Doteli Letters & Script

Doteli, also spelled Dotyali (डोटेली, डोट्याली), is the Indo-Aryan language of Sudurpashchim, the far-western province of Nepal. It takes its name from Doti, the old hill kingdom of the region whose name lives on in Doti district, and its ISO 639-3 code is dty.

Doteli belongs to the Pahari group of Indo-Aryan languages and is closely related to Nepali, close enough that Doteli was long treated as a dialect of Nepali. Across the Mahakali river, which forms Nepal's western border with India, it shades into Kumaoni, the language of the Kumaon hills of Uttarakhand. Nepal's census now counts Doteli as a mother tongue of its own, and Nepal's constitution recognises every mother tongue spoken in the country as a national language.

Doteli letters: the Devanagari alphabet

Doteli has no separate alphabet and no special font: it is written in Devanagari with the same letters as Nepali, Hindi and Marathi, so any Devanagari font on Windows, macOS, Android or iOS writes it. Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant already includes the vowel a, so क is ka and म is ma. Other vowels are added as signs called matras, written before, after, above or below the consonant: का kā, कि ki, की kī, कु ku, कू kū, के ke, कै kai, को ko, कौ kau. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ are used only where a syllable starts with a vowel, as in the अ of अछाम (Achham) or the उ of उत्तर (north); ऋ and its sign ृ appear in learned words from Sanskrit.

The 33 consonants run in the traditional order by where they are made in the mouth: क ख ग घ ङ, च छ ज झ ञ, ट ठ ड ढ ण, त थ द ध न, प फ ब भ म, then य र ल व and श ष स ह. Each row goes plain, aspirated (with a puff of breath), voiced, voiced aspirated and nasal. The virama ्, called halanta in Nepal, removes the built-in a so two consonants can join: क् + ष = क्ष, त् + र = त्र, ज् + ञ = ज्ञ. The candrabindu ँ and anusvara ं mark nasal sounds, and the visarga ः turns up mostly in Sanskrit words.

A sentence ends with the danda । (purnaviram, the full stop of Nepal), and verses or prayers may close with the double danda ॥. Question marks and commas are the ordinary ? and ,. Numbers are written with Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ or with 0–9; in Nepal the Devanagari ones are everyday, on dates in the Bikram Sambat calendar, on shop prices and on official papers.

How to type Doteli on a computer or phone

Doteli is typed with a Nepali keyboard. Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → add Nepali; its built-in layout puts one letter on each key. Some people in Nepal instead install the free Nepali Unicode Romanized layout, which places letters on the Latin keys that sound like them (k → क, m → म). Switch keyboards with Windows + Space.

Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add a Devanagari layout such as Devanagari – QWERTY, or Hindi – Transliteration, which turns Latin typing into Devanagari as you go; the letters are the same for Doteli. Phones: add Nepali in Gboard on Android; its transliteration mode lets you type in Latin letters and pick the Devanagari word. On iPhone, the built-in Hindi keyboard types the same Devanagari letters.

For a single character, copy it from this page. In HTML the danda । is ।, the double danda ॥ is ॥ and the rupee sign ₨ is ₨. In Nepal prices are usually written रु (र + ु) rather than ₨: रु १००. Please do not type the vertical bar | for a danda: it looks close, but search, screen readers and line breaking treat it as a different character.

Where the Doteli language is spoken

Doteli is spoken across Sudurpashchim Province: in the hill districts of Doti, Dadeldhura, Baitadi, Darchula, Achham, Bajhang and Bajura, and by many families in the lowland Terai districts of Kailali and Kanchanpur, around the cities of Dhangadhi and Bhimdatta (Mahendranagar). CLDR lists about 780,000 Dotyali speakers for Nepal. Counts differ because neighbouring forms such as Baitadeli, Bajhangi and Achhami are often listed by the census as mother tongues of their own, while many linguists treat them as dialects of Doteli; treat any single number as an estimate.

Many Doteli speakers also speak and write Nepali, the language of school and government, so everything on this page is shared with the Nepali collection. Hindi uses the same letters too, and in the Terai of the far west Doteli lives next to Tharu and, further east along the border, Awadhi. See the Nepal collection for the country's emoji, from 🏔️ to 🥟.

Doteli songs: deuda and the Gaura festival

Much of what people copy in Doteli is song. Deuda (देउडा) is the song and dance of the far west: men and women stand in a long line or circle with linked arms, step and sway together, and sing short verses, often answering each other in improvised couplets that tease, flirt or tell news. Deuda songs, Doteli gajal (ghazals) and modern Doteli pop are shared online with their lyrics in Devanagari, which is why doteli song lyrics is a common search for Doteli.

The great festival of the region is Gaura (गौरा पर्व), in late summer, when women fast and worship the goddess Gaura (Parvati) and her husband Mahesh (Shiva), soak and offer five kinds of grain called biruda, and villages dance deuda for days. Greetings for it go out written in Devanagari with 🙏, and ॐ or 🕉️ for the temple.