Sirmauri is a

Western Pahari The Western Pahari languages are a range of languages and dialects of Northern Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the western parts of the Himalayan range, primarily in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. They are also spoken in Jammu and Jaunsar ...

language spoken in the

Sirmaur district Sirmaur district is the southernmost district of Himachal Pradesh, northern India. It is largely mountainous and rural, with 90% of its population living in villages. Some of its towns include the capital Nahan, Paonta Sahib, Lana palar, T ...

in the northern Indian state of

Himachal Pradesh Himachal Pradesh (; Sanskrit: ''himācāl prādes;'' "Snow-laden Mountain Province") is a States and union territories of India, state in the northern part of India. Situated in the Western Himalayas, it is one of the thirteen Indian Himalayan ...

. Its two main varieties are Dharthi (also called Giriwari) and Giripari.

Grammar

Postpositions

Script

The native script of the language is called the Sirmauri script. This script is under proposal to be encoded in Unicode. It is locally known as Dhankari. Pabuuchi was a script used by a class of astrologers.

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari or Himachali. The language has no official status and is recorded as a dialect of Hindi. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the language is in the critically endangered category, i.e. the youngest speakers of Sirmauri are generally grandparents or older and they too speak it infrequently or partially. Earlier the language enjoyed some state patronage, but this ended after independence due to the government favoring Hindi more. 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, was made in 2010 by the state's Vidhan Sabha. However, no positive progress on this matter has been made since then. Some small organisations are attempting to save the language.

References

Northern Indo-Aryan languages Indo-Aryan languages Languages of Himachal Pradesh Endangered languages of India Languages written in Devanagari Languages listed as Hindi dialects in latest census {{IndoAryan-lang-stub