Garhwali Language

The Garhwali are a people of the hilly Garhwal Division of Uttarakhand, India. The Garhwali language belongs to the Pahari (Northern) subgroup of Indo-Aryan.

Garhwali

Spoken in : Garhwal Division

Total speakers : 300,000 (2003)

Language family : Indo-European

Indo-Iranian

Indo-Aryan

Garhwali

Garhwali is a hilly dialect originated from mediveal Hindi. In the middle period of the course of development of Hindi, there were many "apbhransh" (dialects) of Hindi. Of these, the most popular "apbhransh" of western India was "Saurseni". Saurseni gave birth to three sub-language those were Western-Hindi (in the region around Mathura, Meerut and Delhi), Rajasthani (in Rajasthan) and Pahari (west-sub Himalayan region).

The Pahari sub language is the mother of Garhwali dialect along with Kumauni (spoken in theKumao region of Uttrakhand) and Himanchali (spoken in Himachal Pradesh). The closest language is Kumauni (or Kumaoni) to its immediate east, in the Central subgroup of the Paharichain of dialects stretching from Himachal Pradesh to Nepal. Garhwali, like Kumauni, has many regional dialects spoken in different places in Uttarakhand. The Script used for Garhwali is Devanagari.

Dialects

Pahari

· Tehri/Sailani (Gangapariya) - spoken in Tehri Garhwal

· Jaunsari - spoken in Jaunsar-Babar area (strongly related to neighbouring Himachali,

dialects), only limited mutual intelligibility with the other dialects।

· Srinagari - classical Garhwali spoken in erstwhile royal capital, similar to Pauri.

· Badhani

· Dessaulya

· Lohbya
· Majh-Kumaiya
· Bhattiani
· Nagpuriya
· Rathi
· Salani (Pauri)
· Ravai
· Bangani
· Parvati - reportedly not mutually intelligible with other dialects.
· Jaunpuri
· Gangadi (Uttarkashi)
· Chandpuri

Tibeto-Burman

Marchi/Bhotia - spoken by Marchas, neighbouring Tibet. Jadhi - Spoken in parts of Uttarkashi.

Garhwali is a dialect spoken by four million Garhwali people, mostly living in the Garhwali region of a north Indian state Uttaranchal. Almost all people who can speak and understand Garhwali can speak and understand Hindi also. This is one of the dialects which is shrinking very rapidly and becoming out of fashion. Most of the educated people who live in cities hardly speak Garhwali and in most cases parents still speak and understand Garhwali but their children cannot. Although it is easy to write Garhwali in Hindi (Devnagri) script, there is hardly any literature available in Garhwali.