Mewari

Mewari is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European language family. It is historically grouped under the Western Rajasthani group of languages. * ISO 639-3: mtr * Glottocode: mewa1249

Speakers

According to the 2011 Census of India, Mewari is spoken by approximately 4.2 million speakers, typically represented as a mother tongue under the broader category of Rajasthani.

Distribution in India

Mewari is primarily spoken in the Mewar region of Rajasthan, India. The principal districts of distribution include Udaipur, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand, Bhilwara, and Pratapgarh.

Major Grammatical Features

• Phonology: Mewari features a rich inventory of dental, retroflex, and aspirated consonants. Like other Western Rajasthani varieties, it possesses a retroflex lateral approximant [ɭ]. Vowel length is phonemic, and there is a characteristic dental-sibilant shift where /s/ often changes to /h/ or is deleted in certain word-initial or intervocalic environments.
• Morphology: The nominal system inflects for two grammatical genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural), and three cases (direct, oblique, and vocative). Morphological marking relies heavily on postpositions. Verb conjugation agrees with the subject in gender, number, and person in non-perfective tenses.
• Syntax: The default word order is Subject-Object-Verb (SOV). Mewari exhibits split ergativity: the agent of a transitive verb is marked in the ergative case in the perfective aspect, with the verb agreeing in gender and number with the direct object (absolutive).

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: Mewari language
• Glottolog Entry: Mewari (mewa1249)