An estimated 70 million people of Uttar Pradesh and a further 80 million people in Bihar speak Bhojpuri as their first or second language. There are 6 million Bhojpuri speaking people are living outside the Bhojpuri heartlands of Bihar and Purvanchal. These areas include Nepal, especially Birgunj, Mauritius, Fiji, Suriname, Guyana, Uganda, Singapore, Trinidad & Tobago, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Great Britain, and the United States. This makes the total Bhojpuri speaking population in the world close to 150 million.
However, the official figures as per the Census of India 2001 are much lower. The census counts 33 million people in India to be speakers of the Bhojpuri dialect under the Hindi language sub-family.
Bhojpuri dialects, varieties, and creoles are also spoken in various parts of the world, includingBrazil, Fiji, Guyana, Mauritius, South Africa, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, many colonizers had faced labor shortages and were unable to obtain slaves from Africa due to the abolition of slavery; thus, they imported many Indians as indentured servants to labor on plantations. Today, many Indians in the West Indies, Oceania, and South America still speak Bhojpuri as a native or second language.
The Bhojpuri language has been heavily influenced by other languages in many parts of the world. Mauritian Bhojpuri includes many Creole and English words, while the one spoken in Trinidad & Tobago has picked up some Caribbean words along with English.
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