Symbols
159Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Bhojpuri vowels (स्वर)
Each vowel has a full letter for the start of a syllable and a sign (matra) added to a consonant: क + ा = का. अ has no sign; every consonant already carries it. Bhojpuri often spells its diphthongs as two letters: कइसन, अउर.
Nasal and other signs
Candrabindu ँ marks a nasal vowel (हँसल, गाँव); anusvara ं stands for a nasal before a consonant (गंगा).
Bhojpuri consonants (व्यंजन)
The traditional order: five rows by place in the mouth (plain, aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated, nasal), then the semivowels, the sibilants and ह.
Punctuation and Devanagari digits
The danda । ends a sentence; ॥ closes a verse in songs and religious texts.
Kaithi script: vowels and signs (historic)
Kaithi was the everyday script of Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili writers, clerks and courts until the 20th century. It has no headline joining the letters.
Kaithi script: consonants
Currency
Where Bhojpuri is spoken
Largest first: India (western Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh), Nepal (the Terai), Mauritius.
Chhath, festivals and Bhojpuri songs
Chhath Puja: offerings to the setting and the rising sun from a river or pond, in bamboo baskets of fruit and thekua.
On the map
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The Bhojpuri alphabet: Devanagari letters
Bhojpuri today is written in Devanagari, the same script as Hindi, Nepali and Marathi: left to right, with the letters hanging from a line along the top (the shirorekha). The alphabet is the familiar Indian set: the vowels अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ and the dependent vowel signs (matras) used after consonants (का कि की कु कू कृ के कै को कौ), and the consonants in the old phonetic grid, from क ख ग घ ङ through प फ ब भ म to य र ल व श ष स ह, plus ड़ and ढ़.
Every consonant carries a built-in a, so क alone is ka. The virama ् removes it, and two consonants then join into a conjunct: क ् ष क्ष, त ् र त्र, प ् र प्र. Alphabet charts often add क्ष त्र ज्ञ श्र at the end, but they are such joined pairs, not separate letters, and you type them as two letters with a virama between.
What makes a text look Bhojpuri rather than Hindi is spelling and grammar, not new letters. Bhojpuri often writes its diphthongs as two vowels where Hindi uses ऐ and औ: कइसन kaisan "how", अउर aur "and", पइसा paisā "money". The verb "to be" is बा and बानी instead of Hindi है, as in का हाल बा? "how are things?", and the past tense ends in -ल: गइल "went", आइल "came", पढ़ल "read".
Special letters and signs: ड़ ढ़, ँ ं and the nukta
ड़ and ढ़ are flaps: the tongue curls back and strikes once, like a quick r. They are among the commonest sounds of Bhojpuri: बड़ "big", पढ़ल "read", गाड़ी "cart, car", and the song favourite कहाँ बाड़ू? "where are you?" said to a girl or woman. The dot under them is the nukta ़. Unicode has two ways to write each: a single character (U095C ड़, U095D ढ़) or ड / ढ followed by the nukta. They look the same, and Unicode normalization turns the single character into the two-part form, so search and spell checkers treat them as one.
Bhojpuri has many nasal vowels, marked with the candrabindu ँ (moon and dot): गाँव "village", कहाँ "where", हँसी "laughter". The anusvara ं (a dot alone) stands for a nasal before a consonant: गंगा "Ganga", संगीत "music". When a matra already sits above the line, writers use the plain dot for both, as in में and नहीं. The visarga ः appears only in Sanskrit words such as दुःख "sorrow".
ङ ञ ण rarely start a word; they belong to the alphabet grid and to Sanskrit spellings, and everyday Bhojpuri writes their sound with ं (गंगा rather than गङ्गा). The candra e sign ॅ, which CLDR lists for Bhojpuri, is used by some writers for the vowel of English "bat" in loanwords; most simply write ै.
Kaithi: the old script of Bhojpuri
Before Devanagari took over in the 20th century, Bhojpuri was usually written in Kaithi (कैथी), the script of the Kayastha scribes. Across Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh it was used for letters, shop accounts, land records and court papers, and in the 19th century the British administration made it a script of the courts in Bihar. It is related to Devanagari but has a distinct letter inventory and no top line: 𑂍 ka, 𑂎 kha, 𑂏 ga, 𑂥 ba, 𑂦 bha.
Kaithi entered Unicode in version 5.2 (2009), in the block U11080–U110CF, and fonts such as Noto Sans Kaithi display it; without one you see empty boxes. Old land deeds and other records in Bihar are written in Kaithi and few people can still read them, which is why many look for ways to convert Kaithi script to Hindi. The Kaithi tables on this page show Kaithi letters in their own script; they do not each have a one-to-one Devanagari twin.
