1666 manuscript of a 6th-century Jain Prakrit text with a 1487 commentary in Old Gujarati
Gujarati (sometimes spelledGujerati,Gujarathi,Guzratee,Guujaratee,Gujrathi, andGujerathi)[2][28] is a modern Indo-Aryan (IA) languageevolved fromSanskrit. The traditional practice is to differentiate the IA languages on the basis of three historical stages:[28]
Another view postulates successive family tree splits, in which Gujarati is assumed to have separated from other IA languages in four stages:[29]
IA languages split into Northern, Eastern, and Western divisions based on the innovate characteristics such asplosives becomingvoiced in the Northern (Skt.danta "tooth" > Punj.dānd) anddental andretroflexsibilants merging with thepalatal in the Eastern (Skt.sandhya "evening" > Beng.śājh).[30]
Gujarati/Rajasthani into Gujarati and Rajasthani through development of such characteristics as auxiliarych- and thepossessivemarker -n- during the 15th century.[31]
The principal changes from the Middle Indo-Aryan stage are the following:[29]
Old Gujarātī (જૂની ગુજરાતી; 1200 CE–1500 CE), which descended from prakrit and the ancestor of modern Gujarati and Rajasthani,[41] was spoken by theGurjars, who were residing and ruling inGujarat, Punjab,Rajputana, and central India.[42][43] The language was used as literary language as early as the 12th century. Texts of this era display characteristic Gujarati features such as direct/oblique noun forms, postpositions, and auxiliary verbs.[44] It had threegenders, as Gujarati does today, and by around the time of 1300 CE, a fairly standardized form of this language emerged. While generally known as Old Gujarati, some scholars prefer the name Old Western Rajasthani, based upon the argument that Gujarati and Rajasthani were not yet distinct. Factoring into this preference was the belief that modern Rajasthani sporadically expressed a neuter gender, based on the incorrect conclusion that the [ũ] that came to be pronounced in some areas for masculine [o] after anasal consonant was analogous to Gujarati's neuter [ũ].[45] Aformal grammar,Prakrita Vyakarana, of the precursor to this language,Gurjar Apabhraṃśa, was written byJain monk and eminent scholarAcharya Hemachandra Suri in the reign ofChaulukya kingJayasimha Siddharaja ofAnhilwara (Patan).[46]
MIddle Gujarati (AD 1500–1800) split off from Rajasthani, and developed the phonemes ɛ and ɔ, the auxiliary stemch-, and the possessive marker -n-.[47] Major phonological changes characteristic of the transition between Old and Middle Gujarati are:[48]
diphthongs əi, əu change to ɛ and ɔ in initial syllables and to e and o elsewhere
əũ develops to ɔ̃ in initial syllables and to ű in final syllables
These developments would have grammatical consequences. For example, Old Gujarati's instrumental-locative singular in -i was leveled and eliminated, having become the same as Old Gujarati's nominative/accusative singular in -ə.[48]
A page from the Gujarati translation ofDabestan-e Mazaheb prepared and printed byFardunjee Marzban (25 December 1815)
A major phonological change was the deletion of finalə, such that the modern language has consonant-final words. Grammatically, a new plural marker of -o developed.[49] In literature, the third quarter of the 19th century saw a series of milestones for Gujarati, which previously had verse as its dominant mode of literary composition.[50] In 1920s, the efforts to standardise Gujarati were carried out.[51]
Of the approximately 62 million speakers of Gujarati in 2022, roughly 60 million resided in India, 250,000 inTanzania, 210,000 in Kenya, and some thousands in Pakistan. Many Gujarati speakers in Pakistan areshifting to Urdu;[2] however, someGujarati community leaders in Pakistan claim that there are 3 million Gujarati speakers in Karachi.[54]
Mahatma Gandhi used Gujarati to serve as a medium of literary expression. He helped to inspire a renewal in its literature,[55] and in 1936 he introduced the current spelling convention at theGujarati Literary Society's 12th meeting.[56][57]
SomeMauritians and manyRéunion islanders are of Gujarati descent and some of them still speak Gujarati.[58]
A considerable Gujarati-speaking population exists inNorth America, especially in theNew York City Metropolitan Area and in theGreater Toronto Area, which have over 100,000 speakers and over 75,000 speakers, respectively, but also throughout the major metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada. According to the 2016 census, Gujarati is the fourth most-spoken South Asian language in Toronto afterHindustani,Punjabi andTamil.
