless velar fricative — that no neighbouring Indian language shares. |
| Badhani, Dasoliya and Nagpuriya | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Garhwal | Chamoli and Rudraprayag — the pargana names survive as speech names. These are the varieties nearest the Kumaoni frontier, and they share vocabulary across it that neither standard admits to. |
| Bagheli and Bundeli of the Narmada belt | Indo-Aryan, Eastern and Central Hindi | Mahakoshal & Gondwana | The market, school and court language of Jabalpur, Mandla, Katni and Narsinghpur, transitional between the two and usually returned simply as Hindi. |
| Bagri | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Haryana Bangar & Bagar | Sirsa, Fatehabad and western Hisar, continuing into Rajasthan and southern Punjab. Grammatically it leans Rajasthani rather than Western Hindi, which is why the sand boundary is also a language-family boundary. |
| Bagri | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Marwar & the Thar | Spoken across the Rajasthan–Haryana–Punjab–Pakistan meeting point, and a good illustration of a speech community that no state boundary contains. |
| Baigani | Indo-Aryan | Mahakoshal & Gondwana | The Baiga are a distinct people with their own ritual repertoire, but their speech is an Indo-Aryan variety close to Chhattisgarhi and Bagheli. Community and language do not line up here, and assuming they do is the commonest mistake made about the region. |
| Bajjika | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Bihari group) | Mithilanchal | Spoken in Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Sitamarhi and East Champaran — between Maithili and Bhojpuri, claimed by both, and counted as Hindi in the census. |
| Baleswari | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Utkal | The northern coastal speech, shading towards the Bengali of the Medinipur border. |
| Bambaiya Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Hindi contact variety | North Konkan | A city vernacular with Hindi vocabulary over a largely Marathi and Konkani grammatical frame — the dative forms mereko and tereko, the invariable bola, and a lexicon borrowed from Marathi, Gujarati, Konkani and Urdu in the same sentence. It is nobody's mother tongue and everybody's working language. |
| Banaphari | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Bundelkhand | Spoken around Banda, Hamirpur and Mahoba, and named for the Banaphar clan to which Alha and Udal belonged. Transitional towards Baghelkhandi and the Awadhi of the Yamuna bank. |
| Banarasi Hindi and Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Bhojpur & Purvanchal | The city's own register — famously blunt, dense with address terms like guru and bhaiya, and the medium of the literature that made modern Hindi prose. |
| Bangali (eastern delta) | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bengal Delta | Dhaka, Faridpur, Barisal and Jessore varieties, now also spoken across the western delta. Differs from the standard in verb endings, in the treatment of aspirates, and in a large vocabulary of tide, boat and net. |
| Bangru (Haryanvi, Deswali)About 98 lakh returned as Haryanvi in the 2011 Census, under Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Haryana Bangar & Bagar | The Rohtak–Jind–Sonipat–Hisar core. Marked by the -s future, the retention of an open final vowel where standard Hindi has none, and a very high rate of vowel nasalisation. |
| Banni Kachchhi | Indo-Aryan, Sindhi group | Kutch | The grassland register, with markedly more Sindhi vocabulary and a pastoral lexicon — for grass species, grazing routes, animal ages and milk states — that has no equivalent in the town speech. |
| Bardeshi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | North Goan coastal Konkani, from Bardez and Tiswadi, with a large Portuguese-derived vocabulary in domestic, administrative and culinary use. |
| Belagavi Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Bayaluseeme | Spoken as a first language in a substantial part of the Belagavi belt and continuous with the Marathi of the country to the north. Households, schools, theatre and worship all run in both languages, and code- switching mid-sentence is ordinary rather than remarkable. |
| Bengali | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Anga & Seemanchal | A first language across Katihar, Kishanganj and the Bengal fringe, with Bengali-medium schooling and a full literary and festival culture. |
| Bengali of the western plain | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Tripura Hills & Plains | Continuous with the speech of the Meghna floodplain rather than with Kolkata Bengali, carrying eastern vocabulary and a distinct intonation, and the language of the region's print and administrative culture since the Manikya period. |
| Bengali, Nepali and Hindi | Indo-Aryan | Dooars & Terai | Bengali in the towns and the schools, Nepali across the Terai and the garden fringes, Hindi as the market and transport language. Most people here operate in three or four languages daily and do not consider it remarkable. |
| Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Sadri and Karen | Indo-Aryan; Dravidian; Sino-Tibetan | Andaman Islands | The settler mother tongues. Bengali is the largest by number; Karen, spoken by a few thousand around Mayabunder, is the only Sino-Tibetan language in the territory and the only one that arrived from Burma. |
| Bhaderwahi, Bhalesi and Padri | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | The cluster spoken in the Bhaderwah bowl and the Bhalessa ridges of Doda. Padri takes its name from the pass that connects Bhaderwah to Chamba, and the speech does not stop at the pass either. |
| Bharmauri (Gaddi) | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | The language of the Gaddi community around Bharmour and Holi, carried the length of the migration route into Kangra, Lahaul and the J&K pastures. The Gaddis are a Scheduled Tribe in Himachal, so the language travels with a recognised community even though it has no recognition of its own. |
| Bhateali and the Nurpuri fringe | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kangra & Dhauladhar | The western transition, spoken where the Shivalik opens towards the Ravi. Speakers here are as often taken for Dogri speakers as for Kangri ones. |
| Bhatri | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bastar | Spoken by Bhatra households on the eastern plateau and closely related to Halbi and to Odia's western dialects. Its speakers are often counted under Halbi or Odia in census returns. |
| Bhattiyali and Chambeali contact varieties | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Jammu Duggar | Spoken across the Ravi in the Bhattiyat belt around Dalhousie and Banikhet, where Dogri and Chambeali merge without a break. Speakers here often describe their speech by village rather than by language name. |
| Bhili and Bhilali of the western scarp | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | Malwa Plateau | Not Malvi at all, but in continuous contact with it along the Vindhyan west, and the source of much of the vocabulary Malvi uses for forest produce and for cattle. |
| Bhili of the Aravalli slope | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | Mewar | The Kotra, Jhadol and Gogunda speech, and the language Gavri is largely performed in. Its speakers are routinely counted under Bhili, Wagdi or Hindi depending on who is doing the counting. |
| Bhili, Bhilali and Barela of the slopes | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | Nimar | Spoken on both flanking ranges and in continuous contact with Nimadi on the floor. Barela is spoken across the Satpura foothills of the western districts and is usually described as a Bhili variety, with its speakers commonly bilingual in Nimadi. |
| Bidar Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Kalyana Karnataka | Spoken in the northern taluks of the Bidar plateau, continuous with the Marathi of the country beyond it, and a normal second or third language in Bidar town. |
