MarathiMarathi (मराठी) is spoken by the Marathi people and is the official language of Maharashtra, Goa and is one of the 23 official languages of India. It is the 14th most spoken language in the world. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and has some of the oldest literature of all modern Indo-European, Indic languages, dating from about 1000 AD.
Standard Marathi is based on dialects used by academics and the print media.
Indic scholars distinguish 42 dialects of spoken Marathi. Dialects bordering other major language areas have many properties in common with those languages, further differentiating them from standard spoken Marathi. The bulk of the variation within these dialects is primarily lexical and phonological (e.g. accent placement and pronunciation). Although the number of dialects is considerable, the degree of intelligibility within these dialects is relatively high.