Bhojpuri

Bhojpuri (भोजपुरी) is a Bihari language spoken mainly in India, and also in Nepal, Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago and Mauritius. In India Bhojpuri speakers can be found in western Bihar state, in the northwest of Jharkhand and in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh. Bhojpuri spoken in Suriname is know as Sarnami Hindi or Sarnami and has absorbed vocabulary from English and Dutch.

Bhojpuri used to be considered a dialect of Hindi, but is the government of India is planning grant it the status of national scheduled language.

Bhojpuri is closely related to Maithili and Magadhi and they are collectively known as Bihari languages. It is also part of the eastern Indo-Aryan languages and related to Bengali and Oriya. According to the 2001 census, the number of Bhojpuri speakers in India is 33 million, though some people estimate the number to be 150 million in India, and a further 6 million elsewhere.

From 16th century until the mid 20th century Bhojuri was written with the Kaithi script, and also with the Perso-Arabic script. The Kaithi script is still used to a limited extent today, though Devanāgarī is more common and has been used in official documents since 1894.