Halbi (also Bastari, Halba, Halvas, Halabi, Halvi) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language, transitional between Odia and Marathi. It is spoken by at least 766,297 people across the central part of India. Halbi is often used as a trade language, but there is a low literacy rate. It is written in the Odia and Devanagari scripts. It uses SOV word order (subject-object-verb), makes strong use of affixes, and places adjectives before nouns.