Kangri dialect


Kangri is an Indo-Aryan language variety spoken in northern India, predominantly in the Kangra, Hamirpur and Una districts of Himachal Pradesh and in the Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur districts of Punjab. It is associated with the people of the Kangra Valley. The total number of speakers has been estimated at 1.7 million, while those who reported their first language as Kangri in the 2011 census were 1.17 million.
Its precise position within Indo-Aryan is subject to debate. Some scholars have classified as a dialect of the Dogri language spoken to the west, while others have seen its affinity to be closer with the Pahari dialects spoken to the east: Mandeali, Chambeali and Kullui.

Script

The native script of the language is Takri Script.

Status

The language is commonly called Pahari or Himachali. Some speaker may even call it a dialect of Punjabi or Dogri. The language has no official status and is recorded as a dialect of Hindi. According to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the language is of definitely endangered category, i.e. many Kangri children are not learning Kangri as their mother tongue any longer.
The demand for the inclusion of 'Pahari ' 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. There has been no positive progress on this matter since then even when small organisations are taking upto themselves to save the language and demanding it. Due to political interest, the language is currently recorded as a dialect of Hindi, even when having a poor mutual intelligibility with it and having a higher mutual intelligibility with other recognised languages like Dogri.