| Bilaspuri | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Chhattisgarh Plains | The northern-plain variety around Bilaspur, Janjgir and Ratanpur; the register in which most Panthi and Bharthari repertoire is sung. |
| Bishnupriya | Indo-Aryan | Barak Valley | An Indo-Aryan language spoken by a community that lived in the Manipur valley and carries Meitei vocabulary and a Vaishnav repertoire with it. Its speakers and Meitei speakers are distinct communities and the distinction matters locally. |
| Bishnupriya Manipuri | Indo-Aryan | Imphal Valley | A distinct Indo-Aryan language, not a dialect of Meiteilon, spoken by communities associated with the valley and now largely resident in Assam, Tripura and Bangladesh. The two languages share a cultural world and belong to different families entirely. |
| Braj Bhasha of the western margin | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Antarved Doab | Spoken along the Yamuna in Aligarh, Hathras and Mainpuri, where the Doab faces Braj across the river. |
| Braj of the Chambal (Gwalior, Bhind, Morena) | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Braj | The southern Braj-speaking belt, usually recorded as Hindi, and the reason Braj as a speech region reaches well past its pilgrimage boundary. |
| Brajabuli | Indo-Aryan, literary | Imphal Valley | Not a spoken language but the artificial Vaishnav literary idiom used in Sankirtana and Raas song texts, carried in from Bengal and Assam and preserved here in performance long after it stopped being written elsewhere. |
| Brokskat | Indo-Aryan, Dardic | Ladakh & Zanskar | The Dardic language of the Brokpa villages at Dah, Hanu, Garkone and Darchik on the lower Indus — a pocket of the Shina group inside a Tibetic region, with its own dress, songs and a partly non-Buddhist ritual calendar. It is spoken by only a few thousand people and is the region's most endangered language. |
| Buksa (Bhoksa) | Indo-Aryan | Rohilkhand & Katehar | A small terai language of the Buksa community, heavily overlaid by Hindi and now seriously endangered. |
| Central Awadhi3.85 million returned in the 2011 Census, against far larger field estimates | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Awadh | The Lucknow, Barabanki and Rae Bareli register, most heavily overlaid with the Urdu of the city. |
| Central Braj (Mathura, Vrindavan, Govardhan) | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Braj | The literary and liturgical variety, and the one the temple repertoire preserves. |
| Central MagahiAbout 1.27 crore in the 2011 Census | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Bihari group) | Magadh | The Gaya, Nalanda and Nawada register; the basis of what modern Magahi writing there is. |
| Chakma | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Tripura Hills & Plains | Related to the Bengali of the Chittagong region but written in its own Brahmic script, and carried by a Buddhist community whose calendar runs on Bizu rather than on either of the region's other new years. |
| Chambal ravine speech | Indo-Aryan | Hadoti | Across the river in Sheopur, Morena and Bhind, Harauti gives way to the Braj- and Bundeli-influenced Hindi of the Gwalior–Chambal belt. The change is gradual and follows the ravines rather than the boundary. |
| ChambealiRoughly 1.3 lakh returned in the 2011 Census, against much larger field estimates | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | The speech of Chamba town and the lower Ravi, historically written in Takri, and the variety most likely to be heard in the district's markets and administration. |
| Chhattisgarhi | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Bastar | Strongest in the towns and in the northern districts towards Kanker, where the plateau meets the Chhattisgarh plains, and increasingly the school and shop language everywhere. |
| Churahi | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | The Siul and Baira valley speech of Churah, north of Chamba town, distinct enough to be counted separately. |
| Core Harauti | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Hadoti | The Kota and Bundi register, and the variety used when Harauti is written at all. |
| Dakhni Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Bayaluseeme | A home language in the Vijayapura, Bagalkot and Belagavi old towns, with a literary history in this region that begins at the Adil Shahi court — Ibrahim Adil Shah II's Kitab-i-Nauras is a Dakhni work. |
| Dakhni Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Kalyana Karnataka | The Deccan's own Urdu, with a literary history that begins in the Bahmani and Adil Shahi courts and predates the standardisation of Urdu in the north. Spoken at home in the towns and used as a common market language between Kannada, Marathi and Telugu speakers. |
| Dakhni Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Marathwada | The Deccan's own Urdu, and structurally a different thing from the northern standard — it borrowed Marathi's nako as nakko for a negative imperative, uses hau for yes, kaiku for why, and carries the emphatic clitic -ich straight out of Marathi. It is spoken here, not learned from Delhi. |
| Danpuriya | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Kumaon | The Danpur country behind Bageshwar, up towards the Pindari glacier — the variety carried by the chanchari songs, and the one closest to the Garhwali frontier. |
| Deccani Urdu in the port towns | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Kosta Andhra | Long-settled Urdu-speaking households in Machilipatnam, Guntur, Eluru and Nellore, a residue of the Golconda and Nizam-period administration and of the export trade. |
| DesiaUsed as a second language across the highland; rarely returned as a mother tongue | Indo-Aryan, Odia | Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands | Also called Koraputia. A trade and inter-community speech with a reduced verb system, Odia core vocabulary and Dravidian and Munda loans. Being nobody's first language is precisely what makes it usable. |
| Desia | Indo-Aryan contact variety | South Odisha & Ganjam | A stripped-down Odia used as the market language between communities on the hill slope. It has almost no native speakers and a great many users. |
| Dhangari and Vadari speech | Indo-Aryan | Desh | Registers of the pastoral Dhangar and the stone-working Vadari communities, the latter with Telugu substrate — both are counted as Marathi in the census. |
| Dhivehi (Mahl)Around 10,000 at Minicoy | Indo-Aryan, southern Insular branch | Lakshadweep | Called Mahl by the administration, a name that comes from a colonial-era misunderstanding rather than from local usage. Minicoy speakers and Maldivians understand one another; the Minicoy variety is closest to the dialects of the northernmost Maldive atolls. |
| DhodiaReturned in the census in the low lakhs | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | South Gujarat Littoral | Spoken through Valsad and Navsari on the lower slope, in contact with Gujarati on one side and Kukna on the other. |
| DhundhariField estimates run to around 15 million; census returns record most of them as Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Dhundhar & Shekhawati | The Jaipur basin register. Closest of the Rajasthani varieties to standard Hindi in vocabulary, and therefore the one that gives way to it first in the city. |
| Dhundhari | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Marwar & the Thar | The Jaipur basin register, closest to standard Hindi and therefore the fastest eroding. |
| Diaspora Kachchhi | Indo-Aryan, Sindhi group | Kutch | Mumbai and East Africa. The East African branch absorbed Swahili and English vocabulary and kept older Kutchi forms; the Mumbai branch sustains the only commercial Kachchhi theatre there is. |
