Bhojpuri is a Bihari language spoken in northeastern India in the western part of state of Bihar, the northwestern part of Jharkhand, and the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, as well as an adjoining area of southern plains of Nepal. Bhojpuri is also spoken in Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago and Mauritius and is often said to be the only Indian language to be spoken on all continents.

Bhojpuri has evolved as a language from its dialect form and government of India is preparing to grant it statutory status of as national scheduled language.

Bhojpuri shares vocabulary with Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and other Indo-Aryan languages of northern India. Bhojpuri and several closely related languages, including Maithili and Magahi, are together known as the Bihari languages. They are part of the Eastern Zone group of Indo-Aryan

There are numerous dialects of Bhojpuri, including three or four in eastern Uttar Pradesh alone.

Some notable Bhojpuri personalities are the first president of India, Rajendra Prasad, Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpai, and former Indian prime minister Chandra Shekhar.

Number of speakers

Bhojpuri is usually quoted to have about 25 million speakers in India, 1.4 million speakers in Nepal and 300,000 speakers in Mauritius but these are all rough estimates.

Bhojpuli dialects, varieties, nd creoles are also spoken in various parts of the world, including Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, South Africa, Fiji, and Trinidad and Tobago. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many colonizers had faced labor shortages and were unable to obtain slaves from Africa due to the abolition of slavery; thus, they imported many Indians as indentured servants to labor on plantations. Today, many Indians in the West Indies, Oceania, and South America still speak Bhojpuri as a native or second language, although the forms of Bhojpuri spoken by them often vary considerably from their Indian counterpart due to years of geographic and cultural separation.

See also

• Hindustani language
• Languages of India
• List of national languages of India
• List of Indian languages by total speakers

Bhojpuri Bhojpurikn:ಭೋಜ್‌ಪುರೀ ბოჯპური Bhojpuri 博杰普尔语