Select languages...
Maithili linguistic data
Select languages above to compare their features side by side
Common questions about Maithili
What linguistic data does this Maithili page show?
Word order, tone, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits, vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Maithili's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.
Where do the Maithili data points come from?
Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.
What's special about Maithili verb agreement?
Most Indo-Aryan languages mark only subject agreement on verbs. Maithili marks subject AND addressee, and in some contexts the object too — the verb form encodes 'who is doing what to whom in front of whom'. This creates large agreement paradigms that learners typically meet only after the basics.
What's the Tirhuta script?
Tirhuta (also called Mithilakshar) is the historical script of Maithili, a Brahmic abugida used since the 11th century for manuscripts, religious texts, and personal correspondence among Maithili-speaking communities. Devanagari is now the standard for most printed and modern use; Tirhuta survives in cultural and ceremonial contexts.
Why does Maithili have a high similarity score with Bhojpuri?
Both are Bihari-group Indo-Aryan languages, geographically adjacent, sharing SOV typology, postpositions, ergative past patterns, and a chunk of cognate vocabulary. They're often grouped together with Magahi as 'Bihari languages' though they're not mutually intelligible without exposure. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.
Sources for Maithili
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Yadav, Ramawatar (1996). A Reference Grammar of Maithili. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Jha, Subhadra (1958). The Formation of the Maithili Language. London: Luzac & Co.
- Yadav, Ramawatar (2003). "Maithili." In G. Cardona & D. Jain (eds.), The Indo-Aryan Languages, pp. 523–546. London: Routledge.
- Singh, Udaya Narayana (2007). Maithili Grammar. Munich: Lincom Europa.