| Dingal | Indo-Aryan, old Marwari literary register | Saurashtra | Not a spoken dialect but the metrical language of Charan bardic verse, shared with Marwar. A Charan poet in Saurashtra and one in Jodhpur could compose in the same register and be understood by both courts. |
| Doabi | Indo-Aryan, Punjabi | Punjab Doabs | Between the Beas and the Sutlej — Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala and Nawanshahr. Carried abroad in large quantity by emigration, so it is disproportionately what Punjabi sounds like in Britain and Canada. |
| Doabi Urdu of the qasbahs | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Antarved Doab | The register of Aligarh, Kannauj, Deoband and the smaller Muslim towns, sustained by a dense network of madrasas and by Aligarh Muslim University. |
| East Indian Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Marathi–Konkani transitional | North Konkan | Called Kadodi, Samvedi or Vadvali depending on the village, spoken in the Vasai and Salsette Catholic villages, and carrying a substantial layer of Portuguese loanwords absorbed over two centuries of rule. It is the only Marathi variety normally written in the Roman alphabet as well as Devanagari. |
| East Nimadi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Nimar | Khandwa, Burhanpur and Harda, picking up Marathi and Ahirani vocabulary as the country approaches the Tapti trough. |
| Eastern Awadhi | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Awadh | Ayodhya, Sultanpur and Pratapgarh — the Ramcharitmanas register, shading into Bhojpuri towards the Sarayu–Ganga meeting. |
| Eastern Harauti | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Hadoti | Baran and eastern Jhalawar, heavily overlaid with Malvi vocabulary because the market towns those districts trade with are in Madhya Pradesh. |
| Fiji Hindi, Sarnami and Caribbean Hindustani | Indo-Aryan, Eastern — overseas varieties | Bhojpur & Purvanchal | Descended from the Bhojpuri and Awadhi of nineteenth-century indentured migrants, levelled into new standards with English, Dutch, Fijian and Creole vocabulary. Fiji Hindi is a national language; Sarnami has a written literature in the Netherlands. |
| Gaddi (Bharmauri) | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kangra & Dhauladhar | The speech of the transhumant community, shared with Bharmour over the crest. Because the Gaddis move, their dialect is one of the few in the region heard on both sides of a 4,300 m pass. |
| Gamit and Chaudhari | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | South Gujarat Littoral | Spoken up the Tapi and Purna valleys on the northern and eastern edge of the slope. |
| Ganjami | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Utkal | South of Chilika, with Telugu phonology and vocabulary increasingly present — the transition, not a break. |
| Ganjami OdiaThe majority speech of the plain | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | South Odisha & Ganjam | Odia with Telugu phonology and a heavy Telugu lexical layer, particularly in trade, cooking and kinship. It is a continuum rather than a dialect with a boundary, and the further south you go the more of it there is. |
| Goalpariya | Assamese–Bengali transition | Brahmaputra Valley | Western Assamʼs speech, and the language of the mahout songs Pratima Barua Pandey carried nationally. |
| Goan Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | Marathi has a long liturgical and literary presence in the New Conquest temples and in Goan Hindu schooling, and remains a permitted official language. Its role, rather than its existence, is what is disputed. |
| Gohilwadi | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati | Saurashtra | Bhavnagar, Palitana and the Bhal edge — the eastern variety, closest to standard Gujarati. |
| Gojri | Indo-Aryan, closer to Rajasthani than to Pahari | Jammu Duggar | The language of the Gujjar and Bakerwal pastoralists whose migration routes cross the region twice a year. Its nearest relatives are a thousand kilometres to the south-west, which is itself the clearest surviving record of where the community came from. |
| Gojri and Pahari of the rim | Indo-Aryan (Rajasthani-affiliated and Western Pahari respectively) | Kashmir Valley | Spoken by the transhumant Gujjar and Bakarwal communities and by the outer Pir Panjal villages. They are the valley's edge in speech terms: the point where Kashmiri stops is not a contour line but a change of language family. |
| Gor Boli (Lambani) | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Marathwada | The language of the Banjara tandas, unrelated to the Marathi around it and closer to the speech of western Rajasthan — the linguistic residue of a caravan population that moved goods across the Deccan for centuries. |
| Halari | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati | Saurashtra | Jamnagar, Dwarka and the Gulf of Kachchh coast; the variety carried overseas by Halari trading families. |
| HalbiAround 7.7 lakh returned in the 2011 Census, with far more using it as a second language | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bastar | The lingua franca of the plateau and the language of the weekly haat, of Bastar Dussehra's public proceedings and of most Bastar folklore in print. It carries Marathi and Odia features at once, which is what a trade language between three linguistic regions looks like. |
| Halbi | Indo-Aryan, with heavy Dravidian contact | Vidarbha | A contact language of the Marathi–Chhattisgarhi–Gondi meeting ground, spoken in the far east and continuing into Bastar. It works as a trade tongue between speakers of unrelated languages. |
| Hindi, Bengali and Rajbanshi at the foot | Indo-Aryan | Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills | Spoken in Siliguri, Rangpo and the market towns where the range meets the plain. The change of language at the base of the last spur is abrupt, and it marks the region's southern edge more clearly than any contour line. |
| Hyderabadi Deccani Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani (Deccani) | Telangana | A literary language before Delhi's Urdu was, with a divan compiled for Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah around 1600. Its markers are lexical and grammatical, not just accentual — kaiku for why, nakko for a refusal, hau for yes, an -aan plural on nouns, and a contracted progressive in which kar rahe hain becomes karre. Its substrate is Telugu, Marathi and Kannada. |
| Jaunsari | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Garhwal | Spoken in Jaunsar-Bawar in the Tons and Yamuna country. Despite lying inside Garhwal it belongs to the Western Pahari group and looks towards Himachal — a reminder that the region's western edge is a language boundary, not a foothill. |
| Jhalawadi | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati | Saurashtra | Surendranagar, Morbi and Wankaner, in contact with Kachchhi across the Little Rann and carrying loanwords from it. |
| Judeo-Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Marathi with Hebrew and Aramaic vocabulary | North Konkan | The Bene Israel variety, written in both Devanagari and Hebrew script. Most of its speakers emigrated to Israel after 1948, and the number who use it daily is now very small. |
| Kamraz | Indo-Aryan, Dardic | Kashmir Valley | The northern speech of Baramulla, Kupwara, Bandipora and the Lolab side — regarded within the valley as broader and slower than the city register, and closer to the Pahari-speaking fringe. |
| Kamrupi | Assamese, Western dialect | Brahmaputra Valley | The Lower Assam register around Guwahati, and the older literary standard before the Sivasagar register displaced it. |
| Kanauji | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Antarved Doab | The Central Doab variety of Kannauj, Farrukhabad, Etawah and Kanpur — transitional between Braj and Awadhi, and almost always recorded in the census as Hindi. |
| Kandi and Pahari-contact speech | Indo-Aryan, Punjabi with Western Pahari and Dogri contact | Punjab Doabs | The Shivalik foot in Hoshiarpur, Pathankot and towards Una, where Punjabi shades into Dogri and the Himachali hill dialects. The change is gradual and there is no line to draw. |
