Mandeali (Takri: ) is a Western Pahari language, spoken in northern India, predominantly in the Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh by the people of the Mandi Valley and particularly in the major city of Mandi. Other spellings for the name are Mandiyali and Mandiali. UNESCO reports it is one of the highly endangered languages of India. Speakers of the dialect have decreased by 21% from 1961 to 2001.
The language is distantly related to Kullui. The Chambealic varieties are often considered separate languages, but at least some are 90âÂÂ95% intelligible with Mandeali proper. Its sub-dialect are different than Mandeali.
Preliminary survey suggests speakers have functional intelligibility of Kangri. People in southeast Mandi district may have more difficulty understanding Kangri. Standard Mandeali is spoken throughout the broad valley running north and south from Jogindernagar to Sundarnagar. Mandeali Pahari is spoken north around Barot, east of Uhl River. Intelligible with difficulty to standard Mandeali. May be intermediate variety between Mandeali and Kullui. The dialect is very close to the Kullvi spoken in neighbouring lug valley region of Kullu district and are culturally, linguistically closer to Kullu. Southeast district contains transition to Mahasui. The dialect spoken is also sometimes referred as Suketi or dialect of Outer Seraj Area as dialect is an intermediate variety of Kullvi and Upper Mahasuvi of neighbouring Shimla and Kullu district. In the west, Sarkaghat is also a bit different from standard Mandeali, perhaps forming a transition towards Hamirpur and Bilaspur areas. Lexical similarity: 89% with Palampuri dialect of Kangri, 83% with Chambeali.
The vowels of Mandeali language are shown below.
Mandeali distinguishes two genders (Masculine and feminine), two numbers (Singular and plural) and four cases of direct, oblique, vocative, and ergative. Oblique also serves as locative and ergative also performs the function of instrumental. Nouns may be further divided into extended and unextended declensional subtypes, with the former characteristically consisting of masculines ending in unaccented -àand feminines in -ë.
The following tables displays the suffix paradigms.
The following table of noun declensions shows those suffix paradigms in action. Examples include ghà Âá¹Âà"stallion", mhaá¹Âhë "girl", ghÃÂÃÂr "house", kÃÂndh "wall".
Adjectives may be divided into declinable and indeclinable categories. Declinable adjectives have endings that change by the gender, number and case of the noun that they qualify. Declinable adjective have endings that are similar but much simpler than those of nouns:
Indeclinable adjectives are invariable and can end in either consonants or vowels (including àand ë ). The direct masculine singular (-ÃÂ) is the citation form. Most adjectives ending in consonants are indeclinable.