Marwari Language Letters

Marwari, the language of Marwar in western Rajasthan, is written today in Devanagari, the script it shares with Hindi, Rajasthani, Marathi and Nepali. Letters hang from a headline that joins them into words, there are no capital and small letters, and you read left to right. The language's own name is written मारवाड़ी.

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant already contains the vowel a, so क is ka and म is ma. Other vowels are added as signs called matras: का kā, कि ki, की kī, कु ku, के ke, को ko. The ि of कि is written before the consonant although it is said after it. The full vowel letters अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ stand where a syllable begins with a vowel, as in आछो or ऊंट (camel). ऋ and the visarga ः come with Sanskrit words such as ऋतु and दुःख and are rare in everyday Marwari.

The consonants follow the Indian order by place in the mouth: क ख ग घ ङ, च छ ज झ ञ, ट ठ ड ढ ण, त थ द ध न, प फ ब भ म, then य र ल व and श ष स ह. Each row runs plain, aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated, nasal. The virama ् removes the built-in a so consonants can join, which Marwari does constantly in clusters with h: म्हारो (my), म्हैं (I), थांनै (to you).

Marwari letters: ळ, ण, ड़, ढ़ and historic ॸ

ळ is a retroflex l, said with the tongue curled back. Marwari writes it, as do Gujarati (ળ) and Marathi: काळो is "black" (Hindi काला), मेळो is a fair (Hindi मेला). Many people typing in a hurry write plain ल, but ळ is the Marwari spelling.

Marwari often has the retroflex ण: पाणी (water, Hindi पानी), घणो (much, very). Many Marwari words end in -o (Hindi -ā): म्हारो and थारो (my, your; Hindi मेरा and तेरा), घणो चोखो (very good). Those two habits alone give a line of Marwari its own look on the page.

The nukta ़ under ड and ढ makes the flapped r sounds ड़ and ढ़: मारवाड़, बाड़मेर (Barmer), बड़ो (big). Because this sound lies between r and d, the same word is spelled Marwari or Marwadi in English. Typed text may store ड़ as one character or as ड followed by ़; both look the same.

Unicode also has a historic Marwari letter, ॸ (U+0978, DEVANAGARI LETTER MARWARI DDA): older Marwari orthography used it for [ɖ], while ड represented its flap allophone [ɽ]. It is mainly useful when transcribing historical texts. Nasal vowels use the candrabindu ँ or the dot ं: हूँ, म्हैं, थांनै.

Mahajani: the Marwari merchants' script

For centuries Marwari traders kept their ledgers, the red cloth-bound bahi-khata, not in Devanagari but in Mahajani, a fast bookkeeping script of north Indian merchants used for Marwari, Hindi and Punjabi accounts. Searches for "rajasthani mahajani script" mostly mean this script. During the twentieth century Devanagari took over, and Mahajani is now mainly a historical script, met in old ledgers and family papers.

Mahajani was added to Unicode in 2014 (version 7.0) as the block U+11150–U+1117F, with 39 characters: five vowel letters 𑅐 𑅑 𑅒 𑅓 𑅔 (a i u e o), consonants from 𑅕 ka to 𑅱 ha and 𑅲 ṛa, a nukta, an abbreviation sign 𑅴, a section mark 𑅵 and a ligature for श्री, 𑅶, the auspicious word written at the head of a page. Mahajani has no vowel signs: consonant letters can represent several syllables, so readers usually infer the vowels from context.

To see the letters you need a font that has them, such as Noto Sans Mahajani; without it they show as empty boxes. There is no standard Mahajani keyboard, so copy the letters from the grid above.

How to write the Marwari language on a computer and phone

Marwari is typed with the Hindi Devanagari keyboards. Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → add Hindi, then choose Hindi Traditional (InScript, one key per letter) or Hindi Phonetic, which turns Latin typing into Devanagari (mharo → म्हारो). Switch with Windows + Space. Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → Hindi, with the Devanagari, Devanagari – QWERTY or Hindi – Transliteration layout. iPhone and Android: add the Hindi keyboard in Settings, Gboard or SwiftKey; with the transliteration option you can type khamma ghani and look for खम्मा घणी among the suggestions. If your phone keyboard offers Marwari itself, it writes the same Devanagari.

ळ is missing from some Hindi layouts; Marathi keyboards, which need it, include it, or copy it from this page. In HTML, ळ is ळ, ॸ is ॸ, the danda । is ।, ॥ is ॥ and ₹ is ₹; the English (India) keyboard on Windows gives ₹ with Right Alt + 4. End a sentence with the danda । (पधारो म्हारे देस।), not with the vertical bar |, which looks similar but is a different character for search, screen readers and line breaking. Devanagari digits ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ appear in old ledgers and dates; everyday writing mostly uses 0–9.

Where the Marwari language is spoken

Marwari is the language of Marwar, the western, desert half of Rajasthan around Jodhpur (जोधपुर), Bikaner (बीकानेर), Nagaur (नागौर), Barmer (बाड़मेर), Jaisalmer (जैसलमेर), Pali (पाली) and Jalore (जालोर). CLDR estimates about 17 million speakers, all counted in India; estimates vary because India's census files Marwari under Hindi.

Marwari is the largest of the Rajasthani languages, and Rajasthani is not yet among the 22 languages of the constitution's Eighth Schedule, a recognition its speakers have long asked for. Marwari merchant families, the community that is itself called the Marwaris, settled in Kolkata, Mumbai, Assam and many other trading towns, so the language is heard far beyond the desert. For the neighbouring languages see the Rajasthani, Hindi and Gujarati collections, and for the country's emoji and flag 🇮🇳 the India collection.