Some Sociolinguistic Dynamics in Maithili: Patterns, Transmission, Maintenance and Language Shift

This paper examines some sociolinguistic dynamics in Maithili. Findings indicate that Maithili speakers extensively use their mother tongue across nearly all daily domains— ranging from informal interactions, cultural activities, and media to digital communication. While a strong intergenerational transmission ensures that even young children fluently speak Maithili, the community increasingly faces an unintentional language shift due to regular contact with other languages. Speakers frequently mix or switch to Nepali, Hindi, and, among educated youth, English (Yadav,2021). This linguistic blending is not a deliberate shift, but rather an unconscious outcome of daily interactions. Nepali functions as a dominant contact language in all formal and official functional domains, Hindi serves as a prominent regional lingua franca in the Tarai, and English usage is primarily driven by the growing influence of English-medium educational institutions. Despite this dynamic multilingualism and the encroachment of wider languages, parental preference for Maithili instruction remains strong. Ultimately, the study highlights how regular interaction with Nepali, Hindi, and English leads to unconscious code-mixing, illustrating a complex, ongoing sociolinguistic shift within a vibrant mother-tongue community.