Bhadarwahi is an Indo-Aryan language of the

Western Pahari The Western Pahari languages are a group of Northern Indo-Aryan languages that are spoken in the state of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir and parts of Uttarakhand and Punjab Languages The following lists the languages cla ...

group spoken in the

Bhaderwah Bhaderwah or Bhadarwah (also ''Bhaderwah Valley'') is a town, tehsil, sub-division and also additional district in the Doda district of the Jammu Division of Jammu and Kashmir, India. It is also known as Chota Kashmir (Mini Kashmir) for its sc ...

region of

Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Kashmir may refer to: * Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent * Jammu and Kashmir (union territory), a region administered by India as a union territory * Jammu and Kashmir (state), a region administered ...

, India. The name Bhadarwahi can be understood either in a narrow sense as referring to the dialect, locally known as Bhiḍlāi, native to the Bhadarwah valley, or in a broader sense to cover the group of related dialects spoken in the wider region where Bhadarwahi proper is used as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

. In addition to Bhadarwahi proper, this group also includes Padri, Bhalesi, and Khasali (Khashali) dialect. The

Churahi language Churahi (Takri script, Takri: ) is a Western Pahari language of Himachal Pradesh, India. It is spoken in the Chaurah and Saluni tehsils of Chamba district, and is considered vulnerable. Adages Script The native script of the language is T ...

is closely related. The name of the language is spelt in the

Takri The Tākri script (Takri (Chamba): ; Takri (Jammu/Dogra): ; sometimes called Tankri ) is an abugida writing system of the Brahmic family of scripts. It is derived from the Sharada script formerly employed for Kashmiri. It is the sister script ...

as . Variants include ''Bhaderwahi'' (), ''Baderwali'' (), ''Bhadri'' (), Badrohi (), ''Bhadlayi'' (), and ''Bhadlai'' ().

Phonology

According to Masica (1991) there are a set of lateral retroflex affricates /ʈ͡ꞎ ɖ͡ɭ ɖ͡ɭʱ/ from old /Cr/ clusters.

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari. Some speaker may even call it a dialect of Dogri. The language has no official status. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the language is of definitely endangered category, i.e. many Bhadravahi parents are not teaching this language to the children with which the number of its native speakers is decreasing. Some other languages, such as Kashmiri and Urdu/Hindi are taking this place. This is an archetypical natural human tendency of picking up the language of people placed better economically and socially.

Notable events

A daily news headlines program is broadcast by a news outlet

The Chenab Times ''The Chenab Times'' is a digital news and activist organisation in India founded in 2017. It is known for publishing news in Sarazi and Bhaderwahi languages. History ''The Chenab Times'' derives its name from the Chenab River, which flows th ...

in Sarazi and Bhaderwahi languages to promote them.

References

Sources

* {{Western Pahari languages Languages of Jammu and Kashmir Endangered languages of India