Marwari ( Mārwāṛī मारवाड़ी; also rendered Marvari, Marwadi, Marvadi), is spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and Haryana and in Eastern Pakistan. With some 13.2 million speakers (as of 1997, ca.), it is the largest language by number of speakers of the Marwari subgroup of the Rajasthani language. There are 13 million speakers in Rajasthan and rest 200,000 in Eastern Pakistan. There about 23 dialects of the Marwari Language.
It is popularly written in Devanagari script, as is Hindi, Sanskrit and Nepali. Marwari currently has no official status as a language of education and government. There has been a push in the recent past for the national government to recognize this language and give it a scheduled status. The state of Rajasthan recognizes Rajasthani as a language.
In Pakistan, there are two varieties of Marwari. They may or may not be close enough to Indian Marwari to be considered the same language. Marwari speakers are concentrated in Sindh.
The Marwari language was used in the recent Indian movie, Paheli, where it was mixed with Hindi so it is understandable to the main stream (Hindi speakers) audience. Marwari is still spoken widely in and around Jodhpur. There are ongoing efforts to identify and classify this language cluster and the language differences.
History
It is said that Marwari and Gujarati evolved from
Gujjar Bhakha or
Maru-Gurjar, language of the
.
Formal grammar of Rajasthani was written by Jain monk and eminent scholar
Hemachandra Suri.
Classification and related languages
Marwari sounds similar to Haryanvi and is similar to Gujrati, Punjabi, Hindi and Haryanvi. Closely related languages to Marwari in the Rajasthani cluster are:
Gojri,
Shekhawati,
Hadoti,
Dhundhari,
Mewari,
Brij,
Bagri,
Wagdi,
Mewati.
Geographical distribution
is primarily spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari speakers have dispersed widely throughout India and other countries but are found most notably in the neighboring state of Gujarat and in Eastern Pakistan. Speakers are also found in
Bhopal. With some 13.2 million speakers (as of 1997, ca. 13 million in India and 200,000 in Pakistan) it is the largest of the Marwari subgroup of the Rajasthani cluster of western dialects of Hindi.
Phonology
It shares a 50%-65% lexical similarity with Hindi (this is based on a
Swadesh 210 word list comparison). Marwari has many
cognate words with Hindi. Notable phonetic correspondences include /s/ in Hindi with /h/ in Marwari. 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
are, however, distinct from those of Hindi.
Grammar
Marwari language has grammar structure which is quite similar to the Hindi language. Its primary sentence structure is SOV (
subject–object–verb). Most of the pronouns and interrogatives used in Marwari language are distinct from those used in Hindi. At least Marwari proper and
Harauti have a
clusivity distinction.
Vocabulary
Marwari Vocabulary language is somehow similar to Hindi language but it has difference in speaking of it. They use words which is not of Hindi language and are purely of Sanskrit language.
Writing system
Marwari is generally written in the Devanagari script, although the
Mahajani script is traditionally associated with the language. Traditionally it was written in Mahajani script (which does not have vowels, only consonants). In Pakistan it is written in the
Perso-Arabic script with modifications. Historical Marwari orthography for Devanagari uses other characters in place of standard Devanagari letters.
[Pandey, Anshuman. 2010. Proposal to Encode the Marwari Letter DDA for Devanagari]
See also
External links
