Mahasu Pahari (

Takri The Tākri script (Takri (Chamba): ; Takri (Jammu/Dogra): ; sometimes called Tankri ) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is derived from the Sharada script formerly employed for Kashmiri. It is the sister script ...

: ) is a

Western Pahari The Western Pahari languages are a group of Northern Indo-Aryan languages that are spoken in the state of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Uttarakhand and Punjab Languages The following lists the languages cla ...

(Himachali,

: ) language spoken in

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen mountain states and is characterized by an extreme landscape featuring several peaks ...

. It is also known as Mahasui or Mahasuvi. The speaking population is about 1,000,000 (2001). It is more commonly spoken in the Himachal Pradesh,

Shimla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, List of renamed Indian cities and states#Himachal Pradesh, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the States and union territories of India, northern Indian state of Himachal Prade ...

(Simla) and

Solan Solan is a city in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh and the district headquarters of Solan district. It is located south of the state capital, Shimla. Solan has an average elevation of . The city is situated between Chandigarh (joint capi ...

districts. It is to be known that Shimla and Solan were parts of the old Mahasu district. Himachal Pradesh State on 1 September, 1972 reorganised the districts dissolving Mahasu district. The Solan district was carved out of Solan and Arki tehsils of the then Mahasu district and tehsils of

Kandaghat Kandaghat is a small town and tehsil (sub-district), near Solan city in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh, India which is on the Kalka-Shimla National Highway No. 22. The road to the famous tourist destination of Chail turns from Kanda ...

and

Nalagarh Nalagarh is a city and a municipal committee, near the city of Solan in Solan district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Geography Nalagarh is a gateway to Himachal Pradesh in North India, from Shimla, from Delhi and from Chandig ...

of the then Shimla District of Punjab.

Area

According to different locations, the language has developed several dialects. Lower Mahasu Pahari (Baghati, Baghliani, Kiunthali), Upper Mahasu Pahari (

Rampuri The Rampuri (रामपूरी चाकू) is an Indian gravity knife of formidable reputation having a single-edged blade roughly long. Sometimes, it is the switchblade type but there are also step-lock types. The name Rampuri comes from ...

, Rohruri,

Nawari Nawar is an Arabic term for several nomad communities used primarily in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine. The term, regarded as derogatory, is used by Arabs for several diverse ethnic groups. They have historically been called "Gyp ...

, Jubbali, Shimla Siraji, Sodochi). The Kiunthali variety appears to be understood by others, and their attitude toward it is favorable. Rampuri is also called Kochi; Rohruri is also called Soracholi and Sodochi spoken in

Kotgarh Kotgarh is a village and a sub-tehsil in Kumarsain subdivision of Shimla district in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Formerly under the British Raj, it was the capital of Kotkhai-Kotgarh princely state, which was later shifted to Kiari ...

. Intelligibility among dialects is above 85%. Lexical similarity is 74%–82% with upper dialects, and 74%–95% with lower dialects. The language is used in home and for religious purposes. It is understood and spoken from people of vital age group. The educated are more proficient in

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

and English. It is considered to be highly endangered as the number of people speaking it is constantly going down. It is closely related to

Sirmauri Sirmauri is a Western Pahari language spoken in the Sirmaur district in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; ; "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western ...

and to

Jaunsari Jaunsari may refer to: * Jaunsari people, an ethnic group of northern India * Jaunsari language Jaunsari () is a Western Pahari language of northern India spoken by the Jaunsari people in the Chakrata and Kalsi blocks of Dehradun district in ...

Script

The native script of the language is a variety of

Script. There are some written records of the language in

Takri script The Tākri script (Takri ( Chamba): ; Takri (Jammu/Dogra): ; sometimes called Tankri ) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is derived from the Sharada script formerly employed for Kashmiri. It is the sister scri ...

and

Nastaliq script ''Nastaliq'' (; fa, , ), also romanized as ''Nastaʿlīq'', is one of the main calligraphic hands used to write the Perso-Arabic script in the Persian and Urdu languages, often used also for Ottoman Turkish poetry, rarely for Arabic. ''Nas ...

but nowadays

Devanagari script 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 ...

is usually used. Kiunthali

Phonology

Consonants

* Sounds sʰ bʱ dʱare only seldom heard among dialects. * Allophones of /b d ɡ/ are heard as ̥ d̥ ɡ̊in word-final position. * ʃʰoccurs from Hindi loanwords. * �can be heard as allophone of /dʒ/. * �is heard when a nasal occurs before velar stops. * /ɦ/ may also be heard as a voiceless among dialects. * , ware mainly heard after vowels. can also be an allophone of /ʋ/.

Vowels

* A short /u/ may also have an allophone of a near-close sound � * �is mainly heard as an allophone of /ɑ/. /ɑ/ can also be heard as an open mid sound �

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari or Himachali. The language has no official status and is recorded as dialect of Hindi. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the language is of definitely endangered category, i.e. many Mahasui children are not learning Mahasui as their mother tongue any longer. Earlier the language state patronage. Everything changed since independence, due to favoritism towards Hindi by the Indian Government. The demand for the inclusion of 'Pahari (Himachali)' under the Eight Schedule of the Constitution, which is supposed to represent multiple Pahari languages of Himachal Pradesh, had been made in the year 2010 by the state's Vidhan Sabha. There has been no positive progress on this matter since then even when small organisations strive to save the language and demand it. Due to political interest, the language is currently recorded as a dialect of Hindi, even when having a poor mutual intelligibility with it.

References

{{Dogri-Kangri languages Indo-Aryan languages Northern Indo-Aryan languages Languages of Himachal Pradesh Endangered languages of India