Тхару

Tharu is an Indo-Aryan language cluster of around 2 million speakers, primarily in the Terai lowlands of southern Nepal (Dang, Bardiya, Kailali, Kanchanpur districts) and adjacent areas of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in India. The Tharu are an indigenous people who have inhabited the Terai for centuries, traditionally believed to have a degree of natural malaria resistance that allowed them to settle the formerly malarial lowlands. Linguistically, Tharu is part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan continuum, closely related to Bhojpuri (bho), Maithili (mai), and Awadhi (awa), but with distinctive Tharu vocabulary and dialect features. The ISO macrolanguage code "thr" specifically refers to Rana Tharu, while sister varieties like Dangaura Tharu (thl), Kochila Tharu (thq), and Chitwania Tharu (the) are linguistically distinct enough to be considered separate languages by some scholars. Despite vibrant speaker numbers, UNESCO classifies Tharu as vulnerable due to relentless Nepali and Hindi pressure in education and media.