ABSTRACT
As one of the official state languages of India, M arathi is spoken by about 50 million people in M aharashtra, with some degree of spread into adjacent territories. There are also outlier groups of M arathi speakers in Dravidian country. There are three main dialects: desl, the base for the m odern standard literary language; konkani /kokni/ the dialect spoken in Goa; and Eastern M arathi, which shades gradually into Oriya and Eastern Hindi.
