Hadoti Language Letters

Hadoti (हाड़ौती), also spelled Hadothi or Harauti, is the language of the Hadoti region of south-eastern Rajasthan: the districts of Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar, parts of which lie in the Chambal basin. The name means the land of the Hadas, the Hada Chauhan Rajputs who ruled the kingdoms of Bundi and Kota. Hadoti is one of the Rajasthani languages, a cousin of Marwari, Mewari and Shekhawati, and it has its own ISO language code, hoj, although the Census of India counts it as a mother tongue under Hindi.

Hadoti is written in Devanagari, the script it shares with Hindi, Marathi and Nepali, and there is no fixed Hadoti spelling: writers follow Hindi conventions and spell local words the way they are said. School, newspapers and offices use Standard Hindi, while Hadoti is the language of home, the village and the market, of bhajans and wedding songs, local comedy videos and messages between friends. Everything you need to write it is on this page.

How the Devanagari letters work

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant letter carries a built-in short a, so क alone is ka and कम is kam. Other vowels after a consonant are written with a vowel sign, a matra, attached to it: का कि की कु कू के कै को कौ. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ are used only at the start of a word or after another vowel, as in ऋषि (sage), आम (mango) or ऊपर (up). The long line on top, the headstroke, joins the letters of a word.

The virama ् removes the built-in vowel, and two consonants written together usually merge into a conjunct: क + ् + ष gives क्ष, त + ् + र gives त्र, म + ् + ह gives the म्ह of Rajasthani म्हारो (my, our). Conjuncts have no code points of their own; they are typed as those three characters and the font draws the joined shape. The anusvara ं and the candrabindu ँ mark nasal sounds, as in कांई (what); in everyday writing the anusvara also stands for ङ ञ ण न म before another consonant, so ङ and ञ are mostly seen in Sanskrit spellings.

The dot below, the nukta ़, turns ड and ढ into the flapped sounds ड़ and ढ़, and you need one in the very first word: हाड़ौती, which also shows the au matra ौ. ऋ ृ and the visarga ः appear in learned words taken from Sanskrit (कृपा, दुःख), and ऑ ॉ write the English o in loanwords such as डॉक्टर. Hindi's dotted letters for Persian and Arabic sounds (ज़ फ़ क़) are left out here: they appear only in loanwords, and Rajasthani writers often use the plain ज फ क for them.

Hadoti language words, songs and sentences

Hadoti shares much of its everyday vocabulary with the other Rajasthani languages rather than with Standard Hindi. "My, our" is म्हारो, where Hindi says मेरा or हमारा, and "what" is कांई, where Hindi says क्या. Like Dhundhari around Jaipur, its northern neighbour, Hadoti forms "is" with छै rather than Hindi है, one of the features that set the eastern Rajasthani languages apart from Marwari. The usual polite greeting is राम राम सा, said with folded hands 🙏; the ending सा adds respect, as it does all over Rajasthan.

Hadoti is often written down as song lyrics. People look up the lyrics of Hadoti songs in Devanagari: the ballads and bhajans of the folk hero Tejaji (तेजाजी), who is worshipped across the region, women's wedding songs such as बन्ना-बन्नी, and the new Hadoti DJ songs that circulate on YouTube and WhatsApp. That is where the letters above get the most use, together with place names like कोटा, बूंदी, बारां and झालावाड़.

How to type Hadoti in Devanagari on a keyboard and phone

There is no separate Hadoti keyboard; the Hindi one has every letter Hadoti needs. On Windows, add Hindi under Settings → Time & language → Language & region and choose a layout: Hindi Traditional (InScript) puts the letters on fixed keys, and the phonetic layout lets you type ka to get क. Switch with Win+Space. On a Mac, add Hindi – Transliteration or Devanagari – QWERTY under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources and switch with Control+Space or the Globe key.

On a phone, add the Hindi keyboard in Gboard or in iPhone settings. Both offer transliteration: type ram ram sa in Latin letters and pick राम राम सा from the suggestions, a common way to write Hadoti on WhatsApp. In HTML, any letter can be written by its code: ह is ह, । is the danda । and ₹ is ₹.

Devanagari has its own full stop, the danda ।, and ॥ marks the end of a verse; commas, question marks, exclamation marks and quotation marks are the same as in English. Numbers can be written with Devanagari digits ०१२३४५६७८९ or with 0–9, which are now more common in print. Prices take the rupee sign: ₹५० or ₹50.

Where the Hadoti language is spoken

Hadoti is at home in Kota, Bundi, Baran and Jhalawar, the four districts of the Hadoti region on the plateau of south-eastern Rajasthan, bordering Madhya Pradesh. CLDR estimates about 1.2 million speakers, all in India; estimates vary widely between sources, because the Indian census records Hadoti speakers under Hindi and many people who speak it at home name Hindi or Rajasthani as their language.

Its closest relative is Dhundhari, spoken around Jaipur to the north; Mewari lies to the west, Malvi to the south over the Madhya Pradesh border, and Marwari and Shekhawati further away in the west and north of Rajasthan. All of them are written with the same Devanagari letters: see the Hindi, Rajasthani, Marwari, Mewari and Shekhawati collections, and the India page for the flag 🇮🇳 and its national symbols.