Awadh · Upper Indus–Gangetic Plain

Dialect and oral traditions

Awadhi is an Eastern Hindi language, closer to Bagheli and Chhattisgarhi than to the Kauravi that became standard Hindi. It is one of the few Indian vernaculars with a canonical literature older than the standard that displaced it — Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas and Jayasi's Padmavat are both Awadhi — and the census arithmetic now works against it, because most Awadhi speakers return their language as Hindi.

Speech varieties

Central AwadhiIndo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi

The Lucknow, Barabanki and Rae Bareli register, most heavily overlaid with the Urdu of the city.

Speakers: 3.85 million returned in the 2011 Census, against far larger field estimates

Eastern AwadhiIndo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi

Ayodhya, Sultanpur and Pratapgarh — the Ramcharitmanas register, shading into Bhojpuri towards the Sarayu–Ganga meeting.

Western AwadhiIndo-Aryan, Eastern Hindi

Hardoi, Sitapur and the Lakhimpur fringe; transitional towards Kanauji and Braj, and its speakers are usually counted as Hindi speakers.

Lucknow UrduIndo-Aryan, Hindustani

Not a dialect of Awadhi but a register that grew beside it, marked by a preference for the second-person aap, elaborate address forms, and a vocabulary of courtesy the rest of the language does not need.

Indigenous terminology

Term	Meaning
Dum दम	The sealed-pot method, and by extension the state of a dish left alone under its own steam. To put a dish on dum is to stop interfering with it.
Galawat गलावट	The act of breaking meat down until it will barely hold — the tenderising step that gives the galouti kebab its name.
Bawarchi and rakabdar बावर्ची / रकाबदार	The cook who feeds a household in quantity, and the specialist who prepares a few plates and is judged on refinement. The distinction was a job description, not a compliment.
Dastarkhwan दस्तरख़्वान	The cloth spread on the floor for a meal, and the meal itself. What appears on it, and in what order, is a code of hospitality.
Tehzeeb तहज़ीब	Manners as a cultivated system — forms of address, deference, indirectness. Lucknow's self-description, and also its most-mocked trait.
Takalluf तकल्लुफ़	Ceremonious formality, offered as respect and understood by everyone present to be partly performance.
Imambara इमामबाड़ा	A hall built for Muharram mourning assemblies, not a mosque. Lucknow has the two largest in the subcontinent.
Azadari अज़ादारी	The observance of mourning for Husain — majlis, marsiya, matam and the taziya procession.
Bhulbhulaiya भूलभुलैया	The labyrinth of interlocking passages in the upper storey of the Bara Imambara, produced by the structural need to lighten the load over a vaulted hall of that span.
Taluqdar तालुक़दार	The intermediary landholder of Awadh, confirmed in place after 1858 in exchange for loyalty. The word still describes the rural social order the countryside remembers.
Jaali जाली	The mesh in chikankari, made by parting the threads of the weave with a needle rather than cutting them.
Nimish निमिष	The winter dew-set milk foam, also called makkhan malai. Banaras calls the same thing malaiyo and Delhi calls it daulat ki chaat.

Sayings

Saying	Literally	Meaning
Pehle aap	You first	The Lucknow courtesy formula, and the subject of the city's favourite joke about itself — two men at a carriage door, each insisting the other board first, until the train leaves without them.
Jaake pair na phate bivai, so ka jane peer parai	One whose feet have never cracked cannot know another's pain	An Awadhi proverb in continuous use, and among the lines Tulsidas's register made proverbial.
Ka barsha jab krishi sukhane	What use is rain once the crop has dried	Help that arrives too late. From the Ramcharitmanas, and used as ordinary speech.
Naach na jane aangan tedha	Cannot dance, and blames the crooked courtyard	Blaming the conditions for a lack of skill.
Muskuraiye, ki aap Lucknow mein hain	Smile — you are in Lucknow	A twentieth-century tourism line the city adopted so completely that it now works as a genuine local saying.

Speech varieties, indigenous terminology and sayings of Awadh. (17)