Dakhani language

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Dakkhini (Hindi: दक्खिनी dakkʰinī), also known as Deccani (Urdu: دکنی), is a dialect of the Urdu language spoken in the Deccan region of southern India, centered on the city of Hyderabad, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. There is an extensive literature in this dialect, but it has fallen out of use in recent times.

Dakhani, also known as Dakkhani, Dakhni or Deccani (cognate of Sanskrit dakshin, "south") is spoken in the Deccan plateau area of India. Just as Urdu developed in Delhi, Dakhni developed in South India due to the mixing of various Indian based languages and Persian based languages. The term Dakhani is perhaps an umbrella for a group of dialects spoken by certain communities of Hindus & Muslims in the Deccan region. Thus, Dakhani dialects are an amalgam of Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

Deccani or Dakhini is the lingua franca of the Muslims of South India, chiefly living in Hyderabad and further south. Though it is considered as a dialect of Urdu, it constitutes the traits of a different language in its own sense. Deccani is widely spoken across the South Indian peninsula with subtle changes in the dialect as you go down south away from Hyderabad. This tongue is used extensively in the spoken form; when it comes to writing and literary work, on the other hand, the original Urdu language is made use of.

1 Classification
2 Geographic distribution
- 2.1 Dialects
3 See also

[edit] Classification

Dakhni is part of the Indo-Aryan grouping of the Indo-European languages.

[edit] Geographic distribution

Most speakers of Dakhni live in the Indian region known as the Deccan. They inhabit the regions comprising the erstwhile Muslim kingdoms in South India viz. portions of the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.