TerraverbaAn atlas of the world’s languages 简体中文 Open the atlas

Halbi

Halbi is an Indo-European language spoken in India.

See it on the globeOpen in the family tree

Halbi · 20.3°N 81.4°E

Halbi (also Bastari, Halba, Halvas, Halabi, Halvi) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, transitional between Odia and Marathi. 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 a 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. It uses SOV word order (subject-object-verb), makes strong use of affixes, and places adjectives before nouns.

From Wikipedia · Halbi language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Words in Halbi

MeaningWordRomanization
personbita*
namenam*
eyeakhi*
nosenak*
toothdat*
tonguejib*
handhat*
bloodr3k3t*
bonehada*
skincamdi*
breastdud*
waterpani
fireagi*
sunber*
startara*
stonep3khna*
mountaindoNri*
treehira*
leafpan*
nightrati*
dogkukur*
fishm3Cri*
louseokhni*
oneek*
twodui*
Ime*
youtui*
wehami*
drinkpiu*
seed3kh*

* in the simplified ASJP transcription

Most similar languages

Vocabulary

Vocabulary compares 40 basic words (ASJP); grammar compares 195 features (Grambank). Similar is not always related.

Nearby languages

Elsewhere

Something wrong here? Tell us

Glottolog · halb1244 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · hlb