Kangri Letters & Script

Kangri is written today in Devanagari, the script of Hindi, Marathi and Nepali. Song lyrics, poems, local books and social media posts in Kangri usually use it, and any font that covers Devanagari writes Kangri. The name of the language is written कांगड़ी, after the Kangra valley, कांगड़ा.

Before that, Kangri and the other languages of the Himachal hills were written in Takri (टाकरी), a script descended from Sharada. Takri was the everyday hand of the hill states into the twentieth century: revenue records, letters, accounts and temple inscriptions were kept in it, and each area had its own variety. It gave way to Devanagari, but it was added to Unicode in version 6.1 (2012) as a block of its own, U+11680 to U+116CF, so Kangri can again be typed in it: 𑚊𑚭𑚫𑚌𑚪𑚯. You need a font with that block, such as Noto Sans Takri, to see it.

Kangri letters: vowels, matras and consonants

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant already contains the vowel a, so क is ka and म is ma. Other vowels are 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 where a syllable starts with a vowel. ऍ ॅ and ऑ ॉ write the vowels of English loanwords such as डॉक्टर (doctor), and the sign ृ appears in Sanskrit words like कृपा.

The consonants are arranged by where they are made in the mouth: क ख ग घ ङ at the soft palate, च छ ज झ ञ at the palate, ट ठ ड ढ ण with the tongue curled back, त थ द ध न at the teeth, प फ ब भ म at the lips, then य र ल व and श स ह. Kangri adds ळ, the retroflex l, and the flapped ड़, written as ड with the nukta dot ़. That is the sound in the middle of कांगड़ी itself; Takri has a separate letter for it, 𑚪.

The virama ् removes the built-in a so consonants can join: र् + म = र्म, as in धर्मशाला (Dharamshala). The anusvara ं and candrabindu ँ mark nasal sounds, as in कांगड़ा. Sentences end with the danda ।, verses and prayers with the double danda ॥, and numbers are written with Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ or, more often today, with ordinary 0–9.

How to type Kangri on a keyboard and phone

Because Kangri uses Hindi's letters, you type it with a Hindi keyboard. Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → add Hindi, then choose Hindi Traditional (the InScript standard, one key per letter) or Hindi Phonetic (type in Latin letters and get Devanagari). Switch with Windows + Space. Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add Hindi and pick Devanagari, Devanagari – QWERTY or Hindi – Transliteration. Phones: add a Hindi keyboard in Gboard or SwiftKey on Android, or Hindi on iPhone; transliteration modes use kangri to suggest Devanagari text, which you can correct to कांगड़ी.

Takri is not on the usual system keyboards, so copy its letters from this page. In HTML the danda । is ।, the double danda ॥ is ॥, ड़ is ड़ and ₹ is ₹. Please do not use the vertical bar | for a danda: it looks close, but search engines and screen readers treat it as a different character.

Where the Kangri language is spoken

Kangri is spoken in Himachal Pradesh, India 🇮🇳: in Kangra district, under the snowy wall of the Dhauladhar range 🏔️, and in the neighbouring districts of Hamirpur and Una. CLDR estimates about 2.3 million speakers. It is an Indo-Aryan language of the Western Pahari hills, very close to Dogri across the border in Jammu; George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India grouped Kangri with Dogri, and India's census lists it as a mother tongue under Hindi. Many speakers simply call their speech Pahari or Himachali. See also the collections for Dogri, Hindi, Punjabi, Garhwali and Kumaoni, and the country page for India, whose currency is the rupee ₹.

The valley is a land of goddess temples: the flames of Jwalamukhi 🔥, natural gas burning from the rock and worshipped as the Devi, Brajeshwari in Kangra town and Chamunda near Dharamshala, which is why जय माता दी and 🙏 🛕 fill so many Kangri messages. Palampur is ringed by tea gardens 🍵, the narrow-gauge Kangra Valley Railway 🚞 winds through the hills, paragliders 🪂 launch from Billing above Bir, and the delicate Kangra paintings 🖼️ of Radha and Krishna are among the best-known Pahari miniatures.

At weddings and festivals the region serves Kangri Dham (कांगड़ी धाम) 🍛🍚: guests sit in rows on the floor and eat from leaf plates while the cooks, called botis, serve rice, madra, mash dal, khatta and sweet rice in turn. It is one of the best-known things about Kangra, and the name is written with the same ड़.