Garhwali
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Garhwali | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Garhwal Division | |
| Total speakers: | 15,000 (2003) | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Northern zone Garhwali |
|
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | to be added | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | gbm | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Garhwali are a people of the hilly Garhwal Division of Uttaranchal. The Garhwali language belongs to the Pahari (Northern) subgroup of Indo-Aryan.
Bhotiyas living in the north speak Tibeto-Burman dialects that is unintelligible to other Garwhali dialects and Tibetan. The closest language is Kumauni (or Kumaoni) to its immediate east in the Central subgroup of the Pahari chain of dialects stretching from Himachal Pradesh to Nepal. Garhwali, like Kumauni has many regional dialects spoken in different places in Uttaranchal. The Script used for Garhwali is Devanagari.
The Bangani dialect of Garhwali played a certain 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 [1], and claim that it is in fact a satem language, and that Zoller's data were flawed. Zoller does not accept this [2][3], and claims that their data was flawed.
[edit] Dialects
- Pahari
- Tehri/Sailani (Gangapariya): spoken in Tehri Garhwal.
- Jaunsari: Spoken in Jaunsar-Babar area (strongly related to neighbouring Himachali dialects), only limited mutual intellegibility 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 (reported not intelligible to speaker of other dialects),
- Jaunpuri,
- Gangadi (Uttarkashi),
- Chandpuri.
- Tibeto-Burman
- Marchi/Bhotia: Spoken by Marchas, neighbouring Tibet.
- Jadhi: Spoken in parts of Uttarkashi.