The UK has over 200,000 speakers, many of them situated in the London area, especially in North West London (inHarrow andWembley), but also inBirmingham,Manchester, and inLeicester,Coventry,Rugby,Bradford and the former mill towns withinLancashire. A portion of these numbers consists ofEast African Gujaratis who, under increasing discrimination and policies of Africanisation in their newly independent resident countries (especiallyUganda, whereIdi Amin expelled 50,000 Asians), were left with uncertain futures andcitizenships. Most, with Britishpassports, settled in the UK.[55][59] Gujarati is offered as aGCSE subject for students in the UK.
Some Gujarati parents in the diaspora are not comfortable with the possibility that their children will not be fluent in the language.[60] In a study, 80% ofMalayali parents felt that "Children would be better off with English", compared to 36% ofKannada parents and only 19% of Gujarati parents.[60]
Gujarati is one of the twenty-twoofficial languages and fourteenregional languages of India. It is officially recognised in the state of Gujarat and the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
According to British historian and philologistWilliam Tisdall, who was an early scholar ofGujarati grammar, three major varieties of Gujarati exist: a standard 'Hindu' dialect, a 'Parsi' dialect and a 'Muslim' dialect.[62]
However, Gujarati has undergone contemporary reclassification with respect to the widespread regional differences in vocabulary and phrasing; notwithstanding the number of poorly attested dialects and regional variations in naming.
Standard Gujarati: this forms something of a standardised variant of Gujarati across news, education and government. It is also spoken in pockets ofMaharashtra. The varieties of it include Mumbai Gujarati, Nagari.
Amdawadi Gujarati: spoken primarily inAhmedabad and the surrounding regions, in addition to Bharuch and Surat, where it is colloquially known as 'Surati'. The varieties of it include Ahmedabad Gamadia, Anawla, Brathela, Charotari, Eastern Broach Gujarati, Gramya, Patani, Patidari, Surati, Vadodari.
Kathiawari: a distinctive variant spoken primarily in theKathiawar region and subject to significant Sindhi influence. The varieties of it include Bhavnagari, Gohilwadi, Holadi/Halari, Jhalawadi, Sorathi.
Kharwa, Kakari and Tarimuki (Ghisadi) are also often cited as additional varieties of Gujarati.
Parsi: spoken by theZoroastrianParsi minority. This highly distinctive variety has been subject to considerable lexical influence byAvestan, theliturgical Zoroastrian language.
Kutchi is often referred to as a dialect of Gujarati, but most linguists consider it closer toSindhi.[citation needed] In addition, theMemoni is related to Gujarati, albeit distantly.[2][63]
Furthermore, words used by the native languages of areas where theGujarati people have become a diaspora community, such asEast Africa (Swahili), have become loanwords in local dialects of Gujarati.[64]
TheLinguistic Survey of India noted nearly two dozen dialects of Gujarati: Standard, Old, Standard Ahmedabad, Standard Broach, Nāgarī, Bombay, Suratī, Anāvla or Bhāṭelā, Eastern Broach, Pārsī, Carotarī, Pāṭīdārī, Vaḍodarī, Gāmaḍiā of Ahmedabad, Paṭanī, Thar and Parkar, Cutch, Kāṭhiyāvāḍī, Musalmān (Vhorāsī and Kharwā), Paṭṇulī, Kākarī, and Tārīmukī or Ghisāḍī.[65]
Similar to otherNāgarī writing systems, the Gujarati script is anabugida. It is used to write the Gujarati andKutchi languages. It is a variant of theDevanāgarī script, differentiated by the loss of the characteristic horizontal line running above the letters and by a small number of modifications in the remaining characters.
તદ્ભવtadbhava, "of the nature of that". Gujarati is a modern Indo-Aryan language descended fromSanskrit (old Indo-Aryan), and this category pertains exactly to that: words of Sanskritic origin that have demonstratively undergone change over the ages, ending up characteristic of modern Indo-Aryan languages specifically as well as in general. Thus the "that" in "of the nature of that" refers to Sanskrit. They tend to be non-technical, everyday, crucial words; part of the spoken vernacular. Below is a table of a few Gujaratitadbhav words and their Old Indo-Aryan sources:
તત્સમtatsama, "same as that". While Sanskrit eventually stopped being spoken vernacularly, in that it changed intoMiddle Indo-Aryan, it was nonetheless standardised and retained as a literary andliturgical language for long after. This category consists of these borrowed words of (more or less) pure Sanskrit character. They serve to enrich Gujarati and modern Indo-Aryan in its formal, technical, and religious vocabulary. They are recognisable by their Sanskrit inflections and markings; they are thus often treated as a separate grammatical category unto themselves.
