My Identity

Ever since i moved to kochi, people used to ask me where are you from, and which language do you speak, and the common answer which i used to give was, i’m from delhi and i speak hindi. But to the people who had i known for some time, e.g. my colleague and flatmates, then my answer to the same was somewhere around these lines:

I was born & brought up in north indian household, more particularly in haryanvi household, I’m from a place called narela, (Which is a satellite town of delhi), And We are connected to central delhi via train & roads, but not yet via metro/sub-way, hence I’m considering it as a satellite town, also population is quite low here when compared to central delhi.

So back to the topic, I’m a haryanvi guy, who speaks deshwali accent/dialect as my mother tongue, which comes under haryanvi language itself. The accent is louder & more blunt when compared to hindi. Haryanvi is commonly considered as language of illiterates when spoken in the north indian cities, (including the major cities of haryana itself like gurgaon)

You can think of it like Scottish english & British english, Scottish english is more on the hard side compared to british english. Similarly haryanvi is on the hard side, when compared to hindi.

Another thing to notice is that, haryanvi do not have a written script like punjabi or urdu have. It remained more of spoken language to this day.

Though the digital presence of language was limited to handful of bollywood movies, where it is used in movies like dangal & sultaan, but the accent was off and not at all matching the actual haryanvi accent, all the sentences were ending raee but in actuality we rarely use raee, we use h instead.

But around 2016-17, Jio came, content creation & content consumption exploded in india, Things picked up quite a lot since then, now there’s web series, a few movies, music videos & social media creators which is kinda become the core driver for the language to gain popularity across india.

There a few other sub dialects of haryanvi which are commonly spoken in the Delhi NCR region, namely:

1. Deshwali/Bangru (Narela, Bawana, Pitampura, Najafgarh)
2. Ahirwati (Gurgaon, nearby villages)
3. Kauravi (Jamnapar aka Right side of Yamuna river, Rithala & Naraina)
4. Gujari (Faridabad, Chatarpur, Sultanpur, namely spoken by yadavs)

There’s also common thing to notice in delhi is that if you talk to a delhi police constable or DTC Bus driver/conductor, or a govt school teacher, You’ll mostly likely talking to a person who is from either from haryana or west up. Which kinda proves that delhi was/is mainly dominated by haryanvi & western up cultures, before the major migrations happened from Punjab and Purvanchal areas like bihar. Cause delhi in itself is very small compared to haryana & uttar pradesh & also covered from both sides by the same states.

These are all major sub dialects of haryanvi & places where they are spoken in majority:

1. Bagri (Lower Sirsa, Western hisar, Hanumangarh, Charkhi dadri)
2. Rathee (Fatehabad, Tohana)
3. Bangru (Jind, Kaithal, Panipat, Eastern hisar, upper Gohana, Sonepat which is closer to jind)
4. Deshwali (Old rohtak, jhajjar, Sonepat, Narela, Bawana, Najafgarh)
5. Ahirwati (Gurgaon, Rewari, Mahendragarh & Nearby villages)
6. Mewati (Mewat, Nuh, Firozpur)
7. Brij/Gujari (South delhi, Faridabad, Palwal, Noida, Jewar)
8. Nardak (Panipat, Karnal, Kurukshetra)
9. Puadhi/Ambalvi (Ambala, Yamunanagar, Kaithal, Shahbad)
10. Kauravi (Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Sharanpur, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Faridabad, Baghpat)

One common is thing is that all these dialects are mutually intelligible i.e anyone who speaks any of the above dialects can understand the other dialects with much hassle or effort.

Here’s some common words & sentences of deshwali, that we use in day to day life their English & hindi translation:

References:

• https://youtu.be/hIDJdvwtKu8
• https://youtu.be/59nZP7nFzH0
• https://youtu.be/hn32Iwbm9r0
• https://youtu.be/MJJ5De2YHvY