Mewati language
Mewati is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by about three million speakers in the Mewat Region (Alwar and Bharatpur, districts of Rajasthan, Nuh district of Haryana).
| Mewati | |
|---|---|
| मेवाती | |
| Native to | Mewat Region |
Native speakers | 3 million (2011)[1] Census results conflate most speakers with Hindi.[2] |
Indo-European
| |
| Devanagari | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wtm |
| Glottolog | mewa1250[3] |
While other people groups in the region also speak the Mewati language, it is one of the defining characteristics of the Meo culture.[4]
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
- Mewati at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
- "Census of India: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues –2001".
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mewati". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Moonis Raza (1993). Social structure and regional development: a social geography perspective : essays in honour of Professor Moonis Raza. Rawat Publications Original from-the University of California. p. 166.