Kanjari (also known as ''Kangar Bhat'', ''Kangri'', ''Kuchbandhi'' or "the Gypsy language") is an unclassified Indic tribal language of India associated with the

Kanjar Kanjar is a tribe with significant populations in India and Pakistan. The Kanjari language is spoken mostly by the Kanjari people living mostly in Punjab. Kanjari is a lesser-known Indo Aryan language, but almost all also speak Punjabi.''Kan ...

tribe. It is written using the

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental Writing systems#Segmental syste ...

script. Kanjari is spoken in

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...

and

Rajasthan Rajasthan (; lit. 'Land of Kings') is a state in northern India. It covers or 10.4 per cent of India's total geographical area. It is the largest Indian state by area and the seventh largest by population. It is on India's northwestern si ...

. It may be one of the

Punjabi languages The Punjabi dialects and languages or Punjabic are a series of dialects and languages spoken in the Punjab region of Pakistan and India with varying degrees of official recognition. They have sometimes been referred to as ''Greater Punjabi''. ...

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

classifies Kanjari as an

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

Syntax

George Abraham Grierson Sir George Abraham Grierson (7 January 1851 – 9 March 1941) was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Service but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languag ...

noted several grammatical features for Kanjari in the first

Linguistic Survey of India The Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) is a comprehensive survey of the languages of British India, describing 364 languages and dialects. The Survey was first proposed by George Abraham Grierson, a member of the Indian Civil Service and a linguist w ...

: * The final "ō" of adjectives is usually kept before an inflected noun, which suggests that adjectives are not inflected and that gender is weak. For example, ''tēro naukrī'' ("thy service"). * Some pronouns are similar to

Rajasthani languages Rajasthani (Devanagari: ) refers to a group of Indo-Aryan languages and dialects spoken primarily in the state of Rajasthan and adjacent areas of Haryana, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in India. There are also speakers in the Pakistani provinces ...

, such as the demonstrative pronouns ''jō'' and ''jī''. However, other pronouns are similar to the

Dravidian languages The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...

, such as ''ūr'' ("he") compared to

Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...

''īr'' and Gondi ''ōr''. * Overall, verb conjugations and words "broadly agree" with the patterns of Eastern Rajasthani languages, but some characteristics point to a "certain Dravidian element" being present in Kanjari.

Vocabulary

References

Indo-Aryan languages {{IndoAryan-lang-stub