Bhojpuri is the main language spoken in the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, and it is also spoken in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh. It is sometimes considered to be a dialect of Hindi (the main language in official and written use in the states above). Bhojpuri has about 25 million speakers in India, 1.4 million speakers in Nepal and 300,000 speakers in Mauritius. Bhojpuri and several closely related languages, including Maithili and Magahi, are known as the Bihari languages, which are part of the Eastern Zone group of the Indo-Aryan languages, which includes Bengali and Oriya.

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

Reference

• Entry for this language in the Ethnologue database.

See also

• Hindustani language