Festival story
Chhath and the sun's debt
Fasting women stand waist-deep at dusk and dawn to return the sun's gift of harvest and health.
Language profile
Bhojpuri
भोजपुरी
Bhojpuri of the central Tarai is a language of song above all — Chhath geet, birha ballads and wedding repertoires that migrate with its speakers wherever they work.
- Language family
- Indo-European › Eastern Indo-Aryan
- Script
- Devanagari, Kaithi
- Speakers
- ≈ 2 million in Nepal
- Status
- Vital
- Also called
- Bhojapuri
- Greeting
- Pranam
Where it is spoken
Geographic distribution
ParsaBaraRautahatNawalparasiChitwan
Script
Devanagari, Kaithi
Writing sample
भोजपुरी
Scripts carry more than sound: letterforms, numerals and orthographic conventions record centuries of contact, patronage and revival.
Note
Numeral documentation for Bhojpuri is in progress with community contributors.
Words & expressions
Everyday speech
का हाल बा?
Ka haal ba?
How are you?
बहुते बढ़िया
Bahute badhiya
Very good
Alphabet
Letters and numerals
Devanagari
Official script of Nepal, used for Nepali and most Indo-Aryan and many Tibeto-Burman languages of the country.
Vowels
अआइईउऊऋएऐओऔअंअः
Consonants
कखगघङचछजझञटठडढणतथदधनपफबभमयरलवशषसहक्षत्रज्ञ
Numerals
०१२३४५६७८९
Words
Core vocabulary
माई
maai
mother
पानी
paani
water
गाँव
gaanv
village
छठ
Chhath
sun festival
बिरहा
birha
folk ballad
सूरज
sooraj
sun
भइया
bhaiya
elder brother
ठेठ
theth
pure / rustic speech
Idioms & sayings
How the language thinks
अपन गाँव के कुत्ता शेर
Apan gaanv ke kutta sher
Every dog is a lion in its own village.
History
How Bhojpuri came to be written and spoken
Medieval
Bhojpuri speech spreads across the eastern Gangetic plain, including Nepal's central Tarai.
19th century
Indenture-era migration carries Bhojpuri to Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana and Suriname.
Modern
Large film, music and radio industry; Bhojpuri among Nepal's most spoken Tarai languages.
Tales
Told and retold
Indigenous knowledge
Knowledge carried in the language, not in books
Birha singing circles
Ballads of labour, migration and separation composed and answered by cattle herders.
Tarai crop calendars
Paddy, wheat and sugarcane timed by named fortnights and read against monsoon onset.
AI preparedness index
How ready is Bhojpuri for language technology?
Overall readiness
1.68%
readiness score from the global index of 6,000+ world languages
AI resource readiness0.04%
Infrastructural readiness32.64%
Socioeconomic readiness4.18%
ISO 639-3
bho
Speakers (index)
52,200,000
Endangerment
Potentially vulnerable
Open datasets
43
Published models
108
Wikipedia articles
0
Dictionary exists
Yes
Full text corpus
Yes
These figures place Bhojpuri on the readiness index: how much machine-readable text, speech and model work already exists, and how far the digital and socioeconomic conditions around its speakers support building them. A low AI resource score is exactly where corpus collection changes the outcome.
Source: global language readiness index (Bhojpuri, bho). Scores are readiness percentages across the full index of 6,000+ languages.
Stories
Oral tradition
Ballad
Lorik and Manjari
The cowherd hero Lorik's elopement and battles, sung for nights on end by birha singers with a single drum.
Songs & music
Sung heritage
♪
Chhath geet
Ritual song
Sung at riverbanks to the setting and rising sun.
Recording being catalogued
♪
Birha
Ballad
Long narrative singing of separation and heroism.
Recording being catalogued
Culture & traditions
Festivals, dress, food, craft
Festivals
ChhathHoliTeej
Dress
Sari with heavy border; dhoti-kurta and gamchha.
Food
Litti-chokha, thekua, sattu.
Crafts
Clay pottery, bamboo winnows, wall painting.
People & community
The people who keep Bhojpuri alive
Farming and trading communities of Parsa, Bara and Rautahat, with strong cross-border kinship.
Language → People → Place → Culture → Heritage
Bhojpuri → Farming and trading communities of Parsa → Parsa, Bara, Rautahat → Chhath → audio, video, text and images held with community consent.
Related languages
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