Gujarati

Where it’s spoken

Gujarati is the official language of the Indian state of Gujarat, where it is the mother tongue of about 86% of the population. Large Gujarati-speaking diaspora communities exist in the United Kingdom (where Gujaratis are the largest South Asian community in cities like Leicester), the United States, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa. Many Indian businesses globally are run by Gujaratis.

What it sounds like

Gujarati has typical Indo-Aryan phonology with aspirated and unaspirated stops, dental and retroflex contrasts, and several diphthongs. It is non-tonal but has a phonemic distinction in some vowels between voiced and breathy-voiced (murmured) onsets, often called “aspirated vowels.”

How it’s written

The Gujarati script is a Brahmic abugida descended from the Devanagari script through a Kaithi intermediary. Unlike Devanagari, Gujarati script lacks the horizontal headstroke connecting letters — its more flowing, separate letterforms give it a distinct visual character.

History

Gujarati emerged as a literary language by the 12th century with Jain texts. Mahatma Gandhi wrote his autobiography in Gujarati. The 19th-century Bombay Gujarati publishing industry helped modernize the language.