The Rajasthani Alphabet

Rajasthani (राजस्थानी) is an Indo-Aryan dialect continuum spoken by approximately 80 million people, primarily in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Rather than a single standardised language, it refers to a group of closely related varieties — including Marwari, Mewari, Shekhawati, Harauti, Dhundhari, and Bagri — that share grammatical features and vocabulary while differing in phonology and some vocabulary.

Rajasthani has a rich literary tradition dating back to the 12th–13th century CE, including Bhakti saint poetry and bardic court traditions. Despite its large speaker population, Rajasthani does not currently have official language status in India, though there are ongoing efforts to gain recognition under the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

Rajasthani is written primarily in the Devanagari script (देवनागरी) — the same abugida used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. Devanagari is a left-to-right script with 33 consonants and 11 independent vowels.

Historically, Rajasthani was also written in the Mahajani (or Lande) script — a merchant script used for commercial and accounting purposes across Rajasthan, Punjab, and Sindh. Mahajani is now largely obsolete, having been replaced by Devanagari in modern usage. Some older communities also used the Mārwāṛī and Modi scripts.

Rajasthani is a dialect continuum with no single standardised spoken or written form. The main varieties include: Marwari (Jodhpur/Marwar region — the most widely spoken and often used as the literary standard), Mewari (Udaipur region), Shekhawati (Sikar/Jhunjhunu region), Harauti (Kota/Bundi region), Dhundhari (Jaipur region), and Bagri (northern Rajasthan, shared with Haryana and Punjab).

Each variety has distinct phonological features — for example, Marwari preserves the aspirated glottal sounds that Hindi has merged, and Harauti has different verb morphology. The ISO 639-3 code raj covers the Rajasthani group as a macrolanguage.

Rajasthani is spoken by approximately 80 million people — making it one of the largest language groups without official recognition in India. Speakers are concentrated in Rajasthan state (the largest state in India by area), with significant communities in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, and across the border in Sindh, Pakistan (particularly in the Thar Desert region).

Despite the large speaker count, many Rajasthani speakers identify their variety as Hindi in census surveys, making exact speaker count figures difficult to determine. The 2011 Indian census recorded approximately 18–20 million declaring Rajasthani/Marwari as their first language, though linguistic surveys consistently show far higher numbers of fluent speakers.

The relationship between Rajasthani and Hindi is debated among linguists. Hindi and Rajasthani are closely related Indo-Aryan languages, and there is significant mutual intelligibility — particularly in standard spoken form. Some Indian government classifications treat Rajasthani as a dialect of Hindi, which is why it lacks its own Eighth Schedule listing.

However, many linguists classify Rajasthani as a distinct language (or family of languages) with its own phonological, grammatical, and lexical features that distinguish it from standard Hindi. Features like the retroflex lateral consonant, different verb endings, and distinct vocabulary items support its classification as a separate language group. The Glottolog and SIL classify Rajasthani (raj) as a distinct macrolanguage grouping within Northwestern Indo-Aryan.