The Bhojpuri Alphabet

Bhojpuri (ISO 639-3: bho) is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Bihari group, which also includes Maithili (mai) and Magahi (mag). It is spoken primarily in the Bhojpuri belt (भोजपुरी पट्टी) — comprising Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh (particularly the Varanasi and Gorakhpur regions), and Jharkhand in India. The language takes its name from the historic city of Bhojpur in Bihar (now part of Bhojpur district). Bhojpuri has approximately 50–60 million speakers.

Bhojpuri is closely related to Awadhi (spoken around Lucknow and Ayodhya), Chhattisgarhi, and Standard Hindi, but has its own distinct grammar, verb morphology, and vocabulary. ISO 639-3 assigns Bhojpuri its own code (bho), treating it as a language separate from Hindi (hin). A major movement exists in India to include Bhojpuri in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as a recognised language, which would give it official status.

Bhojpuri is written in the Devanagari script (Unicode Block U+0900–U+097F) — the same script used for Standard Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. Devanagari is a Brahmic abugida, written left to right, in which each consonant carries an inherent /a/ vowel modified by diacritical signs called matras. The Devanagari alphabet for Bhojpuri includes 33 consonants, 11 independent vowels, vowel diacritics (matras), and native Devanagari digits (०–९).

In everyday digital communication, many Bhojpuri speakers write using the Latin alphabet (Romanised Bhojpuri), particularly in social media and messaging, though no standardised romanisation exists. The official and literary medium remains Devanagari. The Bhojwood film industry — the Bhojpuri-language film industry centred in Bihar and eastern UP — uses Devanagari for film titles, posters, and credits, making it a prominent public use of Bhojpuri in script form.

Bhojpuri is spoken in the Bhojpuri belt of India — Bihar (particularly western and central Bihar), eastern Uttar Pradesh (districts including Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Deoria, Balia, and Ghazipur), and Jharkhand (particularly Palamu and the Ranchi belt). The language is also spoken by migrant workers and their families across India, particularly in large cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Surat.

Bhojpuri has a remarkable global diaspora presence — the result of 19th-century indentured labour migration during the British colonial period. Indentured Bhojpuri speakers were transported to work on sugar plantations in Mauritius (where Hindi/Bhojpuri is still spoken by a significant minority), Fiji, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, and Jamaica. Descendants of these communities maintain Bhojpuri cultural traditions including folk music, dance, and religious practices derived from the Bihar homeland.

Bhojwood is the informal name for the Bhojpuri-language film industry, centred primarily in Patna (Bihar), Varanasi, and Mumbai. It is one of the largest regional film industries in India by output, producing hundreds of films per year. Bhojwood films are popular in Bihar, eastern UP, Jharkhand, and among the global Bhojpuri diaspora, particularly in Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, and Trinidad. The industry produces action films, romantic comedies, and folk-music-influenced cinema.

Alongside films, Bhojpuri music (songs, albums, and digital content) is enormously popular on YouTube and music streaming platforms — many Bhojpuri music videos have hundreds of millions of views. The digital popularity of Bhojpuri content has significantly raised awareness of the language globally, contributing to Bhojpuri's identification as a distinct and vibrant language rather than a "dialect" of Hindi. The folk music traditions (biraha, chaita, kajari) that form the cultural roots of Bhojpuri are increasingly celebrated alongside the commercial Bhojwood content.

The ISO 639-3 code for Bhojpuri is bho. Bhojpuri has no ISO 639-1 two-letter code. The language is catalogued in Glottolog under the identifier "bhoj1246". Bhojpuri is listed as a distinct language separate from Standard Hindi (hin), Maithili (mai), Magahi (mag), Awadhi (awa), and Chhattisgarhi (hne), though all these languages belong to the broadly defined Indo-Aryan continuum of north and eastern India.

The language is recognised in linguistic databases as a member of the Bihari group of Eastern Indo-Aryan. However, in Indian administrative and census contexts, Bhojpuri speakers have historically been subsumed under the Hindi speaker count, which is why Hindi's speaker numbers are inflated in census data. Independent estimates of Bhojpuri speakers range from 50 to 60 million, making it potentially one of the 20 most spoken languages in the world if counted as a separate language.