The Rajasthani languages are a group of various languages derived from Western Indo-Aryan languages, primarily spoken in Rajasthan and Malwa, and adjacent areas of Haryana, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in India and Bahawalpur division of Pakistani Punjab and the adjacent areas of Sindh. They have also reached different corners of India, especially eastern and southern parts, due to the migrations of people of the Marwari community who use them for internal communication. Rajasthani languages are also spoken to a lesser extent in Nepal, where they are spoken by 25,394 people according to the 2011 Census of Nepal.
The term Rajasthani is also used to refer to a literary language mostly based on Marwari..
Geographical distribution Most of the Rajasthani languages are chiefly spoken in the state of Rajasthan, but are also spoken in Gujarat, Western Madhya Pradesh, i.e. Malwa, and Nimar, Haryana, and Punjab. Rajasthani languages are also spoken in the Bahawalpur division of the Punjab and the Tharparkar district of Sindh in Pakistan. A distribution of the geographical area can be found in 'Linguistic Survey of India' by George A. Grierson.
Speakers Standard Rajasthani or Standard Marwari, a version of Rajasthani, is the common lingua franca of the Rajasthani people and is spoken by over 25 million people (2011) in different parts of Rajasthan.2011 Census datacensusindia.gov.in It has to be taken into consideration, however, that some speakers of Standard Marwari are conflated with Hindi speakers in the census. Marwari is the most spoken Rajasthani language with approximately 8 million speakers situated in the historic Marwar region of western Rajasthan.
In Indian census reporting, many Rajasthani varieties are counted under the broader "Hindi" language category as mother tongues, which can make it difficult to compare speaker totals across sources. Linguists and reference works therefore often discuss "Rajasthani" as a language cluster that includes major varieties such as Marwari, Malvi, Mewari, Dhundhari, Harauti, Nimadi and Bagri, while also noting that boundaries between “language” and “dialect” labels vary by framework.
Rajasthani also has a recognized literary presence beyond state-level education and activism for constitutional recognition. India’s National Academy of Letters, the Sahitya Akademi, lists Rajasthani among the languages in which it runs literary programs and confers awards, even though it is not currently included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. In academic classification, major catalogues such as Glottolog and Ethnologue treat Rajasthani as a distinct Western Indo-Aryan grouping and provide structured listings of its principal varieties.
History The various Rajasthani languages and dialects form a sub-branch of the Western Indo-Aryan languages. While references to a separate language of Rajasthan are as old as the 8th century it wasn't until the 18th century that a Rajasthani linguistic identity emerged.
Classification
The Rajasthani languages belong to the Western Indo-Aryan language family. However, they are controversially conflated with the Hindi languages of the Central-Zone in the Indian national census, among other places. The main Rajasthani subgroups are:
Rajasthani Western Rajasthani Marwari Godwari Dhatki Shekhawati Mewari Bhilli-Banjara Adivasi Wagdi Lambadi Saharia Northern Rajasthani Bagri Bagri (Sri Ganganagar district, Hanumangarh district, churu district, majority of bikaner district, Sirsa district, Fatehabad district of haryana and Fazilka district of punjab.) Vishnoi / Bishnoi Bagri [ with a slight difference of pronunciation of some words like स to ह, some differences or words like कठे, बठे /(kathe bathe)where, there) to कित बीत /(kit bit), इन बिन/(ine bine)/(here, there) to इत बीत, उड़ ज्या/(ud jya)/ (go there) to बु ज्या Eastern Rajasthani Malvi Ujjaini (Ujjain, Sehore, Dhar, Dewas, Indore, Shajapur and Agar Malwa districts.) Dashori Malvi( Mandsaur, Neemuch and Ratlam districts.) (often considered in Western Rajasthani because of similarities with Marwari and Mewari Rajwadi Malvi( Ujjain, Dhar and Ratlam districts.) Umathwadi (Rajgarh district.) Sondhwadi (Jhalawar district.) Dangesari Malvi( kota, Jhalawar districts) Bhoyari / Pawari (Betul, Chhindwara, Pandhurna and Wardha districts.) Dhundhari Jaipuri Nagarchol Harauti Nimadi Bhuwani
