Caribbean Hindustani

Caribbean Hindustani
Native to Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Caribbean
Native speakers
 (150,000 in Suriname cited 1986)[1]
16,000 in Trinidad (1996); a few elders in Guyana
Language codes
ISO 639-3 hns
Glottolog cari1275[2]

Caribbean Hindustani or Hindustani Sarnami [3] is a dialect of Bhojpuri spoken in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, and the rest of the Caribbean region with significant Indian influence.

After Dutch and Sranan Tongo, Sarnami Hindustani is the most widely spoken language of Suriname. The language is spoken by the descendants of emigrants from the current Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, collectively known in Suriname and the Netherlands as Hindoestanen. Because of the predominance of Bhojpuri-speaking emigrants, the Caribbean Hindustani and Sarnami Hindustani are most influenced by Bhojpuri and other Bihari varieties of the Hindustani language.

Dialects

The Caribbean Hindustani of neighboring Guyana, known as Aili Gaili, is spoken by a few older members within a community of 300,000 Indo-Guyanese.

The variant spoken in Trinidad and Tobago is known as Trinidad Bhojpuri. In 1996, it was spoken by 15,633 people.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Caribbean Hindustani at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Caribbean Hindustani". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  3. ↑ ethnologue.com
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