Key facts
- Native to
- India
- Region
- Jalgaon Jamod , Buldhana district , Maharashtra (on the border with Madhya Pradesh )
- Ethnicity
- 5,000 Nihali
- Native speakers
- 2,500 (2016)
- Language family
- Language isolate
- Iso 639 3
- nll
- Glottolog
- niha1238
- Elp
- Nihali
via Wikipedia infobox
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Nihali, also known as Nahali ( Nihali: [nihaːliː, nahaːliː]), is an endangered language isolate that is spoken in west-central India by approximately 2,500 people as of 2016. The name of the language derives from nahal, meaning "tiger".
Nihali has not been definitively proven to be related to any other surrounding language families of South Asia, such as Munda, Indo-Aryan, and Dravidian languages, nor to other language isolates like Burushaski and Kusunda. However, a connection with Ainu has been suggested.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Nihali” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.