Haryanvi Alphabet

Haryanvi (हरियाणवी), also called Bangru after the Bangar country of central Haryana, has no alphabet of its own: it is written in Devanagari, the script of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit. There is no official Haryanvi spelling either. Hindi is the language of Haryana's schools, newspapers and offices, and Haryanvi lives mostly in speech, songs, folk theatre, jokes and films; when people write it, in song lyrics, ragni booklets or a WhatsApp status, they use the Hindi letters and spell each word the way it sounds.

Devanagari is an abugida. Every consonant carries a built-in short a, so क reads ka; any other vowel is added as a matra, a sign attached to the consonant: का kā, कि ki, की kī, कु ku, के ke, को ko. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ are used only at the start of a word or after another vowel. The matra ि is written to the left of its consonant even though it is said after it, and the line along the top, the shirorekha, joins the letters of a word. There are no capital and small letters.

The consonants are ordered by where they are made in the mouth, from the throat (क ख ग घ ङ) to the lips (प फ ब भ म), each row running plain, aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated and nasal. The virama ् strips a consonant of its a so that it joins the next one into a cluster: म्ह in म्हारा (mhārā, our), or the familiar clusters क्ष, त्र and ज्ञ, which are typed as two letters with a virama between them.

Haryanvi letters and sounds

Because Haryanvi is written as it is said, its words keep their own shape even in the same letters as Hindi. Haryanvi सै (sai, is) stands where Hindi has है (hai), so "how are you?" is के हाल सै? (ke hāl sai?). म्हारा matches Hindi मेरा and हमारा, थारा (thārā, your) matches तुम्हारा, घणा (ghaṇā, very) matches बहुत, कोनी (konī, not) is often used where Hindi has नहीं, and a boy and a girl are छोरा and छोरी.

The letter ण (retroflex ṇ, said with the tongue curled back) is far more common in Haryanvi than in Hindi, because Haryanvi often has ṇ where Hindi has n after a vowel: पाणी (pāṇī, water) for Hindi पानी, खाणा (khāṇā, food) for खाना. In the same way rural Haryanvi has a retroflex l in many words where Hindi has ल; some writers show it with ळ, the letter Marathi and Rajasthani use for that sound, while most simply write ल.

The dotted letters ड़ and ढ़ are flaps, a quick tap of the curled tongue, as in धाकड़ (dhākaṛ, tough, fearless) and बढ़िया (baṛhiyā, great). The dot is the nukta ़. For nasal vowels Haryanvi uses the candrabindu ँ (हाँ, yes) and the anusvara ं (मैं, I), as Hindi does. A few letters turn up only in Sanskrit words borrowed through Hindi: ऋ and its matra ृ (कृष्ण, Krishna) and the visarga ः (दुःख, sorrow).

How to type Haryanvi in Hindi letters

On a phone the easiest way is transliteration. Add Hindi to Gboard on Android or iPhone, or the Hindi Transliteration keyboard on iPhone, then type the word in English letters, such as mhara haryana, and pick म्हारा हरियाणा from the suggestions. The Devanagari layouts on the same phones show the letters directly, with the matras on their own keys.

On Windows, add Hindi under Settings → Time & language → Language & region and choose a layout: Devanagari – INSCRIPT, where every key is one letter, or a phonetic one where you type as it sounds; switch with Win+Space. On a Mac, add Hindi – Transliteration, Devanagari or Devanagari – QWERTY under System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources and switch with Control+Space or the Globe key. With the English (India) keyboard on Windows, AltGr+4 (or Ctrl+Alt+4) types ₹.

ड़ and ढ़ can be stored two ways: as one character or as ड or ढ followed by the nukta ़. They look the same, and keyboards usually produce the two-character form, so if a search does not find a word, try the other one. In HTML any letter can be written by its code: ण is ण, ळ is ळ, । is । and ₹ is ₹.

Where Haryanvi is spoken

CLDR lists about 17 million Haryanvi speakers in India. The figure is an estimate; the Census of India groups Haryanvi under Hindi, and many speakers simply give their language as Hindi.

Haryanvi belongs to the Western Hindi group of languages, next to the Khari Boli of Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh on which standard Hindi and Urdu are built, and it shades into Punjabi to the north and into Rajasthani and Marwari to the south-west. Its speech changes across the state, from the Bangru of the centre to Ahirwati around Rewari, Mewati in the Nuh district and Bagri in the dry west. For the same letters in their standard form, see the Hindi collection; for neighbouring languages, the Punjabi, Rajasthani, Marwari and Urdu ones; and for the country's flag and emoji, the India collection.

Haryanvi words, songs and emoji

Much Haryanvi is typed today in song titles, comments and status lines. Haryanvi pop songs draw huge audiences online, and older forms live on in ragni, sung verse duels performed at village gatherings, and saang, the open-air folk theatre. Lyrics written in Devanagari often close a verse with ॥, the double danda.

A well-known Haryanvi saying is देसां मैं देस हरियाणा, जित दूध दही का खाणा: "among all lands the best is Haryana, where milk and curd are the daily food", which is why 🥛 and 🐃 (Haryana's famous Murrah buffalo) appear in Haryanvi posts. 🌾 and 🚜 stand for a farming state, and 🤼 and 🥊 for its wrestlers and boxers. The film Dangal (2016), about the wrestling Phogat sisters from Haryana, made the Haryanvi line म्हारी छोरियाँ छोरों से कम हैं के? ("are our girls any less than boys?") known across India. And 🙏 goes with राम राम, the everyday Haryanvi greeting.