Halbi (also Bastari, Halba, Halvas, Halabi, Halvi) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, transitional between Odia and Marathi.[2] It is spoken by at least 766,297 people across the central part of India.
The Mehari (or Mahari) dialect is mutually intelligible with the other dialects only with difficulty. There are an estimated 200,000 second-language speakers (as of 2001). In Chhattisgarh educated people are fluent in Hindi. Some first language speakers use Bhatri as second language.
Halbi is often used as a trade language, but there is a low literacy rate. It is written in the Odia and Devanagari scripts.[citation needed] It uses SOV word order (subject-object-verb), makes strong use of affixes, and places adjectives before nouns.
Phonology
Vowels
Halbi has 6 vowels: /a, e, ɘ, i, o, u/. All vowels show contrastive vowel nasalization.
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | ʔ | |
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||
| breathy | bʱ | dʱ | gʱ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | cç | |||
| voiced | ɟʝ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ç | h | |
| voiced | v | z | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||
| Halbi | |
|---|---|
| ହଲବୀ, हलबी | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra |
| Ethnicity | Halba |
|
Native speakers
|
766,297 (2011 census)[1] |
|
Language family
|
Indo-European
|
|
Writing system
|
Odia, Devanagari |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | hlb |
| Glottolog | halb1244 Halbi |
| Linguasphere | 59-AAF-tb |
Halbi-speaking region
|
|