Tatsam
English
Gujarati
lekhak
writer
lakhnār
vijetā
winner
jītnār
vikǎsit
developed
vikǎselũ
jāgǎraṇ
awakening
jāgvānũ
Many old tatsam words have changed their meanings or have had their meanings adopted for modern times. પ્રસારણprasāraṇ means "spreading", but now it is used for "broadcasting". In addition to this areneologisms, often beingcalques. An example istelephone, which isGreek for "far talk", translated as દુરભાષdurbhāṣ. Most people, though, just use ફોનphon and thus neo-Sanskrit has varying degrees of acceptance.
So, while having uniquetadbhav sets, modern IA languages have a common, highertatsam pool. Also,tatsams and their derivedtadbhavs can also co-exist in a language; sometimes of no consequence and at other times with differences in meaning:
Work—Dharmic religious concept of works or deeds whose divine consequences are experienced in this life or the next.
kām
work [without any religious connotations].
kṣetra
Field—Abstract sense, such as a field of knowledge or activity;khāngī kṣetra → private sector. Physical sense, but of higher or special importance;raṇǎkṣetra → battlefield.
khetar
field [in agricultural sense].
What remains are words of foreign origin (videśī), as well as words of local origin that cannot be pegged as belonging to any of the three prior categories (deśaj). The former consists mainly ofPersian,Arabic, and English, with trace elements ofPortuguese andTurkish. While the phenomenon of Englishloanwords is relatively new, Perso-Arabic has a longer history behind it. Both English and Perso-Arabic influences are quite nationwide phenomena, in a way parallelingtatsam as a common vocabulary set or bank. What's more is how, beyond a transposition into general Indo-Aryan, the Perso-Arabic set has also been assimilated in a manner characteristic and relevant to the specific Indo-Aryan language it is being used in, bringing to mindtadbhav.
India was ruled for many centuries by Persian-speakingMuslims, amongst the most notable being theDelhi Sultanate, and theMughal dynasty. As a consequence Indian languages were changed greatly, with the large scale entry of Persian and its many Arabic loans into the Gujarati lexicon. One fundamental adoption was Persian's conjunction "that",ke. Also, whiletatsam or Sanskrit is etymologically continuous to Gujarati, it is essentially of a differing grammar (or language), and that in comparison while Perso-Arabic is etymologically foreign, it has been in certain instances and to varying degrees grammatically indigenised. Owing to centuries of situation and the end of Persian education and power, (1) Perso-Arabic loans are quite unlikely to be thought of or known as loans, and (2) more importantly, these loans have often been Gujarati-ized.dāvo – claim,fāydo – benefit,natījo – result, andhamlo – attack, all carry Gujarati's masculine gender marker,o.khānũ – compartment, has the neuterũ. Aside from easy slotting with the auxiliarykarvũ, a few words have made a complete transition of verbification:kabūlvũ – to admit (fault),kharīdvũ – to buy,kharǎcvũ – to spend (money),gujarvũ – to pass. The last three are definite part and parcel.
Below is a table displaying a number of these loans. Currently some of the etymologies are being referenced to an Urdudictionary so that Gujarati's singular masculineo corresponds to Urduā, neuterũ groups intoā as Urdu has no neuter gender, and Urdu's Persianz is not upheld in Gujarati and corresponds toj orjh. In contrast to modern Persian, the pronunciation of these loans into Gujarati and other Indo-Aryan languages, as well as that of Indian-recited Persian, seems to be in line with Persian spoken inAfghanistan andCentral Asia, perhaps 500 years ago.[74]
With the end of Perso-Arabic inflow, English became the current foreign source of new vocabulary. English had and continues to have a considerable influence over Indian languages. Loanwords include new innovations and concepts, first introduced directly throughBritish colonial rule, and then streaming in on the basis of continuedAnglophone dominance in theRepublic of India. Besides the category of new ideas is the category of English words that already have Gujarati counterparts which end up replaced or existed alongside with. The major driving force behind this latter category has to be the continuing role of English in modern India as a language of education, prestige, and mobility. In this way, Indian speech can be sprinkled with English words and expressions, even switches to whole sentences.[97]SeeHinglish,Code-switching.
