Varhadi dialect

Varhadi or Varhadi-Nagpuri is a dialect of Marathi spoken in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and by Marathi people of adjoining parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana in India.

Vocabulary and grammar

Although all the dialects of Marathi are mutually intelligible to one another up to a great extent, each dialect can be distinctly identified by its unique characteristics. Likewise, Varhadi replaces the case endings lā and nā of standard Marathi with le, a feature it shares with neighboring Khandeshi language. So, malā of standard Marathi becomes male while tyānnā becomes tyāle in Varhadi. The common examples of Hindi words in Varhadi which are different than standard Marathi are:

Varhadi	Hindi	Standard Marathi	English
			Straight
			Old man
			Stupid
			Grapes

The grammatical changes in Varhadi differing from standard Marathi & closer to Hindi are:

Varhadi	Hindi	Standard Marathi	English
			I am going
			I came
			Give your pen
			Have water.

Apart from this, there are many words & phrases indigenous to Varhadi i.e. common to neither standard Marathi nor Hindi. For instance, to give stress on a request or an order, the suffix or is used like " "Please attend my daughter's wedding." Also, there are words & phrases maintained by Varhadi which were present in older Marathi and have vanished from mainstream Marathi. E.g., in the vocative case, is said in Varhadi instead of are of standard Marathi. Another good example is the sentence construction of past continuous tense e.g. in Varhadi, it is said Tho bahut abhyās kare' or 'To lay abhyās kare' unlike To khūp abhyās karāychā' of standard Marathi.
In most of the Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskritized words of standard language get simplified in spoken dialects. Exceptionally, Varhadi has a few Sanskrit tatsama words for whom the standard Marathi counterparts are modified words such as in eastern parts of Vidarbha, snake is called unlike of standard Marathi.
The forms of Varhadi vary in different parts of Vidarbha and also, as per castes. The similarity to Central Indo Aryan languages increases as one moves towards Madhya Pradesh. E.g. in the parts adjacent to Madhya Pradesh, zāna padte is preferred over zā lāgte, which is similar to Hindi jānā padtā hai. Also, consonant sound /t͡s/ like in chūk, prevalent in Marathi but absent in Hindi, is often pronounced /t͡ʃ/ like in vachan. So, pāch/पाच may be pronounced as pānch/पांच of Hindi.
In the areas closer to Marathwada region of Maharashtra and on the contrary, distant to Madhya Pradesh, Varhadi is influenced by dialects of adjacent parts of Marathwada. One can easily recognize a person from Pusad, Digras or Umarkhed taluka of Yavatmal district by his sentence of present continuous tense. Somebody from this area will say mī mandirāt zāylo instead of mī mandirāt zāun rāhilo of other parts of Vidarbha. Similarly, the tone of speech in Chikhli, Mehkar and Deulgaonraja talukas of Buldhana district is similar to that of nearby parts of Marathwada. If someone from this area speaks to a person from Nagpur or Wardha, the latter may get confused whether the former is from Vidarbha or Marathwada. Likewise, Khandeshi dialect spoken in parts of Jalgaon district adjacent to Vidarbha is too similar to be differentiated from Varhadi of Malkapur- Shegaon belt of Buldana district. The perfect varhadi can be heard in Akola and Amravati district.