The Lambadi Alphabet

Lambadi (ISO 639-3: lmn; also called Banjara, Gormati, Gor Boli, or Sugali) is a Rajasthani Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Banjara people of India. The 2011 Indian Census recorded approximately 4,857,819 native speakers, with concentrations in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra.

Despite the multiple regional names — Lambadi (Telangana/AP), Lamani (Karnataka), Banjari (Maharashtra), Sugali (Andhra Pradesh) — all share a single ISO 639-3 code (lmn) and Glottolog code (lamb1269), indicating that linguists classify them as dialects of one language rather than separate languages.

Lambadi has no single native or standard script. Being a primarily oral language of a historically nomadic community, Lambadi adopts the script of the surrounding dominant regional language:

• Devanagari — used in Maharashtra, for Hindi-belt contexts, and as a pan-Indian standard (as on this page)
• Telugu script — used in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
• Kannada script — used in Karnataka

A dedicated "Gormati script" was proposed in 2008 after decades of effort, containing 50 letters derived from English letter forms. It received academic approval from Indian universities but has not achieved widespread community adoption and is not encoded in Unicode.

Lambadi belongs to the Western Rajasthani branch of Indo-Aryan (Indo-European → Indo-Iranian → Indo-Aryan). Its closest relatives are Rajasthani varieties — Marwari, Mewari, Shekhawati — and Gujarati. Glottolog (5.3) classifies it within the Rajasthani subgroup, reflecting origins in the Mewar dialect zone of medieval Rajasthan.

However, centuries of geographic separation and contact have significantly differentiated Lambadi. It has accumulated heavy borrowings from Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Kannada, and Persian depending on the speaker's region, producing a distinctively contact-mixed variety despite its Rajasthani foundation.

The Banjara (also Vanjara, Lambadi, Lamani) are one of India's most distinctive traditionally nomadic communities. Their name derives from Sanskrit Vanjara (merchant/trader). They trace their origins to the Mewar region of Rajasthan and claim Agnivanshi Rajput ancestry.

The Banjara were the dominant long-distance goods transporters of pre-railway India. They moved in large convoys (tandas) of several hundred families with herds of bullocks, carrying salt, grain, bamboo, and other commodities across the subcontinent. They supplied grain to Mughal armies and held near-monopolies on salt transport in the Deccan. The British railway network of the late 19th century effectively ended this livelihood, forcing sedentarisation. Their settled villages are still called tandas — a reminder of their nomadic heritage.

Lambadi is not in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution (the 22 officially recognised languages), despite advocacy from community organisations. However, the Banjara people as an ethnic community are recognised as a Scheduled Tribe in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra.

Telangana has been the most active in language support, producing Lambadi-language primary school textbooks. Kethavath Somlal received the Padma Shri in 2024 for contributions to Banjara literature and education. UNESCO classifies Lambadi as "Vulnerable" in its Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.

Lambadi shares core features with other Indo-Aryan languages while showing influences from surrounding Dravidian languages. Key features include:

• SOV word order (Subject-Object-Verb) — consistent with both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian patterns
• Postpositions rather than prepositions
• Two grammatical genders: masculine (nouns ending in -o, e.g. tāṇḍro = Lambadi man) and feminine (-i, e.g. tāṇḍri = Lambadi woman)
• Overt verb morphology for tense marking
• Extensive borrowing from surrounding contact languages varying by region

Ronald L. Trail's The Grammar of Lamani (SIL, 1970) remains the most comprehensive scholarly description.