In matters of sound, Englishalveolar consonants map asretroflexes rather thandentals. Two new characters were created in Gujarati to represent English /æ/'s and /ɔ/'s. Levels of Gujarati-ization in sound vary. Some words do not go far beyond this basic transpositional rule, and sound much like their English source, while others differ in ways, one of those ways being the carrying of dentals.SeeIndian English.
As English loanwords are a relatively new phenomenon, they adhere to English grammar, astatsam words adhere to Sanskrit. That is not to say that the most basic changes have been underway: many English words are pluralised with Gujaratio over English "s". Also, with Gujarati having three genders, genderless English words must take one. Though often inexplicable, gender assignment may follow the same basis as it is expressed in Gujarati: vowel type, and the nature of word meaning.
The smaller foothold the Portuguese had in wider India had linguistic effects. Gujarati took up a number of words, while elsewhere the influence was great enough to the extent that creole languages came to be (seePortuguese India,Portuguese-based creole languages in India and Sri Lanka). Comparatively, the impact of Portuguese has been greater on coastal languages[98] and their loans tend to be closer to the Portuguese originals.[99] The source dialect of these loans imparts an earlier pronunciation ofch as an affricate instead of the current standard of[ʃ].[74]
1598, "name given by Europeans to hired laborers in India and China," from Hindiquli "hired servant," probably fromkoli, name of an aboriginal tribe or caste in Gujarat.[101]
c.1616, "pool or lake for irrigation or drinking water," a word originally brought by the Portuguese from India, ult. from Gujaratitankh "cistern, underground reservoir for water," Marathitanken, ortanka "reservoir of water, tank." Perhaps from Skt.tadaga-m "pond, lake pool," and reinforced in later sense of "large artificial container for liquid" (1690) by Port.tanque "reservoir," fromestancar "hold back a current of water," from V.L. *stanticare (seestanch). But others say the Port. word is the source of the Indian ones.[102]
જગ પ્રસિદ્ધ દાંડી કૂચ પછી ગાંધીજીએ અહીં આંબાના વૃક્ષ નીચે ખજૂરી નાં છટિયાંની એક ઝૂંપડીમાં તા.૧૪-૪-૧૯૩૦ થી તા.૪-૫-૧૯૩૦ સુધી નિવાસ કર્યો હતો. દાંડીમાં છઠ્ઠી એપ્રિલે શરૂ કરેલી નિમક કાનૂન (મીઠાના સત્યાગ્રહ) ભંગની લડતને તેમણે અહીંથી વેગ આપી દેશ વ્યાપી બનાવી હતી. અહીંથી જ તેમણે ધરાસણાના મીઠાના અગરો તરફ કૂચ કરવાનો પોતાનો સંકલ્પ બ્રિટિશ વાઈસરૉયને પત્ર લખીને જણાવ્યો હતો.
તા.૪ થી મે ૧૯૩૦ની રાતના બાર વાગ્યા પછી આ સ્થળેથી બ્રિટિશ સરકારે તેમની ધરપકડ કરી હતી.
world famous dandi march after gandhiji here mango's tree under palm date's bark's one hut-in date.14-4-1930-from date.4-5-1930 until residence done was. dandi-in sixth April-at started done salt law break's fight (-to) he here-from speed gave country wide made was.here-from he dharasana's salt's mounds towards march doing's self's resolve British viceroy-to letter written-having notified was.
date.4-from May 1930's night's twelve struck after this place-at-from British government his arrest done was.
After the world-famousDandi March Gandhiji resided here in adate palmbark hut underneath a/themango tree, from 14-4-1930 to 4-5-1930. From here he gave speed to and spread country-wide the anti-Salt Law struggle, started in Dandi on 6 April. Fromhere, writing in a letter, he notified the British Viceroy of his resolve of marching towards thesaltmounds of Dharasana.
The British government arrested him at this location, after twelve o'clock on the night of 4 May 1930.
