| Kharia | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | India (Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar Islands), Nepal |
| Native speakers | 293,575[1] (date missing) |
| Language family |
Austro-Asiatic
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | khr |
The Kharia language is an Austro-Asiatic language that is primarily spoken by indigenous Kharia people of eastern India.
Kharia belongs to the Kharia–Juang branch of the Munda language family. Its closest extant relative is the Juang language, but the relationship between Kharia and Juang is remote.
The most widely cited classification places Kharia and Juang together as a subgroup of the South Munda branch of the Munda family. However, some earlier classification schemes placed Kharia and Juang together as an independent branch deriving from the root of the Munda languages, and named this branch Central Munda.