Garhwali Alphabet & Letters

Garhwali (गढ़वाली) is written in Devanagari, the same script as Hindi, Nepali and Marathi: left to right, with the letters hanging from a line along the top (the shirorekha). There is no separate Garhwali script: the alphabet is Devanagari, and some letters shown here, such as ळ for the retroflex l, write sounds of Garhwali. The vowels are अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ; all except अ have a sign (matra) for use after a consonant (गा गि गी गु गू गृ गे गै गो गौ), because a bare consonant already carries an inherent a. The consonants follow the old phonetic grid, from क ख ग घ ङ through प फ ब भ म to य र ल व श ष स ह.

Every consonant carries a built-in a, so ग alone is ga. The virama ् removes it, and two consonants then join into a conjunct: क + ् + ष = क्ष, त + ् + र = त्र, द + ् + र = द्र as in रुद्रप्रयाग. Alphabet charts add क्ष त्र ज्ञ श्र at the end, but they are such joined pairs, not separate letters, and you type them as two letters with a virama between.

Garhwali has words and grammar of its own. Many words end in -ु or -ो: मेरु meru "my" (Hindi मेरा). "I" is मि mi, and the verb "to be" is छ or च with endings of its own: मि ठीक छौं "I am fine", तुम कन छा? "how are you?". Family words show it at once: भैजी bhaijī is an elder brother, भुला bhulā a younger one.

Special letters in Garhwali: ड़ ढ़, ळ and the nasal signs

ड़ and ढ़ are flaps: the tongue curls back and strikes once, like a quick r. The language's own name needs one: गढ़वाली, from गढ़ garh "fort", so Garhwal is the land of forts. The dot under them is the nukta ़. Unicode has two ways to write each: a single character (U+095C ड़, U+095D ढ़) or ड / ढ followed by the nukta. They look the same and are canonically equivalent; normalization to NFD turns the single character into the two-part form, but search matches both spellings only if it respects canonical equivalence.

Garhwali has a retroflex l, said with the tongue curled back; the standard Hindi alphabet lists ळ as a special consonant used in Garhwali. Many Garhwali writers spell it with ळ, the letter Marathi and Rajasthani use for the same sound, as in the name गढ़वळि; others simply write ल, so you will see both spellings of the same word. ळ is U+0933 and is on the Devanagari INSCRIPT layout, or copy it here.

Nasal vowels are marked with the candrabindu ँ (moon and dot), as in गाँव "village", and the anusvara ं (a dot alone) stands for a nasal before a consonant: गंगा "Ganga". When a matra already sits above the line, writers use the plain dot for both, as in में. The visarga ः appears only in Sanskrit words such as दुःख "sorrow", and ऑ ॉ write the o of English loanwords: डॉक्टर, कॉलेज.

How to type Garhwali on a keyboard and phone

Garhwali can be typed with Hindi (Devanagari) input, and Microsoft SwiftKey also lists it as a supported language. On Windows, add Hindi under Settings → Time & language → Language & region and choose the Devanagari INSCRIPT layout or the Hindi phonetic keyboard, where you type in Latin letters and pick the Devanagari word; switch with Win+Space. On a Mac, add Devanagari, Devanagari – QWERTY or Hindi – Transliteration under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources.

On a phone, add Hindi to Gboard or SwiftKey. Its transliteration mode lets you type mi theek chhaun and pick मि ठीक छौं from the suggestions, a common way to write Garhwali song captions, statuses and WhatsApp messages. The suggestions follow Hindi spelling, so Garhwali words sometimes need a letter fixed by hand; copy ढ़ ळ । ॥ or the digits ० to ९ from this page when the keyboard does not offer them.

In HTML any letter can be written by its code: ग is ग, ढ़ is ढ़, ळ is ळ and । is the danda ।. The "Garhwali fonts" people look for to design posters and video thumbnails are decorative Devanagari fonts: the letters are the same Unicode characters as on this page.

Where Garhwali is spoken

CLDR estimates about 3.8 million speakers of Garhwali, with speakers also recorded in Nepal; the 2011 census, which counts Garhwali under Hindi, recorded about 2.5 million people who named it as their mother tongue. Its home is the Garhwal division of Uttarakhand: the districts of Uttarkashi, Tehri Garhwal, Chamoli, Rudraprayag, Pauri Garhwal, Dehradun and Haridwar. Many Garhwali families also live in Delhi and other cities of North India, where the language is kept up in songs, films and family chat.

Garhwali has many local dialects; Srinagariya, the speech around the old royal capital Srinagar on the Alaknanda, has long been treated as the standard, alongside Tehriyali, Rathi, Salani and Nagpuriya. With Kumaoni, spoken in the Kumaon division next door, Garhwali forms the Central Pahari group of Indo-Aryan languages, and Nepali is a close relative further east. For the same Devanagari letters in neighbouring languages see the Kumaoni, Hindi, Nepali, Kangri, Sirmauri and Dogri collections, and for the flag and emoji of the whole country the India collection.

Uttarakhand emoji: Char Dham, Igas Bagwal and Phool Dei

Uttarakhand calls itself देवभूमि Devbhoomi, "land of the gods", and Garhwal holds all four temples of the Char Dham pilgrimage: Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath. People send 🛕🙏🏔️ with जय बाबा केदार or जय बद्री विशाल, and 🌊 for the rivers: the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda meet at Devprayag and from there are called the Ganga.

Igas Bagwal (इगास बग्वाल) is the Garhwali Diwali, celebrated eleven days after Diwali with lamps and bhailo, bundles of resinous pinewood set alight and swung on a rope; its emoji are 🪔🔥. Phool Dei (फूलदेई) welcomes spring: children put flowers on every doorstep singing फूलदेई, छम्मा देई, so it gets 🌼🌸. Garhwali music runs on the dhol and damau drums 🪘 with songs 🎶 and dances 💃, and the mountain kitchen on millets 🌾 such as mandua (finger millet) rotis 🫓 and jhangora kheer.

The forests matter too: the Chipko movement, in which village women hugged trees to stop them being felled, took its most famous stand in 1974 at Reni in Chamoli, so 🌲🌳🫂 carries a Garhwali story. And 🪖 is for the Garhwal Rifles, the Indian Army regiment of the region.