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Mewati language

Mewati (Devanagri: मेवाती; Perso-Arabic: میواتی) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken predominantly by the Meo people. It has three million speakers in the Mewat Region (Alwar and Bharatpur, districts of Rajasthan, and the Nuh districtofHaryana). While other people groups in the region also speak the Mewati language, it is one of the defining characteristics of the Meo culture.^[3]

There are 9 vowels, 31 consonants, and two diphthongs. Suprasegmentals are less prominent than they are in the other dialects of Rajasthani. There are two numbers; singular and plural. Two genders; masculine and feminine, and three cases; direct, oblique, and vocative. The nouns decline according to their final segments. Case markingispostpositional. Pronouns are traditional in nature and are inflected for number and case. Gender is not distinguished in pronouns. There are two types of adjectives. There are three tenses; past, present, and future. Participles function as adjectives.

Phonology[edit]

There are twenty plosives at five places of articulation, each being tenuis, aspirated, voiced, and murmured: /p t ʈ tʃ k, pʰ tʰ ʈʰ tʃʰ kʰ, b d ɖ dʒ ɡ, bʱ dʱ ɖʱ dʒʱ ɡʱ/. Nasals and laterals may also be murmured, and there is a voiceless /h/ and a murmured /ɦ/.

See also[edit]

• Mewat
• Meo (ethnic group)
• Nuh
• Meenas
• Jat people
• Gujjar

References[edit]