Bhojpuri Language - Comparison of Bhojpuri Dialects

Comparison of Bhojpuri Dialects

Bhojpuri has three dialects identified in the literature as

1. Standard Bhojpuri (also referred to as Southern Standard)
2. Northern Bhojpuri,
3. Western Bhojpuri

Southern Standard Bhojpuri covers the areas of Bhojpur, Rohtas, Saran, Bhabua, Buxar, Siwan, Gopalganj in Bihar, and Ballia and eastern Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh. One may also come across a local name ‘Chaparahiya’ in Saran.

Northern Bhojpuri covers the areas of Deoria, Gorakhpur and Basti in Uttar Pradesh and parts of Champaran in Bihar. Local names include ‘Gorakhpuri’ for the language in Deoria and eastern Gorakhpur, and ‘Sarwariya’ in western Gorakhpur and Basti. The variety spoken cast of Gandak river between Gorakhpuri Bhojpuri and Maithili in Champaran has a local name Pachhimahwa.

Western Bhojpuri includes the areas of Varanasi, Azamgarh, Ghazipur and Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh ‘Banarasi’ is a local name for the Banaras Bhojpuri. There is a very popular general name ‘ Purabiya’ for Western Bhojpur, obviously used by Hindi speakers to the west of them.

United Bhojpuri linguistic province has unfortunately been ignored by Indian Federalism, the reason could be the caste plagued politics in this region could not boast linguistic movement for Bhojpur or Purvanchal. Purvanchal means Eastern State. Caste rigidity prevented the people of Purvanchal from uniting as a linguistic region. They are not Hindi speaking people and their dialect is quite different. Hindi heart land is Awadh and parts of Madhya Pradesh and south western Uttar Pradesh. Because the people of Purvanchal have very less linguistic feelings and they have no identity known as such and many times they are incorrectly addressed as Hindians. Even today the people do not connect to the regional sentiments and caste feelings are dominant.

Except Gorakhpur, Deoria and Basti, all others are strict Bhojpuri speakers. They are striving for Bhojpuri state to promote their Bhojpuri language and culture.