| Kandi DogriAbout 26 lakh returned as Dogri speakers in the 2011 Census | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Jammu Duggar | The Jammu, Samba and Kathua register, the base of the standard literary language and the one used in broadcasting. |
| KangriOver a million returned in the 2011 Census, and counted under Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kangra & Dhauladhar | The valley-floor speech, tonal like Punjabi and Dogri, with a vocabulary of terracing, irrigation and cattle that standard Hindi has no equivalents for. |
| Karnataka Konkani | Indo-Aryan | Tulu Nadu | Spoken by Gaud Saraswat Brahmin and Catholic families whose ancestors moved south along the coast from Goa from the sixteenth century. Written here in Kannada script by the Saraswats and historically in Roman script by the Catholics — one language, two orthographies, along one street. |
| Karwari and Canara Konkani | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | The southward continuation into the Karwar estuaries and beyond, including the Saraswat and Catholic Konkani carried down the coast by migration from the sixteenth century onwards. |
| Karwari Konkani | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Canara Coast | Spoken by Saraswat, Kharvi, Christian and other communities of the northern coast, continuous with the Konkani of Goa immediately north and written here in Devanagari or Kannada script depending on the community. |
| Kataki | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Utkal | Cuttack city speech, carrying a layer of Persian and Urdu administrative and legal vocabulary from the centuries when the town was the region's revenue and court centre. |
| Katehari | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Rohilkhand & Katehar | The plain's own speech across Bareilly, Badaun, Shahjahanpur and Pilibhit; recorded as Hindi in every census and rarely written. |
| Katkari and Thakar varieties | Indo-Aryan, Bhil–Konkani group | South Konkan | Spoken by forest and hill communities on the ghat slope, including the Thakar families who hold the Chitrakathi and puppetry traditions. Under heavy pressure from schooling in Marathi. |
| Kauravi (Khari Boli) | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Antarved Doab | Spoken from Saharanpur to Bulandshahr. Khari Boli is the base of standard Hindi and Urdu; Kauravi is what its speakers actually speak, and it is noticeably blunter, with a different verb ending and a strong Punjabi and Haryanvi overlay in the north-west. |
| Khaltahi (central Chhattisgarhi)Part of the roughly 16.2 million who returned Chhattisgarhi in 2011 | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Chhattisgarh Plains | The Raipur, Durg and Bemetara register, treated as the standard because it is what broadcasting and publishing use. |
| Khandeshi proper and Dangri | Indo-Aryan, Khandeshi | Khandesh | Varieties recorded alongside Ahirani, with Dangri towards the western hills and the Dang country on the Gujarat side. |
| Khasparjiya (Central Kumaoni)Roughly 2.1 million returned Kumaoni overall in the 2011 Census, certainly an undercount | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Kumaon | The Almora and Nainital register, and the one broadcasting, publishing and the stage settled on as standard Kumaoni. |
| Khatola | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Bundelkhand | The Damoh, Panna and eastern Sagar variety, at the contact zone with Bagheli. |
| Khortha, Kurmali and Panch Pargania | Indo-Aryan, Bihari group | Chota Nagpur Plateau | The rim speeches — Khortha across the Hazaribagh and Dhanbad uplands, Kurmali on the Bengal-facing east, Panch Pargania south-east of Ranchi. All three carry heavy Munda substrate vocabulary. |
| Kishtwari | Indo-Aryan, Dardic — a close relative of Kashmiri | Chenab Valley & Chamba | Spoken at Kishtwar and in its side valleys, and conservative enough to preserve forms Kashmiri itself has lost. Its presence here means the Kashmiri language group reaches south-east down the Chenab and does not stop at the Pir Panjal, which is the single most useful fact about the region's linguistic map. |
| Kishtwari | Indo-Aryan, Dardic | Kashmir Valley | A conservative outlying variety spoken beyond the south-eastern rim in the Chenab country. It preserves forms the valley has lost, which makes it the reference point for what older Kashmiri sounded like. |
| Kolhapuri and southern Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Desh | Spoken at the ghat foot and through Sangli and Belagavi, with a distinct rising intonation, different second-person forms and a substantial Kannada loan vocabulary that increases towards the Krishna. |
| Koli | Indo-Aryan, Marathi group | North Konkan | Several related fishing-community varieties — Son Koli, Mahadev Koli, Mangela — differing between koliwadas only a few kilometres apart, and carrying a technical vocabulary of nets, tides and species that standard Marathi has no words for. |
| Konkani and Lambani | Indo-Aryan | Bayaluseeme | Konkani among trading and Saraswat households along the western edge; Lambani (Gor Boli) in the tandas across the plain. Both are household languages with no public role here. |
| Konkani of the southern edge | Indo-Aryan, Konkani | South Konkan | Around Vengurla, Sawantwadi and the Terekhol the speech runs continuously into Goan Konkani, and families on either side of the boundary understand each other without adjusting. |
| Kosi Maithili | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Mithilanchal | The eastern variety of Saharsa, Supaul and Madhepura, shading towards Angika beyond the Kosi. |
| Kosli | Indo-Aryan, Odia | Koraput–Kalahandi Uplands | The speech of the Bolangir and Kalahandi lowland, also called Sambalpuri, with its own literature, its own festival calendar and a long-running claim to separate language status. |
| Kukna and Warli | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | South Gujarat Littoral | The Dangs and Valsad speech communities, continuing without a break into the Konkan hills to the south and into the enclave between. Warli is written in both Devanagari and Gujarati script depending on which school system a speaker passed through, which is the clearest evidence that the language is older than the line. |
| KullviA few lakh, returned in the census under Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kullu & Mandi | The Beas valley floor, from Bhuntar to Manali. It carries a vocabulary of orchard work, deity ritual and timber building that Hindi has no terms for. |
| Kumaiya | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Kumaon | The Champawat and Kali valley speech, from the Chand dynasty's original seat — often described as the oldest-sounding Kumaoni and the closest to Doteli across the river. |
| Kunbi and Gabit speech | Indo-Aryan, Malvani group | South Konkan | Occupational varieties within Malvani, carrying vocabularies of cultivation and of fishing gear that a town speaker of the same dialect does not have. |
| Kurmali | Indo-Aryan, Bihari group | Rarh | Spoken across the Purulia–Jharkhand fringe by Kurmi and neighbouring communities, and used alongside Bengali rather than instead of it. There is a long-standing demand for its inclusion in the Eighth Schedule. |
| Lahnda (Western Punjabi) varieties | Indo-Aryan, Western Punjabi | Punjab Doabs | Saraiki, Pothwari and the western dialects, now almost entirely on the Pakistani side. They were spoken by substantial populations in the canal colonies and came east in fragments with 1947 migrants, surviving in families rather than in territory. |
| Lambadi (Gor Boli) | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Rayalaseema | An Indo-Aryan language in a Dravidian region, transmitted at home in the tandas of Kurnool and Anantapur. |