Translation (provided at location)—
Gandhiji's hut-Karadi
Here under the mango tree in the hut made of palm leaves (khajoori) Gandhiji stayed from 14-4-1930 to 4-5-1930 after the world famous Dandi march. From here he gave impetus to the civil disobedience movement for breaking the salt act started on 6 April at Dandi and turned it into a nationwide movement. It was also from this place that he wrote a letter to the British viceroy expressing his firm resolve to march to the salt works at Dharasana.
This is the place from where he was arrested by the British government after midnight on 4 May 1930.
^Grierson, G. A. (1908).Linguistic Survey of India, Vol IX: Indo-Aryan Family, Central Group, Part II: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī. Superintendent Government Printing. pp. viii.
^Grierson, G. A. (1908).Linguistic Survey of India, Vol IX: Indo-Aryan Family, Central Group, Part II: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī. Superintendent Government Printing. pp. viii.
^Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), inNationalencyklopedin. Asterisks mark the2010 estimates for the top dozen languages.
^Edwards, Viv."Gujarati today".BBC.Gujaratis form the second largest of the British South Asian speech communities, with important settlements in Leicester and Coventry in the Midlands, in the northern textile towns and in Greater London.
^Barlas, Robert; Yong, Jui Lin (2010).Uganda.Marshall Cavendish. p. 96.ISBN9780761448594.Of the non-Ugandan languages, Hindi and Gujarati are commonly spoken among members of the Asian Hindu community that migrated to Uganda during the early part of the 20th century.
^"Indian South Africans". South African History Online.English is spoken as a first language by most Indian South Africans, although a minority of the Indian South African population, especially the elders, still speak some Indian languages. These languages include Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Punjabi, and Gujarati.
^Ajay Mitra Shastri; R. K. Sharma; Devendra Handa (2005),Revealing India's past: recent trends in art and archaeology, Aryan Books International, p. 227,ISBN8173052875,It is an established fact that during 10th-11th century ... Interestingly the language was known as the Gujjar Bhakha.
^Smith, J.D. (2001) "Rajasthani."Facts about the world's languages: An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present. Ed. Jane Garry, and Carl Rubino: New England Publishing Associates. pp. 591-593.
^Yashaschandra, S. (1995) "Towards Hind Svaraj: An Interpretation of the Rise of Prose in 19th-century Gujarati Literature."Social Scientist. Vol. 23, No. 10/12. pp. 41–55.
^Benson, Eugene (30 November 2004).Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English.Routledge. p. 563.ISBN9781134468485.Gandhi's seminal work, 'Hind Swaraj' ('Indian Home Role'), appeared in the columns ofIndian Opinion in 1909. Originally written in his mother tongue, Gujarati, it was translated into English by Gandhi and published asHind Swaraj orIndian Home Role in 1910.
^Rehman, Zia Ur (18 August 2015)."With a handful of subbers, two newspapers barely keeping Gujarati alive in Karachi".The News International. Retrieved14 January 2017.In Pakistan, the majority of Gujarati-speaking communities are in Karachi including Dawoodi Bohras, Ismaili Khojas, Memons, Kathiawaris, Katchhis, Parsis (Zoroastrians) and Hindus, said Gul Hasan Kalmati, a researcher who authored "Karachi, Sindh Jee Marvi", a book discussing the city and its indigenous communities. Although there are no official statistics available, community leaders claim that there are three million Gujarati-speakers in Karachi – roughly around 15 percent of the city's entire population.
^Grierson, G. A. (1908).Linguistic Survey of India, Vol IX: Indo-Aryan Family, Central Group, Part II: Specimens of the Rājasthānī and Gujarātī. Superintendent Government Printing. pp. viii.
^Snell, R. (2000)Teach Yourself Beginner's Hindi Script. Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 83–86.
Waghmar, Burzine (2009).Gujarati. In Keith Brown and Sarah Ogilvie (eds.),Concise Encyclopedia of the Languages of the World. Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 468–469.
Mistry, P.J. (1996), "Gujarati Writing", in Daniels; Bright (eds.),The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press.
Mistry, P.J. (1997), "Gujarati Phonology", in Kaye, A.S (ed.),Phonologies of Asia and Africa, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
Mistry, P.J. (2001), "Gujarati", in Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl (eds.),An encyclopedia of the world's major languages, past and present, New England Publishing Associates.
Mistry, P.J. (2003), "Gujarati", in Frawley, William (ed.),International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, vol. 2 (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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