Bhojpuri

Closely related, but linguistically separate. Hindi and Bhojpuri share an Indo-Aryan grammatical core, postpositions, SOV order, and gender agreement, but Bhojpuri has its own pronouns, verb endings, and vocabulary, and is not fully mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi. The Indian census often groups Bhojpuri under Hindi, but linguists treat it as a distinct Bihari language.

Mainly in western Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and northern Jharkhand. Substantial diaspora populations exist across the former British and French indenture-labour destinations: Mauritius (where Bhojpuri has constitutional recognition), Suriname (where the language is called Sarnami Hindustani), Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Fiji, and South Africa. The language is one of the most internationally dispersed of all Indian regional languages.

Devanagari is the modern standard, the same script used for Hindi and Marathi. Historically, Bhojpuri has also been written in Kaithi, a related Brahmic script that was widely used in the Bihar region but is now archaic. Most Bhojpuri publishing today uses Devanagari, with some online and ceremonial use of Kaithi as a heritage marker.

Mauritius recognizes it constitutionally, and Nepal lists it in the country's language schedule. India does not formally recognize Bhojpuri among the 22 scheduled languages — campaigns for inclusion have been ongoing for years but haven't yet succeeded. Within India, Bhojpuri retains a vibrant film and music industry, especially the regional cinema known as Bhojpuri cinema.

Indo-Aryan in shape: SOV word order, postpositions, two grammatical genders, gender agreement on adjectives and verbs, and the split-ergative past tense familiar from Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages. Verb conjugations differ noticeably from Standard Hindi, and Bhojpuri preserves several older Indo-Aryan forms that Hindi has dropped.