Marathi Keyboard Layout
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Marathi language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marathi (मराठी Marāṭhī) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi is the 4th most spoken language in India and the 15th most spoken language in the world. Marathi is the oldest of the regional literatures in Indo-Aryan languages, dating from about 1000 AD.
Marathi is estimated to be over 1300 years old, evolving from Sanskrit through Prakrit and Apabhramsha. Its grammar and syntax derive from Pali and Prakrit. In ancient times, Marathi was called Maharashtri, Marhatti, Mahratti etc.
Peculiar features of Marathi linguistic culture include Marathi drama, with its unique flavour of ‘Sangeet Natak’ (musical dramas), scholarly discourses called ‘Vasant Vyakhyanmala’ (Lectures in Spring), Marathi folk dance called ‘Lavani’, and special editions of magazines for Diwali called ‘Diwali anka’.
Written Marathi first appeared during the 11th century in the form of inscriptions on stones and copper plates. From the 13th century until the mid 20th century, it was written with the Modi alphabet. Since 1950 it has been written with the Devanāgarī alphabet.
Devanagari script
Marathi is written in the Devanagari script, an alphasyllabary or abugida consisting of 16 vowel letters and 36 consonant letters making a total of 52 letters. It is written from left to right. Devnagari used to write Marathi is slightly different than that of Hindi or other languages. Marathi Devnagari script is called Balbodh (बाळबोध) script.
Modi script
Marathi was written in Modi script — a cursive script designed for minimising the lifting of pen from paper while writing.[24] Most writings of the Maratha empire are in Modi script. However, Persian-based scripts were also used for court documentation. With the advent of large-scale printing, Modi script fell into disuse, as it proved very difficult for type-setting. Currently, due to the availability of Modi fonts and the enthusiasm of the younger speakers, the script is far from disappearing. (See Reference Links).
Marathi on computers and the Internet
Historically Marathi has suffered from weak support by computer operating systems and Internet services, as have other Indian languages. But recently, with the introduction of language localisation projects and new technologies, various software and Internet applications have been introduced. Shrilipi, Shivaji and Kiran fonts were used prior to the introduction of Unicode standard for Devanagari script. Various Marathi typing software is widely used and display interface packages are now available on both Windows and Linux. Many Marathi websites, including prominent Marathi newspapers, have become popular especially with Maharashtrians outside India. Online projects such as the Marathi language Wikipedia, the Marathi blogroll and Marathi blogs have gained immense popularity.
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