| Lambadi (Gor Boli) | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Telangana | An Indo-Aryan language spoken in hamlets throughout a Dravidian region, carried south by the Banjara caravan trade and still transmitted at home. |
| Lambani (Gor Boli) | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Kalyana Karnataka | Spoken in the tandas across the region, unwritten in ordinary use, and unrelated to the Kannada spoken around it. Its speakers are almost universally bilingual, and transmission to children is falling sharply. |
| Laria | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Chhattisgarh Plains | The eastern variety towards Raigarh and the Mahanadi gorge, shading into Sambalpuri and Odia. Speakers here are routinely bilingual and the vocabulary moves in both directions. |
| Latur and Dharashiv register | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Marathwada | Kannada contact speech on the southern edge, with Kannada vocabulary in agriculture and kinship and a large Kannada-speaking population in the border talukas. It reads towards Kalyana Karnataka, not towards Pune. |
| Lodhanti | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Bundelkhand | A variety named for the Lodhi cultivating community rather than for a place — a reminder that speech boundaries here track caste and occupation as often as they track geography. |
| Lucknow Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Awadh | Not a dialect of Awadhi but a register that grew beside it, marked by a preference for the second-person aap, elaborate address forms, and a vocabulary of courtesy the rest of the language does not need. |
| Magadh Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Magadh | Sustained by the khanqah and madrasa network at Bihar Sharif, Phulwari Sharif and Maner, with a literary history going back to Persian and Urdu writing at the Sufi centres. |
| Mainland KachchhiAround 10.3 lakh returns in the 2011 Census, grouped under Gujarati | Indo-Aryan, Sindhi group | Kutch | The Bhuj, Mandvi and Anjar register, most exposed to Gujarati and the one used in Kutchi print and radio. |
| MajhiThe prestige and literary variety; Punjabi as a whole returned around 3.3 crore speakers in India in 2011 | Indo-Aryan, Punjabi | Punjab Doabs | Spoken across the Bari Doab — Amritsar, Tarn Taran and Gurdaspur on one side of the line, Lahore, Kasur and Sheikhupura on the other. It is the basis of standard written Punjabi in both scripts, which means the standard language of two countries comes from one doab that both of them share. |
| MalvaniReturned under Marathi in the census; field estimates run to a few million including migrants | Indo-Aryan, Marathi–Konkani transitional | South Konkan | Spoken across Sindhudurg and southern Ratnagiri, with Konkani-type case endings, a distinct question vocabulary — khay for where, kityak for why — and an intonation that Marathi speakers recognise instantly. Also called Kudali after the Kudal country. |
| Malvi at the eastern edge | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani-Malvi | Mewar | Takes over as the Chittor plateau steps down towards Neemuch and Mandsaur. The transition is gradual enough that speakers on the boundary switch between the two without regarding it as switching. |
| Malwai | Indo-Aryan, Punjabi | Punjab Doabs | South of the Sutlej, through Ludhiana, Bathinda, Sangrur and Ferozepur. Distinct vowels, a distinct vocabulary of agriculture, and the variety most Punjabi popular music is actually sung in, whatever the grammar books say the standard is. |
| Manbhumi | Indo-Aryan, Bengali–Assamese | Rarh | The Purulia and western Bankura variety, with heavy Kurmali and Santali contact influence in vocabulary and intonation. It carries the Jhumur, Tusu and Bhadu repertoires. |
| Mandeali | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kullu & Mandi | The Mandi basin, transitional westward towards Kangri and southward towards the Sutlej dialects. It has the largest speaker base of the three and the least distinct identity, because the basin has been connected to the plains for longest. |
| Mandeali contact belt | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kangra & Dhauladhar | Around Jogindernagar and the Uhl divide, where Kangri gives way to Mandeali. There is no line, only a gradient about fifteen kilometres wide. |
| Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern Indo-Aryan | South Gujarat Littoral | Ordinary in the southern towns and fishing settlements, and the first language of a substantial part of the enclave and the Umbergaon coast. The Gujarati–Marathi transition on this coast is gradual and household by household. |
| Marathi and Konkani of the Joida forest | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Canara Coast | The northern and eastern forest taluks shade into Marathi and into the Konkani of the Goan hinterland, and village names there read Marathi long before the administrative boundary suggests they should. |
| Marathi in the old Holkar towns | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Nimar | Present in Maheshwar, Mandleshwar and Barwaha as an administrative and household inheritance of the eighteenth century, rather than as a border effect. |
| Marathwadi MarathiReturned as Marathi in the census, so no separate count exists | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Marathwada | The central register, marked by its Dakhni-Urdu lexicon, a flatter intonation than the Desh, and retention of older forms that Pune usage has dropped. Not a separate language and never claimed as one. |
| Maraz | Indo-Aryan, Dardic | Kashmir Valley | The southern speech of Anantnag, Kulgam, Pulwama and Shopian, with vowel differences that a Srinagari hears immediately. Much of the Bhand Pather tradition and the mushk budji rice belt are in this country. |
| Marwaric. 14 million | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Marwar & the Thar | The desert register, and the one the trading diaspora carried across India. Retains Old Rajasthani forms lost in Hindi. |
| Mewari | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Marwar & the Thar | Spoken in the watered Aravalli country; the register of Meera Baiʼs bhajans as they are actually sung. |
| MewariAround 5 million by field estimate; census returns are far lower because most speakers return Hindi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Mewar | The Udaipur, Rajsamand and Chittorgarh register. Retains the -o masculine ending and a distinct set of postpositions where Hindi uses ka and ko. |
| Mewati | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani group | Haryana Bangar & Bagar | Nuh, Firozpur Jhirka, Tijara and Alwar. It carries a large Perso-Arabic vocabulary from the Meo community's Muslim practice sitting on top of a Rajasthani grammar, and it holds the Pandun ka Kada epic. |
| Mewati transition (Kaman, Hodal, Deeg) | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani-Western Hindi transition | Braj | Where Braj shades into Mewati, with a Meo Muslim population that sings the Krishna repertoire in its own register. |
| Mughalbandi OdiaThe base of standard written Odia | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Utkal | The Cuttack–Puri coastal register. The name comes from the tract's administrative history and stuck to the speech; nineteenth-century printing and schooling fixed it as the standard. |
| Musalmani Bengali | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bengal Delta | Not a separate dialect but a register with a heavy Perso-Arabic vocabulary — pani for water, gosol for a bath — used in the eastern and Murshidabad-side Muslim households and in the puthi literature printed for them. |
| Musalmani register | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Sundarbans | The Perso-Arabic-vocabulary register of the puthi literature, which is also the register the Bonbibi Johuranama is written in — and which Hindu villagers reciting it therefore use without comment. |
