The Bagri is a dialect bridge of Rajasthani, Haryanvi & Punjabi and takes its name from the Bagar tract region of Northwestern India in the states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana. The language has a very high (70%) lexical similarity with Haryanvi. Bagri is a typical Indo-Aryan language akin to Haryanvi, Punjabi and Rajasthani with SOV word order. The most striking phonological feature of Bagri is the presence of three lexical tones: high, mid, and low, akin to Rajasthani, Haryanvi, Punjabi. The speakers are mostly in India, with a minority of them in Bahawalpur and Bahwalnagar areas in modern day Pakistan. According to the 2011 census of India, there are 234,227 speakers of Rajasthani Bagri and 1,656,588 speakers of Punjabi Bagri.

Geographical distribution

Features

Phonology

Bagri distinguishes 31 consonants including a retroflex series, 10 vowels, 2 diphthongs, and 3 tones. /ɳ/, /ɭ/ and /ɽ/ do not occur word initially. All vowels have their nasalised counterpart, marked with ◌̃ (ँ in Devanagari). Bagri has 3 tones in a similar way to the Punjabi language. A rising-falling tone ◌́,  a rising tone ◌̀, and an unmarked mid tone.

Declension

Verbs

Syntax

Samples

Official status

There are two varieties of Bagri, Bagri Rajasthani and Bagri Punjabi. During the census, Bagri Rajasthani, spoken in Haryana and Rajasthan, is considered a Hindi dialect while Bagri Punjabi, spoken in Punjab, is considered a Punjabi dialect.

Work on Bagri

Gallery

Regions where Bagri is spoken: