The Bhojpuri language
and how it is written

Where Bhojpuri ranks

Bhojpuri is the 38th most-spoken language in the world by total speakers ^[1,2]. Here it is among its neighbours in the ranking, on one scale.

“How are you?” in Bhojpuri

The design of Devanagari

An abugida: every consonant carries an inherent 'a', other vowels are signs attached around it, and a virama removes the vowel. Consonant clusters fuse into conjuncts, and letters hang from a horizontal headline^[7,8]. It descends from Brahmi through the Gupta script^[8,9].

Abugida (syllabic). Each consonant carries a vowel, changed by marks attached to it.

Kind

Abugida (syllabic)

Direction

Left to right

Took shape

In use from the 7th century CE and in its present form by about the 11th century

Line of descent

Brahmi → Gupta → Nagari → Devanagari

Traditional surface

Paper

Own digits

० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९

Also writes

हिन्दी Hindiमराठी Marathi

• Ordered by the mouth

  Consonants are arranged by where they are made in the mouth, from the throat (क ka) to the lips (म ma), each row running from unvoiced to nasal. The alphabet is a phonetics chart inherited from Sanskrit grammarians^[7,10].

• Hanging from a line

  A horizontal headline, the shirorekha, joins the letters of a word; the letters hang below it rather than standing on a baseline^[8].

• Written before, said after

  The i sign ि is drawn to the left of its consonant but pronounced after it, so कि is ki. Unicode stores text in spoken order and leaves the reordering to the font, which is why early phones showed broken Hindi^[7].

• Letters that fuse

  Clusters join into conjuncts: क + ष makes क्ष (kṣa), and ज + ञ makes ज्ञ (jña), shapes that look nothing like their parts^[7].

• Kaithi: the clerk's script

  Kaithi, named after the Kayastha scribe community, had no headline and was quick to write, which suited court and business records^[4].

Explore the letters

Numbers in Devanagari

Bhojpuri's relatives among the 38

Bhojpuri belongs to the Indo-European family (Indo-Aryan (Bihari)). These are the other languages with 50 million or more speakers in the same family; the closest — in the same branch — come first.

• EnglishEnglishGermanic · 1.5B
• हिन्दीHindiIndo-Aryan · 611M
• españolSpanishRomance · 561M
• françaisFrenchRomance · 334M
• বাংলাBengaliIndo-Aryan · 274M
• portuguêsPortugueseRomance · 269M
• اُردُوUrduIndo-Aryan · 246M
• русскийRussianBalto-Slavic · 210M
• DeutschGermanGermanic · 133M
• मराठीMarathiIndo-Aryan · 99M
• پنجابیWestern PunjabiIndo-Aryan · 90M
• فارسیPersian (Iranian)Iranian · 82M
• italianoItalianRomance · 66M
• ગુજરાતીGujaratiIndo-Aryan · 62M

Bhojpuri across the hub

The main page compares all 38 languages. Each link opens it on Bhojpuri.

• Preview it in the explorer →with all 38 side by side
• Hear it in the voice tour →“How are you?” in every language, spoken in turn
• Trace its script's family tree →from the first alphabets and Chinese oracle bones
• Compare its digits →ten ways to write 0–9
• See its share of speakers →an interactive breakdown by script, family and region

Sources

1. Ethnologue — What are the top 200 most spoken languages? (2026)
2. Wikipedia — List of languages by total number of speakers (Ethnologue 2026 figures, retrieved October 2026)
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Indo-Aryan languages
4. Omniglot — Kaithi alphabet
5. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 15: South and Central Asia-IV (Kaithi, Modi)
6. UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage — Bhojpuri folk songs in Mauritius, Geet-Gawai (2016)
7. The Unicode Standard 17.0, chapter 12: South and Central Asia-I (Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada)
8. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Devanagari
9. Omniglot — Gupta script
10. Omniglot — Devanagari alphabet
11. Omniglot — Useful phrases in Bhojpuri

Checked October 25, 2026. Speaker numbers are Ethnologue's 2026 estimates, which count each language separately (Arabic and Chinese varieties are listed one by one). Maps shade whole countries, not regions within them. Found an error? Tell us.