The Sadri Alphabet

Sadri (सादरी; ISO 639-3: sck) — also called Nagpuri, Sadari, or Sadani — is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 3.5 million people across Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Bihar in eastern India. It belongs to the Eastern subgroup of Indo-Aryan, closely related to Hindi and Bhojpuri.

Sadri functions as a lingua franca — a contact language used for communication between communities with different mother tongues — across the linguistically diverse Chota Nagpur Plateau. In this region, many tribal communities speak Austroasiatic languages (Mundari, Ho, Santali) or Dravidian languages (Gondi), and Sadri bridges communication across these language groups. The name \"Nagpuri\" reflects the historical significance of Nagpur as the administrative centre of the Central Provinces under British rule.

Sadri is written in the Devanagari script (देवनागरी) — the same left-to-right abugida used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and Sanskrit. Devanagari has 33 consonants and 11 independent vowels.

In everyday informal writing, Sadri speakers also use the Latin (Roman) script for digital communication, particularly in SMS and social media. Historically, some Sadri communities used the Kaithi script — a Bihari script also used for Bhojpuri and Maithili — before Devanagari became standard. Devanagari is now the accepted literary and educational script for Sadri.

Yes — Sadri and Nagpuri are two names for the same language. The name \"Sadri\" (or Sadari / Sadani) is preferred in linguistic literature and reflects the community's own identification with the language. The name \"Nagpuri\" is more widely used in common parlance in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh — it derives from Nagpur (now in Maharashtra), which was the historic administrative capital of the Central Provinces during British rule.

Other names used for the language include Sadani, Sadhan, and Sodari. The ISO 639-3 code sck applies to all these names — they all refer to the same spoken variety. The two names exist for the same historical reason that the same language may be called by the name of the region or by the community's self-identification term.

Sadri is spoken primarily in Jharkhand state in eastern India — particularly in the Chota Nagpur Plateau districts. It is also spoken in neighbouring parts of Odisha (particularly in the Sundargarh district), Chhattisgarh, and Bihar. Sadri-speaking communities are also found in West Bengal, Assam, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — reflecting historical migration of Jharkhand tribal labourers to tea gardens, mines, and plantation areas during the colonial period.

Within Jharkhand, Sadri is used as a lingua franca across the entire state, functioning as a common communication medium between the numerous tribal groups (Santali, Munda, Ho, Oraon) and the non-tribal Indo-Aryan speaking populations. It was recognised as a regional language of Jharkhand when the state was carved out of Bihar in 2000.

Sadri is spoken by approximately 3.5 million people as a first language, though the number of speakers who use Sadri as a second language (lingua franca) is considerably higher — potentially several million more across Jharkhand and surrounding states. Precise figures are difficult to determine because many census respondents report their tribal language (Santali, Mundari, Oraon) as their primary language, while using Sadri as a working lingua franca.

The 2011 Indian census recorded approximately 2.9 million people declaring Sadri (under the names Sadri, Nagpuri, and Sadani combined) as their mother tongue. However, linguistic surveys consistently show higher usage figures, particularly when counting second-language and lingua franca speakers. Sadri is one of the most significant contact languages in the tribal belt of eastern India.