Languages of Bihar

Most of the languages of Bihar, the third most populous state of India, belong to the Bihari subgroup of the Indo-Aryan family.

In this struggle between Hindi and Urdu standards of the Hindustani language, the potential claims of the three large mother tongues in the region – Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi were ignored.

[14] In 2003, Maithili was included in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution as a recognised regional language of India, which allows it to be used in education, government, and other official contexts.

[15] Angika is mainly spoken in Anga area which includes Munger, Bhagalpur and Banka districts of Bihar and the Santhal Pargana division of Jharkhand.

[19] Bajjika is spoken in the north-western part of Bihar which mostly spans the modern day Tirhut Division and thus is also referred to as Tirhutiya.

[20] Researcher Abhishek Kashyap (2013), based on the 2001 census data, estimated that there were 20 million Bajjika speakers in Bihar (including around 11.46 illiterate adults).

[21] Bhojpuri is an Indo-Aryan language predominantly spoken in the Bhojpur region located in the western part of Bihar.

[22] In Nepal, Bhojpuri is the third most spoken language, primarily used in the central and eastern Terai regions.

[26] Khortha is a language variety spoken in far-southern Bihar adjoining Jharkhand, on the Chota Nagpur plateau.

As an extension of this population, Santhali is spoken by many people in Jamui, Banka, Munger and Bhagalpur districts.

In fact, it is more closely related to Assamese and Bengali than Hindi, being the western extension of the Kamata group of lects like Rajbanshi in neighbouring Nepal and Rangpuri in nearby Bangladesh.