The
Garhwali (गढ़वाली (
Devanagari)) are people of the hilly
Garhwal Division of
Uttarakhand,
India. The
Garhwali language (गढ़वाली भाषा (
Devanagari)) is a
Central Pahari language belonging to the Northern Zone of
Indo-Aryan and is native to
Garhwal.
The Central Pahari languages include Garhwali and Kumauni (spoken in the Kumaun region of Uttrakhand). Garhwali, like Kumauni, has many regional dialects spoken in different places in Uttarakhand. The script used for Garhwali is Devanagari.
Garhwali is one of the 325 recognized languages of India spoken by over 2,267,314 people in Tehri Garhwal, Pauri Garhwal, Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Dehradun, Haridwar and Rudraprayag districts of Uttarakhand. Garhwali is also spoken by people in other parts of India including Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Almost all people who can speak and understand Garhwali can also speak and understand Hindi, the official language of India. However, due to a number of reasons, Garhwali is one of the languages which is shrinking very rapidly. UNESCO’s Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger designates Garhwali as a language which is in the unsafe category and requires consistent conservation efforts.
Development of Garhwali
In the middle period of the course of development of
Hindi, there were many
apabhraṃśa (dialects) of Hindi. Of these, the most popular apabhraṃśa of northern medieval India was
Shauraseni Prakrit. Shauraseni gave birth to three sub-languages, which were
Western Hindi (in the region around
Mathura,
Meerut and
Delhi),
Rajasthani (in
Rajasthan) and
Pahari (in the west-sub
Himalayan region). Therefore it is believed that Garhwali, being one of the
Central Pahari languages, was developed from
Shauraseni Prakrit and
Sanskrit from ancient India.
.
Indo-European studies
The
Bangani dialect of Garhwali played a role in
Indo-European studies in the 1980s, when
Claus-Peter Zoller announced the discovery of apparent traces of a
centum language in it. However,
George van Driem and
Suhnu Sharma later went there to do further fieldwork, and claim that it is in fact a
satem language, and that Zoller's data were flawed. Zoller does not accept this, and claims that it was their data that was flawed. He writes also that Bangali is a West Pahari language. This would imply it is not a dialect of Garhwali.
Garhwali 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
*Jadhi - Spoken in parts of Uttarkashi.
(Linguistically unrelated but geographically neighboring languages include: the Tibeto-Burman language Marchi/Bhotia - spoken by Marchas, neighbouring Tibet.)
Garhwali in Media
In the last few decades many Garhwali folk singers like
Narendra Singh Negi,
Pritam Bhartwan and many more have roused people’s interest in Garhwali language by their popular songs and videos. On average there is one movie in four or five years in Garhwali. If you are planning to visit tourist places of this Middle Himalayan Region (
Badrinath,
Kedarnath,
Uttarkashi,
Joshimath etc.), your knowledge of Garhwali can be useful.
See also
Garhwal Division
Kumaoni language
Garhwal Kingdom
SIL
Further reading
References
External links
Ethnologue.com
External links
Category:Indo-Aryan languages
Category:Uttarakhand
