 |
THE PEOPLE
|
 |
LANGUAGE
The principal and almost only language spoken in the district is Marathi. The Muslim population of the district speaks a mixed Urdu-Marathi and the very small number of Zoroastrians maintain Gujarati as a domestic tongue. Urdu is learnt in Primary Schools by the Muslim children. The Marathi spoken by the peasantry and artisan classes in various talukas differs from place to place in accent and intonation so as to be pretty indistinguishable from what may be called literary Marathi, but this phenomenon is not peculiar to this district. It is met with all over the world and in the ease of all standardised languages.
The Devanagari script in which the mother of most Indian languages, Sanskrit, is written is the script followed for all Marathi writing and printing. The modi script was in vogue till recently and it has to be learnt specially if old documents and historical papers are to be deciphered. This script has practically fallen into disuse in Government offices as well as in private firms and households.
English is taught in High Schools and Colleges as a compulsory language and so among the educated people from all castes and communities English is fairly well understood and occasionally spoken. Familiarity with it is kept up chiefly by Government employees, medical practitioners, legal practitioners, industrial and commercial organisations, and generally by the professional classes. The English daily newspapers from Bombay read in the urban centres of the
district help these people to keep up fair acquaintance with the
English language.
|