| Mysuru and Bengaluru Dakhni | Indo-Aryan, Deccani Urdu | Old Mysore | The city Urdu of the old quarters, carrying Kannada word order and vocabulary in a way that surprises speakers from the north. It is a household language in Mysuru's Mandi Mohalla and in parts of the Bengaluru pete. |
| Nagamese | Assamese-lexified creole | Brahmaputra Valley | Grew out of hill–plain trade and became the everyday link language of Nagaland — a creole that outgrew its source region. |
| NagameseUsed as a second language by most of Nagaland | Assamese-lexified creole | Naga Hills | Assamese vocabulary, simplified verb morphology, no grammatical gender, and syntax influenced by the Tibeto-Burman languages of its speakers. It grew in the foothill markets and army lines of the nineteenth century and has since become a first language for some town-born children. |
| Nagpuri register | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Vidarbha | Urban Marathi with a much heavier Hindi load than any other Marathi city carries, a legacy of Nagpur's century as the capital of a Hindi-majority province. Code-switching between the two mid-sentence is unremarkable here. |
| Nanded register | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Marathwada | The eastern speech of the Godavari below Kandhar, with Telugu loanwords, a large Telugu-speaking minority, and the additional overlay of Punjabi around the Sikh takht — three unrelated contact languages in one district. |
| NawayathiThe Nawayath community of Bhatkal and its diaspora | Indo-Aryan, with heavy Persian and Arabic lexicon | Canara Coast | A Konkani-based language carrying a large Persian, Arabic and Urdu vocabulary, spoken by a merchant community whose settlement on this coast is traced to Arab trade contact. It is chiefly a spoken language, is not used in schooling, and is sustained by a community that has emigrated widely for work and continues to use it abroad. |
| Nepali (Gorkha bhasa)A scheduled language of India since 1992; the majority language of the region | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Pahari | Sikkim & Darjeeling Hills | The eastern register spoken here differs from Kathmandu Nepali in vocabulary and intonation and carries loanwords from Bhutia, Lepcha, Hindi, Bengali and English. It is a second language for most of its speakers and a first language for many, which is why it changes fast. |
| Nepali Maithili | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Mithilanchal | Spoken across Nepal's Madhesh province; standardised separately, written in Devanagari, and politically far more assertive than its Indian counterpart. |
| Nimadi | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Khandesh | Takes over east of Burhanpur, where the Tapi valley narrows and the cultural pull shifts to the Narmada side. |
| North-eastern Bagheli | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Bagelkhand | The Sonbhadra, Mirzapur and Prayagraj fringe, where Bagheli meets Awadhi and Bhojpuri at the foot of the Kaimur scarp and the three become hard to separate in practice. |
| Northern Bhojpuri | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bhojpur & Purvanchal | Gorakhpur, Deoria, Siwan and Gopalganj, shading into Bajjika and, across the border, into the Bhojpuri of Nepal's Bara and Parsa districts. |
| Northern Ratnagiri Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Marathi | South Konkan | From Chiplun and Khed northward the speech is closer to standard Marathi, and the transition to Malvani is gradual rather than sharp — which is why any line drawn on the Savitri is an approximation. |
| Odia in the northern mandals | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Uttarandhra | Spoken by long-settled households in the belt below the Bahuda, where schooling is available in both languages and most families use both. Their Odia is the Ganjami register, not the coastal standard. |
| Pahari Dogri of the Udhampur and Reasi hills | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Jammu Duggar | Retains more tone contrast and more of the older vocabulary. The further up the ridge, the less like Punjabi it sounds. |
| Pangwali | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | Spoken in the Pangi valley beyond the Pir Panjal by a small population, with substantial Lahauli and Tibetic contact vocabulary from the trade over Udaipur. Among the most isolated Indo-Aryan varieties in India by simple road access. |
| Parsi Gujarati | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati group | North Konkan | A distinct register with its own vocabulary and idiom, historically the language of the Bombay Parsi household and of a substantial theatrical and print tradition. |
| Parsi Gujarati | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati sociolect | South Gujarat Littoral | Distinct in vocabulary, in some verb forms and in a set of kinship and religious terms drawn from Persian and Avestan. It has its own printed literature going back to the nineteenth century and is contracting sharply with the community's numbers. |
| Patna and the urban register | Indo-Aryan | Magadh | A standardised Hindi with heavy Magahi substrate, and the register in which most of the region's public and commercial life is conducted. |
| Pawri and Bhili | Indo-Aryan, Bhil | Khandesh | Spoken on the Satpura slope by Pawra, Bhil and Barela communities, and forming a dialect chain that continues into Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat with no break at either border. Ahirani carries loan vocabulary and phonology from this substrate. |
| Pednekari and Kudali | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | The northern fringe around Pernem and across the Terekhol, shading into Malvani and heavily influenced by Marathi. |
| Powari (Bhoyari) | Indo-Aryan | Mahakoshal & Gondwana | Spoken by Powar cultivators of Balaghat, Seoni and the Bhandara side. Its vocabulary points west, towards Rajasthani and Gujarati, and it has been surrounded by Hindi, Marathi and Gondi for centuries without merging into any of them — a small island inside a larger one. |
| Prayag transitional speech | Indo-Aryan | Antarved Doab | At the confluence the region meets Awadhi, Bagheli and Bhojpuri at once, and the city speech is a standardised Hindi with features from all three. |
| Puadhi | Indo-Aryan, transitional Punjabi–Western Hindi | Haryana Bangar & Bagar | Ambala, Panchkula and the Shivalik edge. It shades into Malwai Punjabi to the north-west and is the point at which the region's speech stops sounding Haryanvi. |
| Puadhi | Indo-Aryan, Punjabi | Punjab Doabs | The Powadh belt around Rupnagar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Kharar and towards Ambala, transitional towards Bangru and Haryanvi. Its speakers are frequently counted as Hindi speakers in census returns, which understates it. |
| Puneri (Deshi) Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Desh | The Pune and Bhima basin register, codified by the nineteenth-century missionary and Bombay-presidency grammars and taught as standard Marathi. Its distinguishing features are social as much as linguistic — a reputation for clipped, formal address that the city itself jokes about. |
| Punjabi of the Lakhanpur belt | Indo-Aryan, Northwestern | Jammu Duggar | The last few kilometres before the plain, where Dogri gives way with no boundary anyone can point to. |
| Rajawadi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Malwa Plateau | The north-western register, carrying clear Mewari and Marwari features as the plateau climbs into the Aravalli approach. |
| Rajbanshi (Kamtapuri)Millions across this belt and adjoining districts, though census returns vary with how the question is asked | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Dooars & Terai | Distinguished from standard Bengali by its vowels, its pronoun forms and a large agricultural and riverine vocabulary. It is recognised in West Bengal's list of official languages, and it is the language of Bhawaiya and Kushan gan. |