How to type Bhojpuri on a keyboard and phone
Gboard offers Bhojpuri and Bhojpuri transliteration layouts. On Windows, add Hindi under Settings Time & language Language & region and choose a Devanagari INSCRIPT layout or the Hindi phonetic keyboard, where you type in Latin letters and pick the Devanagari word; switch with WinSpace. On a Mac, add Devanagari, Devanagari – QWERTY or Hindi – Transliteration under System Settings Keyboard Input Sources.
On a phone, add Hindi to Gboard or SwiftKey. Its transliteration mode lets you type ka haal ba and pick का हाल बा from the suggestions, a common way to write Bhojpuri captions, song lyrics and WhatsApp messages. If your keyboard lacks । ॥ or the Devanagari digits ० to ९, copy them here.
In HTML any letter can be written by its code: भ is भ, ड़ is ड़, । is the danda । and 𑂍 is Kaithi 𑂍. The "Bhojpuri fonts" people download for posters and thumbnails are decorative Devanagari fonts: the letters are the same Unicode characters as on this page.
Where Bhojpuri is spoken
CLDR estimates about 35 million speakers of Bhojpuri: about 32 million in India, 2.1 million in Nepal and 110,000 in Mauritius. India's 2011 census, where Bhojpuri is counted under Hindi, recorded about 50 million people who named it as their mother tongue. Its heartland is western Bihar (Bhojpur, Buxar, Saran, Siwan, Gopalganj, Champaran) and eastern Uttar Pradesh (Varanasi, Ghazipur, Ballia, Gorakhpur, Deoria), with Nepal's Terai around Birgunj; the language takes its name from the town of Bhojpur in Bihar.
In the 19th century, indentured workers from the Bhojpuri region were taken to Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname and South Africa. Bhojpuri lives on in Mauritius, in Sarnami Hindustani in Suriname, in the old songs of Trinidad and Guyana, and as one of the roots of Fiji Hindi. Its closest relatives are Magahi and Maithili, grouped with it as the Bihari languages; for the same Devanagari letters in related languages see the Hindi, Awadhi, Magahi, Maithili, Nepali and Fiji Hindi collections, and for flags and emoji the India, Nepal and Mauritius collections.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyBhojpuri Alphabet & Letters combos
14Worth knowing
- The first Bhojpuri feature film, Ganga Maiyya Tohe Piyari Chadhaibo, came out in 1963; Bhojpuri cinema is now a large regional film industry, with well over a hundred feature films a year in recent years.
- Geet-Gawai, the Bhojpuri pre-wedding songs sung by women in Mauritius, was added to UNESCO's list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016.
- The playwright Bhikhari Thakur (1887–1971) is often called the Shakespeare of Bhojpuri; his play Bidesiya is about a migrant worker who leaves his wife behind in the village.
- ड़ has its own code point, U095C, yet Unicode normalization always rewrites it as ड plus the nukta, so the single character almost never survives in normalized text.
Questions people ask
7What is the Bhojpuri alphabet?
Bhojpuri is written in Devanagari: the vowels अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ए ऐ ओ औ with their matras, the consonants क to ह, the flaps ड़ ढ़ and the signs ँ ं ः ्. Until the 20th century it was mostly written in Kaithi, a related script with a distinct letter inventory and letterforms.
What script is Bhojpuri written in?
Devanagari, the same script as Hindi and Nepali, both in India and in Nepal. The older script was Kaithi, used for Bhojpuri letters, accounts and court records in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.
What is Kaithi script?
Kaithi (कैथी) is the script of the Kayastha scribes of North India. It was the everyday script of Bhojpuri, Magahi and Maithili writers and of Bihar's courts and land records until Devanagari replaced it. It has no top line and has been in Unicode since version 5.2 (2009).
How to type Bhojpuri on keyboard?
Use a Hindi keyboard: on Windows add Hindi (Devanagari INSCRIPT or the Hindi phonetic keyboard), on a Mac add Devanagari or Hindi – Transliteration, on a phone add Hindi to Gboard or SwiftKey and type in Latin letters to get Devanagari. Copy anything missing, such as ड़ or ।, from this page.
How many letters are in the Bhojpuri alphabet?
The Devanagari alphabet used for Bhojpuri has 11 vowels and 33 consonants, plus the flaps ड़ ढ़ and the signs for nasals (ँ ं), visarga ः and virama ्. Charts often add the conjuncts क्ष त्र ज्ञ, which are joined pairs rather than letters.
Is Bhojpuri the same as Hindi?
No. Bhojpuri is a language of its own in the Bihari group with Magahi and Maithili, though India's census counts it under Hindi and many speakers also know Hindi. Both use the same Devanagari letters, but Bhojpuri says बा for "is" (Hindi है) and गइल for "went" (Hindi गया).
What emoji are used for Chhath Puja?
The usual Chhath set is (the sun over water), , , and , often with for the fruit offerings and for the bamboo baskets: जय छठी मईया .
