Surgujia is an
Indo-Aryan language spoken in
Chhattisgarh. It belongs to the
Eastern Hindi
The Central Indo-Aryan languages or Hindi languages are a group of related language varieties Spoken across North India and Central India. These language varieties form the central part of the Indo-Aryan language family, itself a part of the ...
subgroup.
Speakers
Surgujia is primarily spoken in
Surguja
Surguja district is a district of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh. The district is one of the oldest districts of Chhattisgarh. The headquarters of the district is Ambikapur.
The district lies in its eponymous Surguja dialectal region (where ...
,
Jashpur
Jashpur District is a district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh bordering Jharkhand and Odisha. Jashpur Nagar is the administrative headquarters of the district. The district was formerly a princely state before Indpendence. Highly mou ...
, and
Koriya
Korea State, currently spelled as Koriya, was a princely state of the British Empire of India. After Indian independence in 1947, the ruler of Koreaccededto the Union of India on 1 January 1948, and Koriya was made part of Surguja District ...
districts of Chhattisgarh; and to a lesser extent in
Raigarh and
Korba.
Speakers of Surgujia have often been conflated with those of
Chhattisgarhi. Furthermore, as is the case with many
Hindi languages
The Central Indo-Aryan languages or Hindi languages are a group of related language varieties Spoken across North India and Central India. These language varieties form the central part of the Indo-Aryan language family, itself a part of the ...
and other regional languages, Surgujia has often been subsumed under the all-encompassing bracket of
Standard Hindi due to erroneous, arbitrary or politically-motivated categorisation.
Classification
It was previously regarded by many as a
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
of
Chhattisgarhi, and was designated as such by the linguist
George A. Grierson in his comprehensive ''
Linguistic Survey of India
The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguist ...
''. Indeed, Surgujia possesses a lexical similarity of 71%-76% with Chhattisgarhi, according to Ethnologue.
In recent times, however, Surgujia has come to be recognised as a distinct dialect.
References
{{Incubator, sgj
Indo-Aryan languages
Languages of India