| Rampuri and Rohilkhandi Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Rohilkhand & Katehar | A literary Urdu register sustained by the Rampur court, the Raza Library and a dense network of madrasas — the register of Jigar Moradabadi, Fani and Shakeel Badayuni and Jaun Elia. |
| Rangari and Kunbi registers | Indo-Aryan, Khandeshi | Khandesh | Community registers of the dyer and cultivator communities respectively; the Leva Patidar cultivator speech of the Jalgaon belt is one of the most widely spoken. |
| Rarhi (Nadia–Kolkata)The base of standard Bengali, spoken as a first variety across the western delta | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bengal Delta | The Nadia–Santipur–Krishnanagar speech that the nineteenth-century prose reformers took as their model, and which Kolkata then made the prestige register of a whole literature. |
| Rarhi BengaliThe dialect group underlying standard Bengali | Indo-Aryan, Bengali–Assamese | Rarh | Spoken across Bardhaman, Birbhum, Bankura, Hooghly and Howrah, and eastward into Nadia. Its Nadia–Shantipur variety is the historical basis of the modern written and spoken standard. |
| Sadri | Indo-Aryan, Bihari group | Barak Valley | The link language of the tea-garden communities, carried here from the Chota Nagpur plateau in the nineteenth century and now a first language for many born in the estates. |
| Sadri | Indo-Aryan | Chhattisgarh Plains | Not a Chhattisgarhi variety but the trade and inter-community lingua franca of the Sarguja and Jashpur belt, shared with Jharkhand — the language people use when their first languages belong to different families. |
| Sadri (Nagpuri) | Indo-Aryan, Bihari group | Chota Nagpur Plateau | The plateau's lingua franca — a market and inter-community language that has become a mother tongue for many Sadan households, and the shared language of the tea-garden communities of Assam and the Dooars. |
| Sadri (tea-garden Sadri, Baganiya)The working lingua franca of the tea belt on both sides of the Assam border | Indo-Aryan, Bihari group | Dooars & Terai | A contact language rather than an ancestral one for most of its speakers. It has absorbed Bengali, Nepali and Hindi vocabulary here and Assamese vocabulary further east, so the garden Sadri of the Dooars and that of upper Assam have already begun to diverge. |
| Salani and Rathi | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Garhwal | The Pauri uplands — Salan on the southern slopes and Rath on the ridges behind them. Rathi is often identified by outsiders as the most conservative Garhwali and by its own speakers as the most direct. |
| Satara–Wai Marathi | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Desh | The Krishna-valley register, close to standard and often cited as the "purest" spoken Marathi — a claim about prestige rather than about linguistics. |
| Saurashtra | Indo-Aryan | Chola Nadu | Spoken by silk-weaving families settled in Kumbakonam and Thanjavur as well as further south, and carried here by the same migration that shaped Madurai's textile trade. |
| SaurashtraSeveral lakh, concentrated in Madurai | Indo-Aryan | Pandya Nadu | An Indo-Aryan language spoken in the heart of Tamil country by families of silk weavers who migrated south by way of Gujarat and the Deccan and settled under Nayak patronage. It has its own script tradition, is written also in Tamil and Devanagari, and its speakers are fully bilingual. |
| Saxtti | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Goa & Gomantak | Salcete Konkani, the language of the mando texts and of much of the tiatr stage, and the variety most Goan migrants carried to Bombay, East Africa and the Gulf. |
| Seemanchal Urdu | Indo-Aryan, Hindustani | Anga & Seemanchal | The urban and madrasa register of a belt where Muslims are a very large share of the population — Kishanganj district is majority Muslim, the only such district in Bihar. |
| Seraji | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kullu & Mandi | The uplands either side of the Jalori pass. Sufficiently distinct from Kullvi that valley-floor speakers hear it as another language, and better preserved because the roads came late. |
| Shekhawati | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Dhundhar & Shekhawati | Spoken across Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu, and usually classed with Dhundhari while its speakers hear it as leaning towards Marwari. This is the variety the merchant diaspora carried to Calcutta and Bombay, where it is what people mean by "Marwari" as a spoken language. |
| Sindhi in Kutch | Indo-Aryan, Sindhi | Kutch | Spoken as a first language by Sodha, Jat and several Muslim communities of the north and west, alongside Kachchhi. The two are close enough that speakers move between them without much effort. |
| Siraji and Poguli | Indo-Aryan, transitional Pahari–Kashmiri | Jammu Duggar | The speech of the Ramban and Banihal slope, structurally between Dogri-type Pahari and Kashmiri. They make the point that the Pir Panjal is a gradient and not a wall. |
| Sirazi | Indo-Aryan, transitional Pahari | Chenab Valley & Chamba | Spoken along the Doda and Ramban slopes; the variety that sits between the Pahari of the valley floor and the Kashmiri of the ridges above it. |
| Sondhwadi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Malwa Plateau | Spoken across the Jhalawar and southern Ujjain-district country — the register that most clearly demonstrates that the interstate line and the language line are drawn in different places. |
| Sondwari | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Hadoti | The speech of south-western Jhalawar, treated in the language surveys as a Harauti variety already carrying Malvi features. It is where the plateau's two languages meet. |
| Sorathi | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati | Saurashtra | Junagadh, Gir and the southern coast. The register most associated with the Charani and bhajan repertoire, and the one most often meant when people say Kathiawadi. |
| Soryali and Askoti | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Kumaon | The Soar valley around Pithoragarh and the Askot country above it, in contact with both the Rung languages upstream and Nepali speech across the Kali. |
| Southern Bagheli | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Bagelkhand | Shahdol, Umaria and Sidhi, shading into Chhattisgarhi. Speakers here are frequently bilingual in Gondi, and Gondi loan vocabulary for trees, tools and forest produce is normal in ordinary speech. |
| Southern Bhojpuri | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bhojpur & Purvanchal | Rohtas, Kaimur and the plateau edge, shading into Nagpuri and Sadri. |
| Southern Magahi | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Magadh | Spoken in Aurangabad, Palamu and Chatra, shading into the Sadri and Nagpuri of the Chota Nagpur plateau. |
| SrinagariyaThe prestige variety; roughly 2.5 million returned Garhwali overall in the 2011 Census, an undercount | Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Garhwal | The speech of the old capital on the Alaknanda, and the register that broadcasting, recording and print settled on as standard Garhwali. |
| Standard (Western) BhojpuriAbout 5.05 crore in the 2011 Census, and several million more overseas | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Bihari group) | Bhojpur & Purvanchal | The Ara, Buxar, Ballia and Varanasi register — the base of the film and music industry that carries the name. |
| Standard Bagheli (Rewa)About 2.7 million returned in the 2011 Census, under a classification that folds it into Awadhi | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Bagelkhand | The Rewa, Satna and Maihar register — the prestige variety, the one used in Bagheli broadcasting on All India Radio and in the region's published literature. |
