Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 23, 2026

Hinduri dialect

Hinduri is a Western Pahari language of northern India. It is spoken in southern Solan district in southern parts of Ramshehar Tehsil and in eastern Nalagarh. It was classified as a dialect under the Mahasui Keonthali Group.

Last revised
Jun 23, 2026
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Hinduri
Handuri
हिंडूरी, hiṁḍūrī
हंडूरी, haṁḍūrī
The word "Hinduri" written in Devanagari script
Native toHimachal Pradesh
RegionMahasu
Native speakers
(47,800 cited 2001 census)1
Census results conflate some speakers with Hindi.2
Takri,3 Devanagari4
Language codes
ISO 639-3hii
Glottologhind1267
ELPHinduri

Hinduri (or Handuri) is a Western Pahari language of northern India. It is spoken in southern Solan district in southern parts of Ramshehar Tehsil and in eastern Nalagarh. It was classified as a dialect under the Mahasui Keonthali Group (as per Grierson).5

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Dental/
Alveolar 		Retroflex Post-alv./
Palatal 		Velar Glottal
Nasal voiced m n ɳ ŋ
breathy mʱ nʱ
Stop/
Affricate 		voiceless p t ʈ tɕ k
aspirated pʰ tʰ ʈʰ tɕʰ kʰ
voiced b d ɖ dʑ ɡ
breathy bʱ dʱ ɖʱ dʑʱ ɡʱ
Fricative s ɕ h
Rhotic voiced r ɽ
breathy ɽʱ
Lateral voiced l ɭ
breathy lʱ
Approximant w j

Vowels

Front Central Back
High iː uː
ɪ ʊ
Mid eː ə oː
ɛ ɔ
Low (æ) ɑ ɑː

Script

Sample text in Handuri From Grierson's book (1916)6 source ↗

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari or Himachali. The language has no official status. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the language is of critically endangered category, i.e. the youngest speakers of Handuri are generally grandparents or older and they too speak it infrequently or partially.7

The demand for the inclusion of 'Pahari (Himachali)' under the Eight Schedule of the Constitution, which is supposed to represent multiple Pahari languages of Himachal Pradesh, had been made in the year 2010 by the state's Vidhan Sabha.8 There has been no positive progress on this matter since then even when small organisations are striving to save the language.9 The language is currently recorded as a dialect of Hindi,10 even when having a poor mutual intelligibility with it.

See also

See also

References

References

  1. Hinduri at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. "Census of India: Abstract of speakers' strength of languages and mother tongues –2001".
  3. LSI 1898.
  4. Linguistic Survey Of India (Volume 9, Part 4). pp. 586–592.
  5. Linguistic Survey Of India (Volume 9, Part 4). pp. 586–592.
  6. Linguistic Survey Of India Vol.9 Part.4. India. 1916. pp. 588–590.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. "Endangered Language". TheGuardian.com. 15 April 2011.
  8. "Pahari Inclusion". Zee News.
  9. "Pahari Inclusion". The Statesman.
  10. "Indian Language Census" (PDF).