Garhwali (गढ़वळि, gɜɽɦʋɜɭiˑ, in native pronunciation) is an Indo-Aryan language of the Central Pahari subgroup. It is primarily spoken by over million Garhwali people in the Garhwal region of the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand in the Indian Himalayas.
Garhwali has a number of regional dialects. It is not an endangered language (Ethnologue lists it as "vigorous"), it is nonetheless designated as "vulnerable" in UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, which indicates that the language requires consistent conservation efforts.
Ethnologue has catalogued alternate names by which Garhwali is known such as Gadhavali, Gadhawala, Gadwahi, Gashwali, Girwali, Godauli, Gorwali, Gurvali, and Pahari Garhwali. These alternate names of the language may have come from the speakers having more than one name for their language, or variant Romanisations of what is essentially the same name. Gadwallis schollar Gadwall's Kukareithi use Gadwallis or Gaddish for all literary & legal purpose.
Garhwali is spoken primarily by people in Tehri Garhwal, Pauri Garhwal, Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Dehradun districts of Garhwal division in the state of Uttarakhand. Garhwali is also spoken by Garhwali migrants to other parts of India including Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh. According to various estimates, there are at least 3.5 million Garhwali migrants living in Delhi and the National Capital Region.
It is difficult to estimate the exact number of Garhwali speakers, as different agencies give different accounts of this number. According to the 2001 Census of Languages in India, there were 22,67,314 Garhwali language speakers, while Ethnologue gave a much larger figure of 29,20,000 Garhwali language speakers in a 2005 report. As per the latest 2011 Census of Languages in India, there are an estimated 24,82,089 speakers, and as of 2022, Ethnologue uses the same estimate.
Historically, in the Middle Indo-Aryan period there were a variety of languages called Prakrits.