Languages and dialects
Language ISO 639-3 ScriptsNo. of speakers Geographical distribution Rajasthani raj Devanagari; previously Mandya; Mahajani 25,810,000 Western and Northern parts of Rajasthan Marwari mwr Devanagari 7,832,000 Marwar region of Western Rajasthan Malvi mup Devanagari 5,213,000 Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan Mewari mtr Devanagari 4,212,000 Mewar region of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh Wagdi wbr Devanagari 3,394,000 Dungarpur and Banswara districts of Southern Rajasthan Lambadi lmn Devanagari, Kannada, Telugu 4,857,819 Banjara communities of Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh Hadauti hoj Devanagari 2,944,000 Hadoti region of southeastern Rajasthan Nimadi noe Devanagari 2,309,000 Nimar region of west-central India within the state of Madhya Pradesh Bagri bgq Devanagari 1,657,000 Bagar region of Rajasthan, Punjab, and Haryana. In Rajasthan: Nohar-Bhadra, Anupgarh, Hanumangarh, Northern & Dungargarh tehsils of Bikaner district and Sri Ganganagar district; Taranagar, Sidhmukh, Rajgarh, Sardarshahar, Ratangarh, Bhanipura tehsils of Churu district.
In Haryana: Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar, Bhiwani, Charkhi Dadri.
In Punjab: Fazilka & Southern Muktsar district. Dhundhari dhd Devanagari 1,476,000 Dhundhar region of northeastern Rajasthan: Jaipur, Sawai Madhopur, Dausa, Tonk, and some parts of Sikar and Karauli districts Gujari gju Takri, Pashto-Arabic 122,800 Northern parts of India and Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan Dhatki mki Devanagari, Mahajani, Arabic 210,000 Pakistan and India (Jaisalmer and Barmer districts of Rajasthan and Tharparkar and Umerkot districts of Sindh) Shekhawati swv Devanagari 3,000,000 The Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, which comprises the southern Churu, Jhunjhunu, Neem-Ka-Thana, and Sikar districts. Godwari gdx Devanagari, Gujarati 3,000,000 Pali and Sirohi districts of Rajasthan and Banaskantha district of Gujarat. Bhoyari/Pawari Devanagari 15,000–20,000 Betul, Chhindwara, and Pandhurna districts of Madhya Pradesh, as well as Wardha district of Maharashtra. It is exclusively spoken by the Bhoyar-Pawars who migrated from regions of Rajasthan and Malwa to the Betul, Chhindwara, Pandhurna, and Wardha regions. Sahariya Devanagari
Official status George Abraham Grierson (1908) was the first scholar who gave the designation 'Rajasthani' to the language, which was earlier known through its various dialects, as well as the term, Maru Bhasa (मरु भासा), as referenced in Udyotan Suri's Kuvalaya-mala in 778 AD. Generally, the term "Marudeshi (मरुदेशी)" historically refers to Rajasthani culture, while "Gurjari/Gurjarati" evolved to become "Gujarati." The various kingdoms present in the Rajasthani-speaking region, including those in Malwa, used their local Rajasthani variety as the official language of administration, from their founding in the early medieval era up until independence from Britain in 1947. Rajasthani and Gujarati also developed a cursive, corrupt version of the Devanagari script, of which the present Gujarati script could be considered a standardized variant. Each kingdom used its own hand of this script, as documented by George Abraham Grierson for the Marwari, Bikaneri, Malvi, and Hadauti hands.
