Page 22 - Bhojpuri Verb Morphology

CHAPTER 2

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

2.0 Outline

This chapter deals with the people, who speak Bhojpuri, their language and culture. It

consists of seven sections. Section 2.1 presents the nomenclature of Bhojpuri
language. Section 2.2 deals with Bhojpuri language and its dialects. In this section we

have talked about Bhojpuri dialects spoken in Nepal. Section 2.3 talks about
population distribution of Bhojpuri speakers. We have given the data of Bhojpurians

of Nepal and the position of Bhojpuri language in the country. Section 2.4 discusses
the social situation of Bhojpurians, their occupation, caste system and their social and

family structure. Section 2.5 outlines the genetic affiliation of Bhojpuri language.
Section 2.6 deals with nominal system of Bhojpuri and finally section 2.7 summarizes
the findings of this chapter.

2.1 Nomenclature

Nepal is a multilingual and multicultural country. The 2001 census has identified 92
languages spoken as mother tongue. According to census, the languages in Nepal

belong to four language families. They are Indo-European, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-
Asiatic and Dravidian families. In Nepal, Indo-Aryan languages, spoken by the largest
populace, belong to Indo-European family. This group comprises nearly 80% of the

population. Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language, which is the third major language
spoken in Nepal after Nepali and Maithili respectively.

Bhojpuri is one of the prominent living languages of Nepal and India. According to

Grierson (1883:15) Bhojpuri takes its name from Bhojpur. Bhojpur is a place exists
near the town of Baksar in the Indian state of Bihar, now a district. It had also been

known as Bhojpuri in the past. Some locals also have given different names of this
language e.g. Purbi Boli 'eastern speech' or just Purbi 'eastern'. It has also been named

as Banarasi after the Indian city of Varanasi or Banaras or Bangarboli i.e. 'the speech
of Bangar'.

5