Bhili Language Script & Letters

Bhili has no alphabet of its own. Like most languages of India's Adivasi (tribal) communities it was handed down by speaking and singing, and when it is written it borrows the script of the state around it. In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra that is Devanagari, the script of Hindi, Marathi and Rajasthani, which Bhil children learn at school; in Gujarat, Bhili is usually written in Gujarati script. Primers, song books and Bhili posts on social media in Devanagari therefore look like Hindi or Marathi at first glance, even though the words are Bhili.

Devanagari is an abugida: each consonant letter carries a built-in vowel a, so क is ka and भ is bha. Other vowels are added as signs called matras around the consonant: की kī, कु ku, के ke, को ko. The sign ि for short i is written before its consonant but typed after it, so कि is typed क then ि. Full vowel letters such as अ आ इ ए ओ are used only at the start of a word or syllable, as in आप or एक. The line along the top, the headstroke, ties the letters of a word together: भीली.

Letters and signs Bhili writing uses

Bhili writing uses the core Devanagari set shown here: eleven vowels with their matras, the 25 consonants arranged in five rows by where they are said in the mouth (from the throat, क ख ग घ ङ, to the lips, प फ ब भ म), and य र ल व श ष स ह. Each row runs from plain to aspirated to voiced: त is t, थ th, द d, ध dh. ङ ञ and ष appear mostly in Sanskrit and Hindi loanwords, and ऋ with its sign ृ only in borrowed words such as ऋषि.

Two marks matter in everyday Bhili spelling. The anusvara ं and candrabindu ँ show nasal sounds, which are frequent in Bhili as in its neighbours. The nukta, a dot under a letter, turns ड and ढ into the flapped sounds ड़ ṛ and ढ़ ṛh, heard in words like पहाड़ (hill, as in Hindi). Bhili, like Gujarati, Marathi and Rajasthani, also has a retroflex l, written ळ.

To join two consonants with no vowel between them, Devanagari uses the virama ् or fuses the letters into a conjunct: क + ् + ष = क्ष, त + ् + र = त्र, ज + ् + ञ = ज्ञ. Fonts draw these automatically, so you copy or type the parts and the conjunct appears.

How to type Bhili in Devanagari

Gboard for Android offers Bhili layouts in Devanagari and Gujarati, including transliteration. On Windows, add Hindi under Settings → Time & language → Language & region and choose the InScript keyboard or Hindi Phonetic, where typing on an English layout spells the sounds out in Devanagari; switch with Win+Space. On a Mac, add Devanagari – QWERTY (phonetic) or Devanagari (InScript) under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources. On Android and iPhone, add Hindi or Marathi in Gboard or the system keyboard; Gboard can also transliterate as you type in Latin letters.

The flapped letters are best typed as the plain letter followed by the nukta (ड then ़). Unicode also has single-code letters for ड़ and ढ़, but they normalize back to letter + nukta, so text copied from websites usually holds the two-part form; both look identical. In HTML any letter can be written by its code point: भ is भ, । is the danda । and ₹ is the rupee sign ₹.

The danda ।, a vertical stroke, is the traditional Devanagari full stop, used in Hindi; writers schooled in Marathi often use an ordinary full stop instead, so Bhili texts may show either. The double danda ॥ traditionally closes a verse in bhajans and other verse. Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ are taught in school, but phone text and prices mostly use 0–9: ₹500 rather than ₹५००.

Where Bhili is spoken

Bhili is the language of the Bhils, one of India's largest Adivasi peoples, in the hill country where Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra meet: around Jhabua, Alirajpur and Dhar, Banswara and Dungarpur, Dahod and Panchmahal, and Nandurbar and Dhule. CLDR estimates about 1.7 million speakers of Bhili proper, all in India. Counted more broadly, the 2011 Census of India recorded over 10 million speakers of Bhili/Bhilodi, the largest language of India outside the 22 languages of the Constitution's Eighth Schedule.

Bhili is an Indo-Aryan language closest to Gujarati and Rajasthani, and it gives its name to the Bhil group of languages, which includes Bhilali and Wagdi, each with its own collection here. Nimadi, Marwari and Marathi are spoken around it, and Gondi, another large Adivasi language, further east. Most Bhili speakers also speak the state language, Hindi, Gujarati or Marathi, so switching between them is normal; the India collection has the flag, rupee and emoji of the country as a whole.