Introduction

With more than seventy million native speakers and twenty million all over India and the world, Marathi is one of the widely spoken languages of India. Foundation of the 'Bhakti' movement was laid by twelfth century poet and philosopher Sant Dnyaneshwar. He composed his literature in Marathi, a language of common people, and not in Sanskrit, a language of the elites. The tradition of Devotion was carried forward by Sant Janabai, Sant Namdeo, Sant Tukaram, Sant Eknath and many other Saints. Their influence on the culture of Maharashtra is so great that Marathi has the largest compilation of devotional songs and literature amongst all the Prakrit languages in India.

There are different theories regarding the origin of Marathi language. According to one of them, Marathi originated from Sanskrit (The Pure Language)and Prakrit (Maharashtri- The colloquial Language or the Natural Language). Over the years Marathi has incorporated in itself the vocabulary from languages like Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, Urdu, Gujrathi,Tamil, Kannad and English. Today, Marathi is the official language of the state of Maharashtra, a region with high urbanization. Modern Marathi culture is enriched by a healthy tradition of cinema,television, devotional songs,folk songs, literature, and theatre.

Course Descriptions

See the current semester roster for times and room numbers

Beginning Marathi: SAST-410 (TTR 5:30 to 7:30)
(This is a one year course with two course credits).
Instructor: Haimanti Banerjee (mranade@sas.upenn.edu)

The first year course in Marathi begins with learning the Devnagari script which is common for other important languages like Hindi and Nepali.With proper emphasis on grammar, vocabulary and phonetics, students will be able to speak conversational Marathi and read short stories and news from the internet. Also, they will be able to write simple compositions on selected topics.