Marathi/Introduction

Marathi is the main language spoken in Maharashtra, India. It is the mother tongue of about 90 million people. Marathi is believed to have evolved from Apabhransha and Maahaarashtri languages, which were derivatives of Prakrit. It is written in Devanagari script, which is also used to write Hindi and Sanskrit. Marathi is similar to Hindi in structure and grammar. The earliest documented use of Marathi goes back to the 13th century, though the language may have existed for some time before that. It makes extensive use of grammatical cases and inflections for nouns, as well as prepositions, conjunctions, and verb conjugations.