Indiclanguage

Indiclanguage is a term used in linguistic and regional studies to refer to the group of languages spoken on the Indian subcontinent that are conventionally categorized as Indic languages. In contemporary usage, the label most often applies to the Indo-Aryan languages, a major branch of the Indo-European family, though some scholarly traditions extend the term more broadly to include additional eastern languages and, in regional discussions, sometimes to certain neighboring languages due to geographic proximity and contact.

Geographically, Indic languages are spoken across the Indian subcontinent, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, with substantial communities worldwide. They are typically written in a range of scripts derived from Brahmi, such as Devanagari (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali), Bengali-Assamese, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, and Odia, as well as the scripts used for Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. Urdu and Kashmiri, though associated with the Indic region, often employ Perso-Arabic or Arabic scripts in addition to native orthographies.

Phonology and grammar vary widely among Indic languages but commonly feature a rich consonant system with aspirated and retroflex stops, a vowel system with distinctions in length and nasalization, and extensive inflection or derivational morphology for tense, mood, number, and case. Orthographic conventions and standardized forms differ by language, reflected in scholarly transcription schemes such as IAST and ISO 15919, as well as national language policies and education systems.