Languagle #35: Marathi
दिव्याखाली अंधार
Divyakhali andhar
"Darkness right under the lamp."
What it means
The place right next to the light can be the darkest. An oil lamp lights up the room but casts a shadow directly below it. Said when something is missed by the people closest to it, or when a knowledgeable person misses what is under their nose.
What kind of saying it is
Oral tradition. In Marathi, a म्हण. Passed down by word of mouth. Sayings like this have no single author.
About the Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by around 80 million people, mainly in the Indian state of Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai. It has a literary history going back more than seven centuries, including the devotional poetry of saints such as Dnyaneshwar and Tukaram. It is written in Devanagari, like Hindi and Nepali, with a few letter forms of its own, such as the ळ for a retroflex l.
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