| Halbi | |
|---|---|
| हलबी / ହଲବୀ | |
| Native to | India |
| Region | Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra |
| Ethnicity | Halba |
Native speakers | 766,297 (2011 census) [1] |
| Odia, Devanagari | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | hlb |
| Glottolog | halb1244 Halbi |
| Linguasphere | 59-AAF-tb |
 Halbi-speaking region | |
Halbi (also Bastari, Halba, Halvas, Halabi, Halvi) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, transitional between Odia and Marathi. [2] It is spoken by at least 766,297 people across the central part of India.
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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.[ citation needed ] It uses SOV word order (subject-object-verb), makes strong use of affixes, and places adjectives before nouns.
