Rajasthani Language Letters

Rajasthani today is written in Devanagari, the script of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit, so people who search for the "Rajasthani alphabet" or "rajasthani bhasha ki lipi" find the same letters that children learn in Hindi at school. There are no capital and small letters, a headline joins the letters of a word, and you read left to right. There is no Latin "A to Z" for Rajasthani; when it is written in English letters, as in khamma ghani or padharo mhare des, spellings simply follow the sound.

Devanagari is an abugida: every consonant already contains a short a, so क is ka and म is ma. Other vowels are added as matras: का kā, कि ki, की kī, कु ku, के ke, को ko. The ि of कि is written before its 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 ऊँट (camel) or आज (today). ऋ, its matra ृ and the visarga ः come with Sanskrit words such as कृष्ण and दुःख.

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. The virama ् removes the built-in a so that consonants join, which Rajasthani does all the time with h: म्हारो (my, our), म्हैं (I), थांनै (to you). Conjuncts such as क्ष and त्र have no code points of their own; they are typed as two letters with a virama between them.

Rajasthani letters and sounds: ळ, ण, ड़ and ढ़

ळ is a retroflex l, said with the tongue curled back. Hindi lost it, but Rajasthani keeps it, as Gujarati (ળ) and Marathi do: काळो is "black" where Hindi says काला, and मेळो is a fair where Hindi has मेला. People typing in a hurry often write plain ल, but ळ is the careful Rajasthani spelling.

Between vowels Rajasthani often has the retroflex ण: पाणी (water; Hindi पानी), घणो (much, very). In Marwari, masculine singular forms commonly end in -o: म्हारो and थारो (my, your; Hindi मेरा, तेरा), छोरो (boy), घणो चोखो (very good). Those two habits alone give a Rajasthani line its own look on the page.

The dot under ड and ढ, the nukta ़, makes the flapped sounds ड़ and ढ़, a quick tap of the curled tongue: मारवाड़, मेवाड़, चित्तौड़, बड़ो (big). Typed text may store ड़ as one character or as ड followed by ़; both look the same, so if a search misses a word, type it the other way. Unicode even has a letter named after the largest Rajasthani language, ॸ (DEVANAGARI LETTER MARWARI DDA), for a Marwari d sound; few keyboards and fonts have it, so most writers use ड.

Mudiya and Mahajani: the old Rajasthani script

Before Devanagari became the rule in the twentieth century, Rajasthani merchants kept their bahi-khata ledgers, letters and bills in Mahajani, a quick bookkeeping script of north Indian traders that is also known as Mudiya or Muriya. That is why searches such as "rajasthani script mudia and devanagari" pair the two: Devanagari for books, schools and print, Mudiya for the shop. It is written without the headline, and the reader supplies most vowels from context, which made it fast to write and easy to misread.

Mahajani was added to Unicode in 2014 (version 7.0) as the block U+11150–U+1117F: 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 the ligature 𑅶 for श्री, the auspicious word written at the head of a page. To see the letters you need a font such as Noto Sans Mahajani; without it they show as empty boxes. There is no standard keyboard, so copy them from the grid.

How to type Rajasthani on a keyboard and phone

Rajasthani is typed with the Hindi keyboards, which have every letter it needs except sometimes ळ. Windows: Settings → Time & language → Language & region → add Hindi, then choose Hindi Traditional (InScript, one key per letter) or a phonetic layout that turns Latin typing into Devanagari; switch with Win+Space. Mac: System Settings → Keyboard → Input Sources → add Hindi – Transliteration, Devanagari or Devanagari – QWERTY, and switch with Control+Space or the Globe key. iPhone and Android: add Hindi in Gboard, SwiftKey or the iPhone keyboard settings; with transliteration you type ram ram sa and pick राम राम सा from the suggestions, which is a common way to write Rajasthani on WhatsApp.

If ळ is missing from your layout, the Marathi keyboard always has it, or copy it from this page. In HTML, ळ is ळ, ण is ण, ड़ is ड़, the danda । is ।, ॥ is ॥ and ₹ is ₹; the English (India) keyboard on Windows gives ₹ with AltGr+4. End a sentence with the danda । (पधारो म्हारे देस।), not with the vertical bar |, which looks similar but is a different character.

Where the Rajasthani language is spoken

Rajasthani is the language of Rajasthan and of the neighbouring edges of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, with Marwari also spoken across the border in Sindh, Pakistan. It is a family of closely related languages rather than one standard: Marwari in the western desert around Jodhpur and Bikaner, Mewari around Udaipur and Chittorgarh, Dhundhari around Jaipur, Hadoti around Kota and Bundi, Shekhawati in the north-east, Wagdi in the south, and Malvi beyond the border in Madhya Pradesh. Each of them has its own collection, as do Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Lambadi and Gujari, cousins that grew from the same roots.

Speaker numbers depend on what is counted. CLDR's estimate for the code raj itself is only about 1.4 million, because most speakers are counted under the individual languages (Marwari alone about 17 million) or under Hindi; in the 2011 census of India about 26 million people named Rajasthani as their mother tongue, listed as a variety of Hindi. Rajasthani is not among the 22 languages of the constitution's Eighth Schedule. The Rajasthan assembly asked for its inclusion in 2003, and manyata, recognition for the मायड़ भाषा (mother tongue), is still a popular cause. The Sahitya Akademi, India's academy of letters, does recognise Rajasthani and gives a yearly award for its literature. For the country's flag 🇮🇳 and emoji, see the India collection.

Rajasthani words, greetings and songs

The greeting that sounds most Rajasthani is खम्मा घणी (khammā ghaṇī), a courtly salute answered with घणी खम्मा and said with folded hands 🙏; राम राम सा is the everyday hello. The ending सा adds respect to names, titles and even to yes: हां सा, जी सा. "Welcome" is पधारो सा, and पधारो म्हारे देस (come to my land), a line from the folk song केसरिया बालम, became the slogan of Rajasthan Tourism. "How are you?" is often कांई हाल है? (kāī hāl hai?); in many parts of Rajasthan you also hear छै for है: कांई हाल छै?

Rajasthani has a long written tradition of song and poetry. Kanhaiyalal Sethia's धरती धोरां री (land of the sand dunes) is sung as an anthem of the state, the Manganiyar and Langa musicians of the Thar keep hundreds of folk songs alive, and the bhajans of Mirabai, the princess-saint of Mewar, mix Rajasthani with Braj. Printed songbooks often close a verse with ॥, and the emoji people add are the state's own: 🐪 🏜️ for the desert, 🏰 for the forts, 👳 for the safa, 💃 for ghoomar and 🪁 for the kites of Makar Sankranti in Jaipur.