Bhojpuri

Bhojpuri, also known as Bajpuri, Bhojapuri, Bhozpuri, Bihari, Deswali, Khotla, and Piscimas, is a member of the Bihari group of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family. Its closest relatives are Magahi and Maithili. Bhojpuri is a direct descendant of Sanskrit but there is very little information about its early history due to the absence of written records. Although Bhojpuri is not one of the established literary languages of India, it has a strong tradition of oral literature.

Status

Due to a long history of emigration from the region, Bhojpuri has spread over all continents of the world.

• India
  Bhojpuri is spoken by 37.8 million people in India, primarily in the western part of the state of Bihar and eastern part of the state of Uttar Pradesh and some adjoining areas of Madhya Pradesh (Ethnologue). Currently it is not an official language, but the government of India is considering changing its status to that of a national scheduled language. Despite its unofficial status, Bhojpuri is used in government and mass media.
• Nepal
  In Nepal, Bhojpuri is spoken by 1.7 million as a first language plus by another 74,000 as a second-language.
• Mauritius
  Bhojpuri is spoken by 336,000 people in Mauritius but Hindi is used in schools and in the media.
• Elsewhere
  Variants of Bhojpuri are spoken by descendants of Bhojpuri-speaking plantation workers in Guyana, Suriname, Fiji, Trinidad and Tobago.

 

Dialects

Ethnologue identifies four major dialects of Bhojpuri which are mutually intelligible. Although the full range of variation is not firmly established, the differences among the dialects appear to be primarily lexical and phonological.

• Northern Standard considered to be the most prestigious dialect of the language
• Western Standard
• Southern Standard
• Nagpuria

 

Structure

Sound system

Bhojpuri syllables can begin and end in consonants. Consonant clusters occur in final positions only. It is also possible to have two vowels in a row.

Vowels

Bhojpuri has six vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that differentiate word meaning.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Open		a, ā

• /ə/ = a in about
• The only length contrast is between /a/ and /ā/.
• There are two diphthongs: /ai/ and /au/.

 

Consonants

The Bhojpuri sound system contains 34 consonant phonemes, depending on the variety analyzed. Most consonants can be geminated (doubled). There is a contrast between aspirated vs. unaspirated consonants. Aspirated consonants are produced with a strong puff of air. In the table above, aspirated consonants are marked by a raised [ʰ]. There is a contrast between and apical vs. retroflex consonants, e.g., /t/ – /ʈ/, /d/ – /ɖ/. Apical consonants are produced with the tip of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, whereas retroflex consonants are produced with the tongue curled, so that its underside comes in contact with the roof of the mouth.

		Bilabial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops	voiceless unaspirated	p	t	ʈ	c	k
	voiceless aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	ʈʰ	cʰ	kʰ
	voiced unaspirated	b	d	ɖ	j	g
	voiced aspirated	bʰ	dʰ	ɖʰ	jʰ	gʰ
Fricatives	voiceless		s				h
Affricates	voiceless unaspirated				tʃ
	voiceless aspirated				tʃʰ
	voiced unaspirated				dʒ
	voiced aspirated				dʒʰ
Nasals	unaspirated	m	n			ŋ
	aspirated	mʰ	nʰ			ŋʰ
Laterals	unaspirated		l			...
	aspirated		lʰ
Flaps	unaspirated..		r	ɽ
	aspirated		rʰ	ɽʰ
Approximants	.	w			j

• /ʈ, ʈʰ, ɖ, ɖʰ, tʃʰ/ have no equivalents in English
• /c/ has no equivalent in English
• /tʃ/ = ch in chop
• /dʒ/ = j in job
• /ŋ/ = ng in song
• /ɽ/ = r in hurt
• /j/ = y in yet

 

Stress

Stress in Bhojpuri does not distinguish word meaning. Primary stress usually falls on the penultimate (one before last) syllable in two-syllable words and antepenultimate syllable in longer words.

Grammar

The grammar of Bhojpuri is similar to that of other Indo-Aryan languages. Grammatical relations are marked by inflectional suffixes. Bhojpuri morphology is fusional with a single ending representing several categories, which is typical of Indo-European languages.

Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns

Nouns in Bhojpuri are inflected for the following categories:

• number: singular and plural
• gender: masculine and feminine (for animate nouns only)
• case: direct, oblique, and vocative; the direct case is used to mark subjects of sentences; the oblique case is used in pronouns with postpositions;
• Adjectives are not marked for agreement with nouns.
• 2nd and 3rd person pronouns are marked for several degrees of politeness.
• 3rd person and demonstrative pronouns are distinguished by degrees of proximity.

 

Verbs

Verbs agree with their subjects in person, number and gender. Verbal categories include the following:

• The typical structure of Bhojpuri verbs is Stem + Aspect/Tense + Personal ending which represents a combination of person and degree of politeness.
• Subject pronouns are frequently dropped.
• There are three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
• There are three tenses: present, past, future.
• There are two aspects: imperfective and perfective.
• There are three moods: indicative, imperative, optative.
• Bhojpuri verbs mark 1st, 2nd and 3rd person in imperatives.
• There are two voices: active and passive.
• Negation is marked by a negative particle placed before the verb.

 

Word order

The normal word order in Bhojpuri is Subject – Object – Verb. Indirect objects precede direct objects. Determiners and modifiers precede the nouns they modify.

Vocabulary

The basic vocabulary of Bhojpuri is Sanskrit in origin. It uses prefixes and suffixes to derive words from basic elements, as well as reduplication and compounding. Over the years Bhojpuri has borrowed words from Hindi, Bengali, and other neighboring Indo-Aryan languages, as well as from English.

Below are a few basic words and phrases in Bhojpuri.

Hello	prannam, प्रणाम
Excuse me.	maf kara, माफ करा
Thank you.	dhanyavad, धन्यवाद
Father	babuji, बाबुजी
Mother	माई (mayee), महतारी
Boy	laika, लइका
Girl	laiki, लइकी
Brother	bhai, भाई
Sister	bahin, बहिन

 

Below are Bhojpuri numerals 1-10 in Latin transcription.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ēk	dui	tīn	cāri	pã:c	cʱæ	sāt	ātʰ	nao	das

 

Writing

Bhojpuri is written in the Kaithi script which is widely used throughout North India, primarily in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Like other Indic scripts, Kaithi is a descendant of the Brahmi script. Kaithi script derives its name from the word Kayastha, one of the social groups of North India. The script can be traced back to the 16th century. It was widely used during the Mughal Empire. Today, the Kaithi script is being replaced by Devanagari.

Kaithi has 35 consonant letters, each letter representing a consonant with an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are represented by a variety of diacritics around the consonant. There are also 10 letters representing separate vowels. Geminated consonants and long vowels are represented by different letters than their single counterparts..

Take a look at Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Bhojpuri. Note that the letters are suspended from a continuous top line.

 

Difficulty