Marwari (Mārwāṛī मारवाड़ी; also rendered Marvari, Marwadi, Marvadi) is a Rajasthani language spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan. Marwari is also found in the neighboring state of Gujarat and Haryana and in Eastern Pakistan. With some 13.2 million speakers (in 1997, ca.), it is the largest language by number of speakers of the Marwari subgroup of the Rajasthani language. There are 13 million speakers in Rajasthan and rest 200,000 in Sindh province of Pakistan. There about 23 dialects of the Marwari language. It is popularly written in Devanagari script, as is Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and Sanskrit; although it was historically written in Mahajani. Marwari currently has no official status as a language of education and government. There has been a push in the recent past for the national government to recognize this language and give it a scheduled status. The state of Rajasthan recognizes Rajasthani as a language. In Pakistan, there are two varieties of Marwari. They may or may not be close enough to Indian Marwari to be considered the same language. Marwari speakers are concentrated in Sindh. In Pakistan, Marwari is generally written using a modified version of the Arabic Alphabet. Marwari is still spoken widely in and around Bikaner. There are ongoing efforts to identify and classify this language cluster and the language differences.
