Mewati language

Mewati
मेवाती
Native to India (Mewat District of Haryana, Rajasthan) .
Native speakers
 5 million (2002)[1]
Census results conflate most speakers with Hindi.[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 wtm
Glottolog mewa1250[3]

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]

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. ↑
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Mewati". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. ↑ Sir George Abraham Grierson (1908). Linguistic Survey of India, Volume 9, Part 2. Office of the superintendent of government printing, India. p. 44.
  5. ↑ 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.
  6. ↑ MINA:THE RULING TRIBE OF RAJASTHAN. B.R. Publishing corporation. p. 11.
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