Mewari Language Letters

Mewari has no script of its own. Like Marwari, Shekhawati, Hadothi and the other Rajasthani languages it is written in Devanagari, the alphabet of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit, and Mewari speakers learn to read and write in Hindi at school. There is no official Mewari spelling: when people write the language, in song lyrics, folk poetry, a wedding card or a WhatsApp status, they use the Devanagari letters and spell words the way they say them. The name itself shows one of its key letters: मेवाड़ी, with the flapped ड़.

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 at the start of a word or after another vowel. The matra ि is written to the left of its consonant although 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 ् removes a consonant's built-in a so that it joins the next one into a cluster, as in म्ह of म्हारो (mhāro, my, our), or the clusters क्ष, त्र and ज्ञ, which are typed as two letters with a virama between them.

Mewari letters and words, next to Hindi

Because Mewari is written as it is spoken, its words keep their own shapes even though they share their letters with Hindi. Many Mewari words end in -o, as across Rajasthan, where Hindi has -ā: म्हारो (mhāro, my, our) where Hindi has मेरा and हमारा, थारो (thāro, your) for तुम्हारा, and घणो (ghaṇo, very, a lot) where Hindi says बहुत. A boy and a girl are छोरो and छोरी.

Three letters do a lot of work in Mewari spelling. ण, the retroflex n said with the tongue curled back, often stands where Hindi has न after a vowel: पाणी (pāṇī, water) for Hindi पानी. ळ, the retroflex l that Marathi and Gujarati also use, marks the Rajasthani l sound in many words that Hindi writes with ल. And the flaps ड़ and ढ़, a quick tap of the curled tongue, appear in names such as मेवाड़ and चित्तौड़ (Chittor). The dot under them is the nukta ़.

For nasal vowels Mewari uses the candrabindu ँ and the anusvara ं 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). Respect is built into the everyday language: सा (sā) is added to names, titles and even to yes, as in हाँ सा, and हुकम (hukam) is the polite way to address an elder or a host.

How to type Mewari 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 khamma ghani, and pick खम्मा घणी 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 मेवाड़, try typing it the other way. In HTML any letter can be written by its code: ड़ is ड़, ण is ण, ळ is ळ, । is । and ₹ is ₹.

Where the Mewari language is spoken

Mewari is the language of Mewar, the old kingdom of the Maharanas in southern Rajasthan, today the districts around Udaipur, Rajsamand, Chittorgarh and Bhilwara. CLDR's estimate for Mewari's literate, functional population in India is about 1.4 million. The figure is only an estimate and other counts differ widely, because the Census of India groups Mewari with the other Rajasthani mother tongues under Hindi and many speakers give their language as Hindi or Rajasthani.

In ISO 639-3, Mewari (mtr) is a member of the Marwari macrolanguage (mwr); in the broader Rajasthani group, it lies near Marwari to the west and north-west, Hadothi to the east and Wagdi to the south, with Shekhawati further north, and shades into Malvi towards Madhya Pradesh and Gujarati across the border to the south-west. The difference between Mewari and Marwari is mostly vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar endings rather than letters; both are written with the same Devanagari. For the neighbours, see the Rajasthani, Marwari, Shekhawati, Hadothi, Wagdi, Gujarati and Hindi collections, and for the country's flag and emoji, the India collection.

Mewari words, songs and emoji

The greeting that says Mewar is खम्मा घणी (khammā ghaṇī), a courtly salute answered with घणी खम्मा, usually with folded hands 🙏; राम राम सा is the everyday village hello. Guests hear पधारो सा (padhāro sā, welcome), and पधारो म्हारे देस ("come to my land"), a line from the Rajasthani folk song केसरिया बालम, became Rajasthan's tourism slogan.

Mewar's history fills its songs and posts. 🏰 stands for its forts: Chittorgarh and Kumbhalgarh are part of the UNESCO World Heritage site Hill Forts of Rajasthan. 🐎 is Chetak, the horse of Maharana Pratap, who fought the Mughal army at Haldighati in 1576. 👳 is the Mewari pagdi, the turban whose style and colour mark the wearer's region and the occasion, and 💃 is ghoomar, the twirling dance of Rajasthani women at weddings and at Gangaur, a festival celebrated with processions to the lakes of Udaipur. The 16th-century poet-saint Mirabai, who married into the royal family of Mewar, sang her bhajans to Krishna in a Rajasthani mixed with Braj, and printed bhajan books still close each verse with ॥.