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Gujarati 〔Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh〕 ( (:ɡudʒəˈɾɑːt̪i)) is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat. It is part of the greater Indo-European language family. Gujarati is descended from Old Gujarati (''circa'' 1100 – 1500 AD), which is derived from Sanskrit. In India, it is the chief language in the state of Gujarat, as well as an official language in the union territories of Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Gujarati is the language of Gujjars, who ruled on Rajputana and Punjab on Rajput and Jutt, respectively. According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 4.5% of the Indian population (1.21 billion according to the 2011 census) speaks Gujarati, which amounts to 54.6 million speakers in India. There are about 65.5 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide, making it the 26th most spoken native language in the world. Along with Romani and Sindhi, it is among the most western of Indo-Aryan languages. Gujarati was the first language of Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel, the "Iron Man of India". Other prominent personalities whose first language is or was Gujarati include Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Morarji Desai, Narsinh Mehta, Dhirubhai Ambani, J. R. D. Tata, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the "Father of the Nation of Pakistan." ==History== Gujarati (also sometimes spelled ''Gujerati'', ''Gujarathi'', ''Guzratee'', ''Guujaratee'', ''Gujrathi'', and ''Gujerathi'') is a modern IA (Indo-Aryan) language evolved from Sanskrit. The traditional practice is to differentiate the IA languages on the basis of three historical stages:〔 #Old IA (Vedic and Classical Sanskrit) #Middle IA (various Prakrits and Apabhramshas) #New IA (modern languages such as Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, etc.) Another view postulates successive family tree splits, in which Gujarati is assumed to have separated from other IA languages in four stages: #IA languages split into Northern, Eastern, and Western divisions based on the innovate characteristics such as plosives becoming voiced in the Northern (Skt. ''danta'' "tooth" > Punj. ''dānd'') and dental and retroflex sibilants merging with the palatal in the Eastern (Skt. ''sandhya'' "evening" > Beng. ''śājh''). #Western, into Central and Southern. #Central, in Gujarati/Rajasthani, Western Hindi, and Punjabi/Lahanda/Sindhi, on the basis of innovation of auxiliary verbs and postpositions in Gujarati/Rajasthani.〔 #Gujarati/Rajasthani into Gujarati and Rajasthani through development of such characteristics as auxiliary ''ch''- and the possessive marker -''n''- during the 15th century. The principal changes from Sanskrit are the following:〔 *Phonological * *Loss of original phonemic length for vowels * *Change of consonant clusters to geminate and then to single consonants (with compensatory vowel length) *Morphological * *Reduction in the number of compounds * *Merger of the dual with plural * *Replacement of case affixes by postpositions * *Development of periphrastic tense/voice/mood constructions *Syntax * *Split ergativity * *More complex agreement system Gujarati is then customarily divided into the following three historical stages:〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gujarati language」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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