Meitei language

Meitei (/ˈmeɪteɪ/; ꯃꯩꯇꯩꯂꯣꯟ; মৈতৈলোন্, romanised: "Meiteilon"), officially known as Manipuri (/ˌmænɪˈpʊəri/, /mʌ-/; ꯃꯅꯤꯄꯨꯔꯤ; মণিপুরী), is a Tibeto-Burman language of northeast India. It is the official language and the lingua franca of Manipur, as well as one of the 22 official languages of the Indian Republic, included in the 8th Schedule to the Indian Constitution. It is one of the advanced literary languages, recognised by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. It serves as one of the recognised educational and literary languages in Assam and Tripura. Native to the Meitei people, it has around 3 million total speakers, and is used as L1 by around 1.8 million people, predominantly in the state of Manipur, and as L2 by different ethnic groups, in different parts of India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. It was used as a court language in the historic Manipur Kingdom, in accordance to the Manipur State Constitution Act 1947.

Meitei, along with Gujarati, hold the third place among the fastest growing languages of India, following Hindi (first place) and Kashmiri (second place), according to the 2011 census of India.

Meitei is the most widely spoken Tibeto-Burman language of India and the most spoken indigenous language of northeast India after Assamese and Bengali. There are 1.76 million Meitei native speakers in India according to the 2011 census. Most of these, or 1.52 million, are found in the state of Manipur, where they represent majority of its population. There are smaller communities in neighbouring Indian states, such as Assam (168,000), Tripura (24,000), Nagaland (9,500), and elsewhere in the country (37,500). Additionally, there are more than 1 million L2 speakers. The language is also spoken by smaller groups in neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh. Meitei is not endangered: its status has been assessed as safe in Ethnologue (where it is assigned to EGIDS level 2 "provincial language"), but is considered vulnerable in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.