Kumaoni Alphabet & Letters

Kumaoni (कुमाऊँनी, also spelled कुमाउनी) is written in Devanagari, the same script as Hindi, Nepali and Marathi: left to right, the letters hanging from a line along the top (the shirorekha). There is no separate Kumaoni script and no special Kumaoni font: every letter on this page is the same Unicode character a Hindi text uses, so any phone or computer that shows Hindi shows Kumaoni.

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: का कि की कु कू कृ के कै को कौ. Every consonant already carries a short a, so क alone is ka. 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. The virama ् removes the built-in vowel so two consonants can join: न + ् + द = न्द, as in नन्दा (also written नंदा). Alphabet charts add क्ष त्र ज्ञ at the end, but those are joined pairs typed as two letters with a virama between, not separate letters.

The language's own name is a small lesson in the script: कुमाऊँ (Kumaon) and कुमाऊँनी need the full vowel letter ऊ, because it follows another vowel, and the candrabindu ँ, because that ū is said through the nose.

Kumaoni letters and words: what makes it Kumaoni

Kumaoni shares its letters with Hindi; what makes a text Kumaoni is its own words and grammar. "Is" is छ (chha), where Hindi says है, so "what is your name?" is तुमर नाम के छ? and "how are you?" is तुम कस छा?. "My" is म्यर, as in the popular phrase म्यर पहाड़, "my hills". The family words are Kumaoni through and through: ईजा is mother, बाज्यू father, आमा grandmother, बुबू grandfather and दाज्यू an elder brother.

ड़ and ढ़ are flaps: the tongue curls back and strikes once, like a quick r, as in पहाड़ "mountain" and in बेड़ु, the wild fig of the best-known Kumaoni song, Bedu Pako Baro Masa. The dot under them is the nukta ़. Unicode can write each as a single character (U+095C ड़, U+095D ढ़) or as ड / ढ followed by the nukta; they look the same, and normalization turns the single character into the two-part form, so search treats them as one.

Nasal vowels take the candrabindu ँ (moon and dot), and the anusvara ं (a dot alone) stands for a nasal before a consonant; when a matra already sits above the line, writers use the plain dot for both. The visarga ः appears only in Sanskrit words, and ऑ ॉ write the o of English loanwords such as डॉक्टर. Kumaoni spelling is not standardized, so you will see the same word written several ways, with or without a final short vowel or a nasal sign.

How to type Kumaoni on a keyboard and phone

There is no separate Kumaoni keyboard: people type Kumaoni with the Hindi (Devanagari) keyboards. 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 and use its transliteration mode: type tum kas chha and pick तुम कस छा from the suggestions. The suggestions are trained on Hindi, so Kumaoni words such as म्यर or दाज्यू sometimes need a letter fixed by hand; copy ँ ड़ । ॥ 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: क is क, ँ is the candrabindu ँ, ड़ is ड़ and । is the danda ।. Please do not type a vertical bar | for the danda: it looks close, but search, screen readers and line breaking treat it as a different character.

Where the Kumaoni language is spoken

Kumaoni is the language of the Kumaon division of Uttarakhand: the districts of Almora, Nainital, Pithoragarh, Bageshwar, Champawat and Udham Singh Nagar. CLDR lists about 3.1 million speakers in India; the 2011 census, which counts Kumaoni under Hindi, recorded about 2.1 million people who named it as their mother tongue. Many Kumaoni families live in Delhi, Lucknow and other cities and keep the language alive in songs, festivals and family chat. Kumaoni is not one of India's 22 scheduled languages, and the vast majority of speakers also know Hindi.

George Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India counted around a dozen Kumaoni dialects, among them Johari in the high valleys, Soryali, Kali Kumaoni along the Kali river and Khasparjia around Almora, the last usually taken as the standard. Almora was the capital of the Chand kings, and Lok Ratna Pant "Gumani" is often called the first poet of Kumaoni.

With Garhwali, spoken in the Garhwal division next door, Kumaoni forms the Central Pahari group of Indo-Aryan languages, and Nepali, just across the Kali river, belongs to the wider Pahari family as its Eastern branch. For the same Devanagari letters in neighbouring languages see the Garhwali, Hindi, Nepali and Doteli collections, and for the flag and emoji of the whole country the India collection 🇮🇳.

Kumaoni emoji: Harela, Ghughutiya, Phool Dei and Kumaoni Holi

Harela (हरेला) is the festival of Kumaon. Some days before it, families sow several kinds of grain in small baskets; on the day the green sprouts are cut and placed on everyone's head with the blessing जी रया, जागि रया, "may you live, may you stay awake". The main Harela falls in Shravan, in mid-July, and people send 🌱🌿 and plant trees. On the eve of Makar Sankranti in January comes Ghughutiya: sweets of flour and jaggery are fried in the shape of little birds (ghughut), strung into necklaces, and next morning children call the crows to eat them, singing काले कौवा काले, घुघुति माला खाले, so 🐦‍⬛ is a Kumaoni festival emoji. Phool Dei in spring, when children leave flowers on every doorstep, gets 🌼🌸.

Kumaoni Holi is a festival of music 🎶: the baithki Holi is sung sitting indoors in classical ragas, the khadi Holi standing in a circle in the village courtyard, with drums 🥁🪘. At weddings, Chholiya dancers lead the procession with swords and shields ⚔️🛡️. For Diwali and other festivals women draw Aipan (ऐपण) on doorsteps and walls, patterns in red ochre and white rice paste 🎨🪔.

Kumaon counts itself part of देवभूमि, "land of the gods": the temple group of Jageshwar near Almora, the goddess Nanda Devi, whose peak rises over the region, and the fairs of Bageshwar and Almora get 🛕🙏🏔️. Nainital's lake and its rowing boats 🚣, the tigers and elephants of Corbett National Park 🐅🐘, the pine forests 🌲, the hill kitchen of mandua (finger millet) rotis 🌾🫓, Almora's brown Bal Mithai studded with white sugar balls 🍬, and 🪖 for the Kumaon Regiment, headquartered at Ranikhet, complete the set.