Guj

Gujarati, designated by the ISO 639-3 code guj, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in the Indian state of Gujarat and by Gujarati communities around the world. It is part of the Western subgroup of the Indo-Aryan branch within the Indo-European language family. The language descends from Shauraseni Prakrit and has a long literary history, with early medieval writings and a standardized form established in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Gujarati is written in the Gujarati script, a variant of the Nagri script family derived from Devanagari. The script is an abugida and is noted for its rounded letters and the absence of the horizontal headstroke that characterizes Devanagari, giving it a distinct appearance.

Dialectally, Gujarati includes varieties such as Standard Gujarati, Charotar, Kathiawari, and Surti, among others. The dialects are largely mutually intelligible, with regional differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and usage.

In terms of status, Gujarati is one of the official languages of India and is the predominant language of Gujarat's education, media, and public life. It is used in literature, journalism, film, radio, and online communication, and has a sizable diaspora that maintains the language in countries across the United Kingdom, North America, East Africa, and the Gulf region. The language continues to evolve with ongoing linguistic work in standardization, transliteration schemes, and computer encoding.