Kannauji language

Kannauji is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in the Kannauj region of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Kannauji is closely related to Hindustani, with a lexical similarity of 83–94% with Hindi. Some consider it to be a dialect of Hindustani, whereas others consider it a separate Western Hindi language. Kannauji has at least 9.5 million native speakers as of 2001.

Kannauji shares many structural and functional differences from other dialects of Hindi, but in the Linguistic Survey of India it has been added as a variant of Braj and Awadhi.

Kannauji has two dialects or variants of its own: Tirhari and Transitional Kannauji, which is between standard Kannauji and Awadhi.

Kannauji is not a standard dialect of Hindi and can be assumed to be the transitory phase between Braj Bhasha and Awadhi. Eastern parts are heavily influenced by Awadhi whereas Western districts are Braj speaking. Kannauji is predominantly spoken around the historic town of Kannauj in the following districts of the Ganga-Yamuna Doab:

In the non-Doabi areas, it is spoken in Hardoi, western parts of Lakhimpur Kheri and Sitapur districts in Awadh and Shahjahanpur and Pilibhit of Rohilkhand.

A distribution of the geographical area can be found in volume 9 of 'Linguistic Survey of India' by George A. Grierson.

The population of the region is 22,011,017.

There is no published grammar of Kannauji till date, but some of the basic features of Kannauji, which can be observed easily, are as below: