Mewati language

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
(Redirected from Mewati)
Jump to: navigation, search
Mewati
मेवाती
Native to India (Mewat District of Haryana, Rajasthan) .
Native speakers
5 million (2002)[1]
Census results conflate most speakers with Hindi.[2]
Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wtm
Glottolog mewa1250[3]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Mewati (Hindi: मेवाती), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about five million speakers in the Alwar, Bharatpur and Dholpur districts of Rajasthan, Mewat districts of Haryana. It is popularly called the language of Mewat, the country of Meos.[4] Mewati dialect distinctly characterize the Meo culture.[5] It contributed profoundly to Rajasthani literature in medieval periods.The word Mewati also means a resident of the land of Mewat.This name is derived from Sanskrit word 'Mina vati',i.e.,a land of abounding in fish.[6][full citation needed][need quotation to verify]

Ahirwati is classified as a Rajasthani language,[7] and is spoken in the Mahendragarh and Rewari districts of Haryana as well as in district Kasur along with other minor areas of Pakistan . According to historian Robert Vane Russell, who wrote during the period of the British Raj, Ahirwati was a language of Ahirs spoken in the Rohtak and Gurgaon Districts of Punjab (now Haryana) and Delhi.[8]

There are 9 vowels, 31 consonants, and two diphthongs. Suprasegmentals are not so prominent as they are in the other dialects of Rajasthani. There are two numbers—singular and plural, two genders—masculine and feminine; and three cases—direct, oblique, and vocative. The nouns decline according to their final segments. Case marking is postpositional. Pronouns are traditional in nature and are inflected for number and case. Gender is not distinguished in pronouns. There are two types of adjectives. There are three tenses: past, present, and future. Participles function as adjectives.

Phonology

There are twenty plosives at five places of articulation, each being tenuis, aspirated, voiced, and murmured: /p t ʈ tʃ k, pʰ tʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ, b d ɖ dʒ ɡ, bʱ dʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ/. Nasals and laterals may also be murmured, and there is a voiceless /h/ and a murmured /ɦ/.

See also

References

  1. Mewati at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
  2. [1]
  3. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. District History
  8. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links