Khalapur is a census town

Census town

In India, a census town is one which has:# A minimum population of 5,000# At least 75% of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits# A density of population of at least 400 persons per km2.In Ireland, a census town is;...

 in Panvel

Panvel

Panvel is city and a municipal council in Raigad district in the state of Maharashtra. Panvel is also known as the gateway of Konkan region. It adjoins Navi Mumbai, and is just after the Thane district border. Panvel is located on the Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway about 21 kilometres from...

 subdivision of Raigad district

Raigad district

Raigad District , also known as Raigarh District, is a district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is located in the Konkan region. The district was renamed after Raigad, the fort which was the former capital of the Maratha leader Shivaji, and is located in the interior regions of the district,...

 in the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n state

States and territories of India

India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...

 of Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

. It is a suburb of Karjat

Karjat

Karjat is a city, a Municipal Council, a Tahsil and a sub-district in Raigad district, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai in the Indian state of Maharashtra.-Geography:...

. It is an industrial area with many chemical, plastic and steel units.

It is Toll Collection Station on Mumbai-Pune Expressway

Mumbai-Pune Expressway

The Mumbai Pune Expressway , officially the Yashwantrao Chavan Expressway is India's first six-lane concrete, high-speed, access controlled tolled expressway. It spans a distance of connecting Mumbai, the administrative capital of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India, with Pune, an...

 on from Mumbai-Pune direction travel and one of the five interchange point on it.

Liguistic Research

Khalapur is well-known internationally to those involved in sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...

, as a place where one of the earliest studies of the relationship between social differences and dialect differences was carried out by John Gumperz.

Gumperz chose Khalapur as a place to study speech patterns due to its being a small, highly stratified community. In all, Khalapur has 31 caste

Caste

Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...

s, ranging from Brahman

Brahman

In Hinduism, Brahman is the one supreme, universal Spirit that is the origin and support of the phenomenal universe. Brahman is sometimes referred to as the Absolute or Godhead which is the Divine Ground of all being...

s and Rajput

Rajput

A Rajput is a member of one of the patrilineal clans of western, central, northern India and in some parts of Pakistan. Rajputs are descendants of one of the major ruling warrior classes in the Indian subcontinent, particularly North India...

s at the top, to Chamar

Chamar

Chamar |tanner]]"; from the Sanskrit Charmakara) is a prominent occupational caste in India, Pakistan and Nepal. Chamar is a Dalit sub-caste mainly found in the northern states, such as Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi and in Nepal at least north to the Himalayas...

s and Bhangi

Bhangi

Bhangi is an Indian caste or jāti traditionally treated as untouchable, and was historically restricted to three occupations: cleaning latrines, sweeping, and scavenging . They prefer to be known as Balmiki...

s at the bottom, and 90% of the overall population was Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

, with the remaining 10% Muslim

Muslim

A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...

. Gumperz observed that the different castes were distinguished both phonologically

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 and lexically, with each caste having a vocabulary

Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...

 specific to their subculture

Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...

. Remarkably, the speech differences between Hindus and Muslims "are of the same order as those between individual touchable castes and certainly much less important than the variation between touchables and untouchables".

Gumperz also observed that the lower prestige groups sought to imitate the higher prestige speech patterns, and that over time, that had caused the evolution

Sociocultural evolution

Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...

 of the prestige away from the regional standard

Standard language

A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...

, as higher prestige groups sought to differentiate themselves from lower prestige groups. Gumperz concluded that in determining speech patterns in this community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

, "the determining factor seems to be informal friendship contacts", rather than work contacts.