|Spoken in||South India|
|Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.|
Dakhni (Urdu: دکنی ;Hindi: दक्खिनी dakkʰinī), also known as Dakkhani, Deccani (Urdu: دکنی), is a dialect of the Urdu language, was spoken in the Deccan region of southern India, centered on the cities of Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Chennai. There is an extensive literature in this dialect, but it has fallen out of use in recent times.
Dakhni is spoken in the Deccan plateau of India. Just as Urdu developed in Lucknow, Dakhni developed in South India due to the mixing of various Indian based languages and Persian based languages. The term Dakhni is perhaps an umbrella for a group of dialects spoken by certain communities of Hindus & Muslims in the Deccan region. Thus, Dakhni dialects are an amalgam of Urdu, Marathi, Konkani, Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Arabic, Persian and Turkish.
Dakhni was the lingua franca of the Muslims of South India, chiefly living in Hyderabad state and further south. Though it is considered as a dialect of Urdu, it constitutes the traits of a different language in its own sense. Deccani was widely spoken across the South Indian peninsula with subtle changes in the dialect as you go down south away from Hyderabad.
North Dakhni - Spoken in areas of Former Hyderabad State: Mainly Hyderabad City, Telangana Region, Marathwada [Maharashtra], Hyderabad-Karnataka [Gulbarga, Bidar & Raichur in Present day Karnataka]
North Dakhni is more refined, rich in vocabulary and is spoken with delicacy and mannerism.
This tongue is used extensively in the spoken form; when it comes to writing and literary work, standard Urdu is used.
Most speakers of Dakhni live in the Indian region known as the Deccan. They inhabit the regions comprising the erstwhile Muslim kingdoms in South India viz. portions of the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.
Dialects of Dakhni include Savji bhasha i.e. the language of the Savji community in the Hubli-Dharwad-Gadag-Bijapur-Belgaum region.