India's National Academy of Literature, the Sahitya Akademi, and University Grants Commission recognize Rajasthani as a distinct language, and it is taught as such in Bikaner's Maharaja Ganga Singh University, Jaipur's University of Rajasthan, Jodhpur's Jai Narain Vyas University, Kota's Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University and Udaipur's Mohanlal Sukhadia University. The state Board of Secondary Education included Rajasthani in its course of studies, and it has been an optional subject since 1973. National recognition has lagged, however.
In 2003, the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly passed a unanimous resolution to insert recognition of Rajasthani into the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. In May 2015, a senior member of the pressure group Rajasthani Bhasha Manyata Samiti said at a New Delhi press conference: "Twelve years have passed, but there has absolutely been no forward movement."Press Trust of India, "Sit-in for constitutional recognition of Rajasthani planned", 4 May 2015, The Economic Times. Accessed 22 April 2016.
All 25 Members of Parliament elected from Rajasthan state, as well as former Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje Scindia,Press Trust of India, "Vasundhara Raje flags off ‘Rajasthani language rath yatra’", 26 July 2015, The Economic Times. Accessed 22 April 2016 have also voiced support for official recognition of the language.
In 2019 Rajasthan Government included Rajasthani as a language subject in state's open school system.
A committee was formed by the Government in March 2023 to make Rajasthani an official language of the state after huge protests by the youths of Rajasthani Yuva Samiti.
Grammar Rajasthani is a head-final, or left-branching language. Adjectives precede nouns, direct objects come before verbs, and there are postpositions. The word order of Rajasthani is SOV, and there are two genders and two numbers. There are no definite or indefinite articles. A verb is expressed with its verbal root followed by suffixes marking aspect and agreement in what is called a main form, with a possible proceeding auxiliary form derived from to be, marking tense and mood, and also showing agreement. Causatives (up to double) and passives have a morphological basis. It shares a 50%-65% lexical similarity with Hindi (this is based on a Swadesh 210 word list comparison). It has many cognate words with Hindi. Notable phonetic correspondences include /s/ in Hindi with /h/ in Rajasthani. For example /sona/ 'gold' (Hindi) and /hono/ 'gold' (Marwari). /h/ sometimes elides. There are also a variety of vowel changes. Most of the pronouns and interrogatives are, however, distinct from those of Hindi.
Use of retroflex consonants The phonetic characteristics of Vedic Sanskrit, surviving in Rajasthani language, is the series of "retroflex" or "cerebral" consonants, ṭ (ट), ṭh (ठ), ḍ (ड), ḍh (ढ), and ṇ (ण). These to the Indians and Rajasthani are quite different from the "dentals", t (त), th (थ), d (द), dh (ध), n (न) etc. though many Europeans find them hard to distinguish without practice as they are not common in European languages. The consonant ḷ(ळ) is frequently used in Rajasthani, which also occurs in vedic and some prakrits, is pronounced by placing the tongue on the top of the hard palate and flapping it forward. In common with most other Indo-Iranian languages, the basic sentence typology is subject–object–verb. On a lexical level, Rajasthani has perhaps a 50 to 65 percent overlap with Hindi, based on a comparison of a 210-word Swadesh list. Most pronouns and interrogative words differ from Hindi, but the language does have several regular correspondences with, and phonetic transformations from, Hindi. The /s/ in Hindi is often realized as /h/ in Rajasthani – for example, the word 'gold' is /sona/ (सोना) in Hindi and /hono/ (होनो) in the Marwari dialect of Rajasthani. Furthermore, there are a number of vowel substitutions, and the Hindi /l/ sound (ल) is often realized in Rajasthani as a retroflex lateral /ɭ/ (ळ).
Phonology Rajasthani has 11 vowels and 38 consonants. The Rajasthani language Bagri has developed three lexical tones: low, mid and high.Gusain 2000b
+Vowels Front Central BackClose Mid Open +Consonants Labial Dental/Alveolar Retroflex Post-alv./Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal Plosive Affricate Fricative Tap or Flap Approximant
Morphology