| Standard Bengali | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Barak Valley | The written and educated register everywhere in the valley — school, newspaper, court and public speech — and the language whose official standing the 1961 movement was about. |
| Standard Bengali | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Sundarbans | The school, radio and market register, based on the Nadia–Kolkata variety of the western delta. The gap between it and island speech is wide enough that children meet a partly unfamiliar language on their first school day. |
| Standard BundeliReturned under Hindi in the census; field estimates run to several million | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi (Sauraseni) | Bundelkhand | The Jhansi, Orchha, Tikamgarh and Chhatarpur register — the literary variety, and the one Alha is sung in. |
| Standard MaithiliAbout 1.35 crore in India in the 2011 Census, and roughly 3 million in Nepal | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Bihari group) | Mithilanchal | The Darbhanga–Madhubani register, the basis of the literary language and of the Sahitya Akademi's Maithili canon. |
| Suketi | Indo-Aryan, Western Pahari | Kullu & Mandi | The speech of the old Suket state around Sunder Nagar, close to Mandeali and usually counted with it. |
| Sundarbans BengaliThe everyday speech of the islands | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Sundarbans | Eastern Bengali in its verb endings and vowels, drawn from Khulna, Jessore, Barisal and Faridpur speech, with a dense occupational vocabulary of tide, net, creek and forest. |
| Surgujia | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Chhattisgarh Plains | The northern fringe variety, in contact with Sadri and with the Chota Nagpur languages, and noticeably different from the plain's speech in intonation. |
| Surjapuri | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Anga & Seemanchal | Spoken across Seemanchal and into north Bengal and Nepal — a transitional language whose speakers are routinely counted as Hindi or Bengali depending on which side of a district line they live. |
| Surti Gujarati | Indo-Aryan, Gujarati | South Gujarat Littoral | The estuary register — heavier on loanwords than any other Gujarati variety, and the source of a large body of urban slang and invective that the rest of the state quotes and affects to disapprove of. |
| SylhetiAround 11 million across the Surma–Barak lowland and its diaspora | Indo-Aryan, Eastern; ISO 639-3 syl | Barak Valley | The spoken language of all three districts and of the Sylhet plain downstream, with the same phonology on both sides of the international line and no meaningful dialect break at it. |
| Sylheti-influenced eastern fringe | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Bengal Delta | At the delta's north-eastern rim, where the plain meets the Barak and Surma country, the speech carries Sylheti phonology and its own script tradition in Sylheti Nagri. |
| Terai Punjabi and Kumaoni | Indo-Aryan; Indo-Aryan, Central Pahari | Rohilkhand & Katehar | Brought by Sikh farming families settled after 1947 and by hill migrants coming down to the plains; both are now ordinary terai languages. |
| Thanjavur MarathiA few tens of thousands, mostly older | Indo-Aryan, Marathi | Chola Nadu | Marathi as spoken by descendants of the Bhonsle court and its retinue, isolated from Maharashtra since the seventeenth century and consequently retaining older forms while borrowing Tamil syntax. Written in Devanagari, Modi and occasionally Tamil script. |
| Tharu | Indo-Aryan, Eastern (Terai group) | Rohilkhand & Katehar | Spoken across the terai on both sides of the India–Nepal border, in several regional varieties that are not always mutually intelligible; Rana Tharu is the variety of this stretch. |
| Tharu and Buksa | Indo-Aryan, distinct from Kumaoni | Kumaon | The languages of the terai communities who lived in the malarial belt before it was cleared, and who were displaced within it by post-1950s settlement. |
| The Puri temple register | Indo-Aryan, Eastern | Utkal | Not a dialect but a closed technical vocabulary — hundreds of terms for offerings, services, rights, utensils and calendar events used inside the temple and nowhere else, and a working knowledge of it is what separates a servitor from a visitor. |
| Tirhari | Indo-Aryan, Western Hindi | Bundelkhand | The southern fringe towards the Narmada valley, shading into the speech of the Sagar–Damoh forest belt. |
| Torawati | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Dhundhar & Shekhawati | The eastern hill register around Neem Ka Thana, Udaipurwati and Khetri, transitional between Shekhawati and the Ahirwati of the Haryana side. |
| Ujjaini | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Malwa Plateau | The Ujjain and Indore register, treated within the region as the prestige form and the one Maach is performed in. |
| Umathwadi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Malwa Plateau | The Rajgarh and Shajapur speech of the north-east, with Hadauti features from the Chambal country beyond it. |
| VarhadiReturned as Marathi in the census, so no separate count exists | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Vidarbha | The speech of Buldhana, Akola, Washim, Amravati and Yavatmal, and loosely of the whole cotton plain. Marked by male and tule, kahun, bhakar for bhakri, and the participle-plus-remain progressive. |
| Varhadi Marathi | Indo-Aryan | Mahakoshal & Gondwana | The Wainganga side, from Gondia and Gadchiroli southwards, shading into the Vidarbha dialect belt. |
| Varkari register | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Desh | Not a geographic dialect but a shared devotional idiom carried by the abhanga corpus, in which thirteenth-century vocabulary and metre remain in daily use by people who otherwise speak modern Marathi. |
| Wagdi | Indo-Aryan, Bhil group | Mewar | Spoken down the southern slope towards the Mahi. Classified with the Bhil languages rather than with Rajasthani, which is why it feels like a break rather than a shading to a Mewari speaker. |
| WarliSeveral lakh, largely in Palghar and across into the Dangs | Indo-Aryan, Bhil–Konkani group | North Konkan | Sufficiently distinct from Marathi that older speakers are not reliably intelligible to Marathi speakers, though schooling and television are levelling it fast. |
| West Nimadi | Indo-Aryan, Rajasthani | Nimar | The Khargone, Barwani and Maheshwar register, and the one usually treated within the region as standard Nimadi. |
| Western Awadhi | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Awadh | Hardoi, Sitapur and the Lakhimpur fringe; transitional towards Kanauji and Braj, and its speakers are usually counted as Hindi speakers. |
| Western Bagheli | Indo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi | Bagelkhand | The Satna, Panna-edge and Chitrakoot belt, heavily overlaid with Bundeli vocabulary while keeping Eastern Hindi verb morphology — which is exactly what a transition zone between two Prakrit stocks looks like. |
| Western Pahari of the lower Sutlej | Indo-Aryan, Northern zone | Kinnaur & Spiti | The Mahasu and Bushahri speech of the Rampur and Nichar side, Indo-Aryan and continuous with the dialects of Shimla district. It reaches up the gorge and stops; the change is not gradual so much as village by village. |
| Yamraz — the Srinagar registerAbout 67 lakh returned as Kashmiri speakers in the 2011 Census, across all varieties | Indo-Aryan, Dardic | Kashmir Valley | The standard of broadcast, publishing and the school textbook, and the most heavily loaded with Persian and Urdu vocabulary because the city was where the administrative language sat. |
| Zadi Boli | Indo-Aryan, Southern | Vidarbha | Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli — the forest and tank country. Heavily influenced by Halbi and Chhattisgarhi, with its own writers' association and the Zadipatti theatre repertoire written in it. Speakers generally treat it as Marathi and outsiders generally cannot follow it. |